Wall Street: We can see the blood
Dow Jones closed at 6594, a territory uncharted since 1997
Nasdaq on 6 year lows. Dow and S&P 500 taking out new 12 year lows. You know, it reminds me of another process of bleeding that’s anatomical in nature. “If it bleeds for 7 days and doesn’t die, don’t trust it.” So now here we are, with nobody trusting it, forcing it to die.
Citigroup managed to set an all time low at $0.97 a share (it closed at $1.02). I like values, and to think of a company size and breadth of Citi at under a dollar, you wonder if they are really that bad. I didn’t buy, so you can see where I stand. Some risks are just too risky.
Bank of America got beat up again as well, thankfully not to it’s 25 year low that was set a few weeks. But with the way the market has been slipping since mid-week, you never know. My finger has been playing with buy, but I think it’ll still move down more.
And a coalition of pension fund managers are crying for Lewis to be canned. Honestly, I’ve never had much for activist funds, trying to make their breed of changes on management. Maybe these guys would be better served by running after the hedge funds that have been a large part of the sinking stock price. Or maybe we need to look around and see everyone’s stocks are well down for the year, even the banks who are in decent positions. I’m not even going to get started on these guys, but I will be voting for Ken Lewis for CEO when the time comes. It’s at lost easier for fund managers to sit there and complain, given they don’t have to make the individual day to day decisions of running the companies they own.
GM was also another sore spot today. It’s saying it needs more federal money, and that it is considering chapter 11. I think someone needs to come to grips with reality in GM. They obviously have done a piss poor job deciding how much they need to stay afloat. They seriously need to get a group of guys together, determine worst case scenarios, evaluate the risks of various positions, then come up with an actual amount. Although their step by step approach reduces the risk to the taxpayers, every time GM hits its “dire straights” again, the stock value plunges and takes the market with it. That’s the sign of an key national industry, when it can move a national market.
What have we learned from this week? We don’t know where the bottom is, and we can’t until we are able to look back. Bad news sells, and bad news is abound, so we are going to see the stocks get beat up. Once again, far too many undisciplined investors and greedy hedges funds, who either sell in fright or profit on short. The economy is bad enough, but it will only get worse while we allow these morons to keep it down.
For more information on the dismal performance of March 5th, 2009, you can check out these articles on CNNMoney and Yahoo! Finance.
