Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Financial stocks at risk

Denninger explains why rescuing banks and insurers mean the shareholder should exit now. Perhaps this explains the ruckus with HBOS?

UPDATE: looks as though Lloyds is angling to buy HBOS!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He excels himself in that piece. But a question: if "shorting" and such is really taking one side of a bet, then if it's a sure thing, why does anyone take the other side of the bet?

Sackerson said...

I'm not sophisto, DM, but I gather that some of the players do combinations of "long" and "short" on the same stuff - like both putting and laying ante-post on the horses in a number of bets spread over days and weeks. "Two views make a market" - there will almost always be someone else betting that it can't be as bad as you think, or that it's worse.