Category Archives: stocks

UBS is the latest bank to see its share price rise in the wake of an absolutely enormous write-down. The $19 billion write-down announced today almost doubles the write-downs taken since the third quarter of 2007, and, in a move … Continue reading →

If you look at the one-day chart of Lehman’s stock price today, you’ll see that it was up a coupla bucks, happily crusing along, until early afternoon. Then, suddenly, in the last two hours of trading, Lehman’s stock skyrocketed in … Continue reading →

Are you tantalized by the prospect of Slate’s new business site? Well, the editor, Jim Ledbetter, is guest-blogging over at Fortune today, so maybe that will give you an idea of what to expect. This morning, talking about the Bear … Continue reading →

Many people believe that Bear Stearns was brought down by a classic "bear raid" – where a rumor gets started, snowballs, and becomes self-fulfilling. In nervous markets, someone who shorts a bank and then starts a rumor that it’s in … Continue reading →

A lot of the back-of-the envelope sums surrounding the Bear Stearns shares assume that Bear’s employees, who own 30% of the outstanding stock, are likely to vote against a deal. But given that New York City’s comptroller has already started … Continue reading →

That confounding Bear Stearns share price! Unsurprisingly, my explanation yesterday for why BSC was trading well above the offer price doesn’t seem to have persuaded everybody (or, frankly, anybody, really). It was mentioned by DealBook, but the "first best explanation" … Continue reading →

In today’s earnings report, Lehman Brothers reported that its book value rose one cent to $39.45 per share. The stock is doing great this morning, up $6 or so to $37.80, which puts Lehman on a price-to-book ratio of 0.96. … Continue reading →

Bear Stearns shares are now trading at $5 apiece: clearly there’s a reasonably large constituency of investors who simply don’t believe that it’s going to be bought for $2 per share. This is definitely one of the weirder merger-arb situations … Continue reading →

So that’s not nearly as bad as it might have been. As of 10:00, the S&P 500 is down 1.6%, and the Dow is down less than 1%. JP Morgan is up – that’s really good news. The financials are … Continue reading →

Around the world today, people are looking at each other with a semi-glazed expression on their face, and saying something along the lines of "Dude. $2 a share." As Dennis Berman says, this is what they call on the Street … Continue reading →

Two dollars per share is an astonishingly low price to pay for Bear Stearns: when I first saw it I honestly thought it was a misprint. If Bear is essentially worth nothing, that means other banks – Lehman seems to … Continue reading →

Heidi Moore has the understatement of the day: CITIC has not yet closed its proposed investment in Bear, and today’s moves suggest that will be more difficult. Er, yes. Not least because at today’s closing price Citic’s proposed $1 billion … Continue reading →

Brad DeLong has a good point today: whatever happened to the moral hazard play? It’s an easy enough game: if you think a bank is going to get bailed out, you go long, safe in the knowledge that Ben Bernanke … Continue reading →

Dan Colarusso takes his stiletto knife to John Mack today, and I’m very happy he did. As Dan shows, Mack has a long history of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, and it’s far from obvious why he’s the … Continue reading →

It’s not just Bear Stearns which is trading below book value. Here are some closing prices from Yahoo Finance: Bank Price/Book Countrywide 0.19 Bear Stearns 0.73 Wachovia 0.74 Citigroup 0.93 JP Morgan Chase 1.06 Lehman Brothers 1.12 Bank of America … Continue reading →