Perhaps they're anticipating a bailout?

The information that Goldman Sachs being run by a bunch of greedy idiots is already priced into the market.

Weaver95: Has Goldman Sachs ever placed a losing bet?

ummmm...yes?

Is this a trick question? What with the subby's headline and the article and all being about Goldman's third quarter announcement of their rather large losses (some of it from writedowns) it would seem quite evident that they have.

Their one billion dollar plus loss on a single bet comes to mind...Industrial and Commercial Bank of China lost 35% in the quarter and Goldman Sachs had a big piece of that.

/finding it hard to give a damn

Why wouldn't they? The worse the company screws up, the larger the bailout will be, the more they make out like bandits.

Weaver95: Has Goldman Sachs ever placed a losing bet?

Not losing... but certainly not winning:

1. Goldman was an underwriter for LNKD IPO. Goldman sells shares at high end of IPO price:$42. LNKD shares available on market next day @$100. Whoops.

2. Goldman sell side rated AAPL a buy at the same time Goldman buy side dumped several million shares this summer. AAPL proceeded to run up ~15% a month or two later. Might have been rebalancing, may have been something else, but still, that's a pretty big misstep.

3. China Construction Bank, as noted.

As for AAPL, I have a hard time feeling bad for anybody who's been long that stock for awhile. It was @340 back in May, up until this earnings miss they were up 24% in five months, at the same time S&P is off ~11% from May highs, for an AAPL outperform of 35%. Hardly something to cry about. The only people who really got burned are those who got greedy into earnings. (disclaimer: may retract this last statement depending on if the sell-off continues at the open).

The fix, you may have noticed, is in

A common man steals a new car (worth at least $25K) and gets caught...that is Class B Felony with a sentence of 5-15 years (at least in MO where I live)

A corporation steals BILLIONS from the public/investors and gets caught...that is ???? crickets ??? wait for it ... crickets ... wait for it ... "To big to fail" and the government pays THEM to get out of trouble.

Just changed my direct deposit from BoA to a local Credit Union.

If the 99% REALLY want to make the corporate a$$hats understand just how pissed we are, we need to stop giving them our money. Every one of the 99% who has accounts/stock in BoA, GoldmanSucks, AIG, etc need to sell the stock in mass, close all of our accounts, buy our products/services from locally owned sole-proprietors/partnerships (IMO). As long as they are making profits they will continue to Fark us in the assets. . . STOP GIVING THEM MONEY AND THEY WILL NO LONGER BE "TO BIG TO FAIL"!

Haven't you heard, subby.

Goldamn Sachs rules the world (new window).

Wouldn't want to do anything to upset our masters. Gotta keep those dividends rolling in.

Snapper Carr: Haven't you heard, subby.

Goldamn Sachs rules the world (new window).

Wouldn't want to do anything to upset our masters. Gotta keep those dividends rolling in.

Wow....that video made me want to punch Wall Street in the face.

apoptotic: Snapper Carr: Haven't you heard, subby.

Goldamn Sachs rules the world (new window).

Wouldn't want to do anything to upset our masters. Gotta keep those dividends rolling in.

Wow....that video made me want to punch Wall Street in the face.

Hit 'em in the brown. punch them in the seat.

DarkLancelot: Gig103: Yeah, but other companies (like Costco & Apple) post great earnings, but since analysts are "disappointed" the stock price drops. I hate Wall Street, but mostly I hate analysts. Well, them and commodity speculators.

So much this! There seems to be no real logic to it and I think that's what makes it annoying to non-Wall Street people. Wow, your company had great earnings, but we think they should be stupendous earnings, stock goes down, this with GS and stocks go up. No logic.

I don't know about this particular case, didn't RTFA.

That said, what you describe does in fact make perfect sense, and isn't really even very complicated (I know it's not complicated because I understand it, and I know almost nothing of investing).

Here's how it goes:

1) We expect company X to make $1000 dollars a day. Great, that (along with a bunch of other crap) means we think the stock is worth $100 a share.
2) Turns out, company X only made $500 dollars a day. I mean, sure it made money, but we were expecting $1000 dollars every day and got $500.

Do you really think the stock should stay the same price in that situation? That's basically what you're advocating, and it seems to make no sense.

Shouldn't the amount you expect a company to make have a bearing on how much the stock is worth?

And once new (bad) information on that front comes in, isn't the stock now worth less than your original estimation?

Al Capone never invested in Wall Street. He condemned the wild speculation on Wall Street. "It's a racket," he said, "Those stock market guys are crooked."

Divinegrace: [snip]

Just changed my direct deposit from BoA to a local Credit Union.

If the 99% REALLY want to make the corporate a$$hats understand just how pissed we are, we need to stop giving them our money. Every one of the 99% who has accounts/stock in BoA, GoldmanSucks, AIG, etc need to sell the stock in mass, close all of our accounts, buy our products/services from locally owned sole-proprietors/partnerships (IMO). As long as they are making profits they will continue to Fark us in the assets. . . STOP GIVING THEM MONEY AND THEY WILL NO LONGER BE "TO BIG TO FAIL"!

