Merrill Posts Third-Straight Loss on $6.5 Billion of Writedowns

[marmar]

from Bloomberg:


Merrill Posts Third-Straight Loss on $6.5 Billion of Writedowns

By Bradley Keoun

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co. posted its third-straight quarterly loss after at least $6.5 billion of writedowns and a 40 percent drop in investment-banking fees.

The first-quarter net loss of $1.96 billion, or $2.19 a share, compared with earnings of $2.16 billion, or $2.26, a year earlier, the third-biggest U.S. securities firm by market value said today in a statement. Analysts had estimated a loss of $1.72 billion, based on the average of six estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Chief Executive Officer John Thain has spent his first four months as CEO overhauling risk-management practices after more than $20 billion of credit-market losses and selling more than $12 billion of equity to bolster capital. Merrill's stock has fallen 50 percent in the past 12 months, trailing larger New York-based rivals Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4rEEQbdSmSA&refer=home

[MadHound]

1. And the stock market will rise on the news today

Sounds about as sane as what the markets have been doing for the past few months. Yesterday they jumped two hundred plus points on the news that the CPI was up, and that housing starts and building permits were lower than expected. Frankly, I think that the DOW and most other markets live in a world that is diametrically opposed to the real one. The trouble is at some point reality is going to intrude on the markets bubble, and do so in a really ugly, brutal way.

[BigDaddy44]

2. IBM blew out their numbers

Thats why the market will rise.