You can fool some people most of the time, but you can't fool everyone all of the time. Wise words spoken long before I blatantly misquoted and mangled them for use as the opening statement of my post.
Onwards.
Today we see people waking up and smelling the coffee. In an attempt to buoy the gains made on the stock markets over the last two weeks, the Bank of America was drafted to present its good news show. Proudly, it reported profits well above the projected doom scenario, with a payout of 44 cents per share as opposed to the expected 4 cents.
Up go the markets, right?
Wrong.
Today, several clever clogs realized something rather important. For one, they realized that in respect to the height of its power, the payout by BoA isn't great. In fact, it is downright pitiful. They also realized that these profits should be offset against the 47 billion dollar bailout, the many securities required to sanitize toxic loans still required, and the fact that the purchase of Merryl-Lynch was supposed to make the business grow, not saddle it with even more bad debt.
Noticing that these things were only briefly mentioned in the press release, quite a few institutional investors realized they were being duped and the reaction was both swift and brutal.
At the closing of the trading day, Bank of America has shed 24 percent of its stock value (that is 24 percent of what was left after the major declines over the past months) and there is not a single stock notation on the Dow Jones today that has made any gain.
The result? A 289 point loss for the whole stock market, and a full wipeout of the advances made throughout the world in the last week and a half. Back to square one, thank you for playing.
People may at times behave like cattle, but all you need is one bull at the front to lead the charge, and you best get out of the way of the stampede.
I wonder who's next in the line of 'good news' stories...