Agree partially; I have an account with Santander (in the UK) who did not require a bailout, and only lost serious money through their high net worth individuals who were invested in Madoff - Santander paid back the $3bn it lost on their behalf.

In an age of billion dollar losses and complex financial assets, Santander's fortunes speak to the advantages of a simpler approach. Spain's largest bank "lends to their clients, takes deposits from their clients, and runs a network of branches," says Antonio Ramirez, analyst at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in London. "It's quite simple, quite traditional." (new window)

relcec: that news came out about france and germany increasing the bailout funds in the afternoon. that shiat always pops the financials.

So does the weather, sports, holidays, wars, statements from the Fed, lack of statements from the fed, OWS, Tea Parties, oil wells catching fire, oil well fires being put out, and if my cat poops extra big.

Weaver95: Has Goldman Sachs ever placed a losing bet?

Apparently they placed a few of them. Don't forget -- they didn't "win" in the housing crisis, either. They just lost less.

DarkLancelot: Wow, your company had great earnings, but we think (and you guided) that they should have been stupendous different ... stock goes down

FTFY. This is how it works. Analysts get nervous when companies can't predict their businesses well. Period. Up or Down. Sometimes this leads them to say things that pummel the stock. (For evidence of a blowout earnings quarter with a 10% down move, see SNDK at several instances over the last couple years). Furthermore the guidance matters and things like "reply hazy, try again later" don't go over well.

Also - its the stock market. It's fairly volatile, especially during earnings season - particularly right now with all the headline risk jerking around Europe every day. If you can't handle it, pop a xanax and go watch Barney.

apoptotic: Snapper Carr: Haven't you heard, subby.

Goldamn Sachs rules the world (new window).

Wouldn't want to do anything to upset our masters. Gotta keep those dividends rolling in.

Wow....that video made me want to punch Wall Street in the face.

Well... We can always burn bankers for fuel.

Abner Doon: I don't know about this particular case, didn't RTFA.

You should RTFA, because you're making DarkLancelot's point for him.

midigod: You should RTFA, because you're making DarkLancelot's point for him.

No. No he isn't. AAPL had already reached $420ish based on the fact that the expected-earnings were priced into the stock. People have been trading AAPL all quarter - not just after-the-bell-last-night. When those earnings missed, it makes sense for the stock to slip a bit.

Similarly, Goldman's earnings were expected to miss - and they've been pummeled all quarter for it. From $137 to $90 or so. So when they showed a loss, people reassess the situation and say "oh, well maybe we over did that there. That looks cheap now." and the stock goes up.

A small quarterly loss (on the scale of GS) barely registers against the rumors of a massive ($2.4T) European bailout that pushed the entire market up yesterday.

Abner Doon: DarkLancelot: Gig103: Yeah, but other companies (like Costco & Apple) post great earnings, but since analysts are "disappointed" the stock price drops. I hate Wall Street, but mostly I hate analysts. Well, them and commodity speculators.

So much this! There seems to be no real logic to it and I think that's what makes it annoying to non-Wall Street people. Wow, your company had great earnings, but we think they should be stupendous earnings, stock goes down, this with GS and stocks go up. No logic.

I don't know about this particular case, didn't RTFA.

That said, what you describe does in fact make perfect sense, and isn't really even very complicated (I know it's not complicated because I understand it, and I know almost nothing of investing).

Here's how it goes:

1) We expect company X to make $1000 dollars a day. Great, that (along with a bunch of other crap) means we think the stock is worth $100 a share.
2) Turns out, company X only made $500 dollars a day. I mean, sure it made money, but we were expecting $1000 dollars every day and got $500.

Do you really think the stock should stay the same price in that situation? That's basically what you're advocating, and it seems to make no sense.

Shouldn't the amount you expect a company to make have a bearing on how much the stock is worth?

And once new (bad) information on that front comes in, isn't the stock now worth less than your original estimation?

Unless your too big to fail.. then its a safe bet the price will go back up.

Only 3.59 billion in revenue? PANIC.

Eh, not any stranger than money flying into Treasuries when Treasuries were downgraded...

2wolves: Wall Street has not been a rational actor for decades.

I saw a paper not long ago that showed that even the weakest form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (that all prior publicly-available information is already factored in to this moment's price) is almost certainly false, because it implies that P=NP.

The guy showed how you could use an efficient market to solve 3-SAT.

Though I guess you could have an approximately efficient market...

Maybe, like JP Morgan, they have been shorting their own stock, which using their HFT algos would force the stock down in the short term, but their earning for shorting their stock would then result in an increased stock price in the long term.

What could possibly go wrong?

earnings management
loss this quarter? well lets push though some other losses and clean shiat up
that way next quarter will be cash

/unless its not

Snapper Carr: Haven't you heard, subby.

Goldamn Sachs rules the world (new window).

Wouldn't want to do anything to upset our masters. Gotta keep those dividends rolling in.

Who cares what this guy thinks? He doesn't seem very clever or insightful. When he started talking about making money in a down economy, he digs deep and all he could come up with was hedging and T-bonds. I could have come up with that.

Why don't they just change their corporate name to "Greedy Winning Taxpayer Farkers" and get it over with?