Rochdale

Well-known permabull financial analyst Dick Bove lost his job in November 2012. Not due to his ineptness, but due to his Rochdale Securities colleague David Miller who today plead guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy over an epic Apple trade gone wrong. As Reuters reports, Miller faces a maximum 25 years (though is expected to suffer less) after falsely telling his bosses that he executed a 1,625 share trade for a client, when in fact he bought 1,623,375 shares of the 'never-gonna-fall' stock on the day of its earnings release (October 25th 2012). When the bet backfired, Rochdale was on the hook for the losses which led the firm to cease operations and to provide the market with a brief respite from Bove's 'loan-loss-provision'-ignoring, 'we're-going-to-the-moon-Alice' investment advice on US banks. What a difference a decimal place makes...

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After joining the firm in 2009, everyone's favorite banking analyst has decided that, according to Dow Jones, Monday is an opportune time to jump the sinking ship that is AAPL-stricken Rochdale Securities. Given the opportunities out there for one more permabull, old-school banking analyst, we suspect the resignation is more to do with Bove's beard and his potential holiday-season role at Macy's (bas santa?) or will we see the BofA-buyer 'greeting' all at Lutz, Florida's nearest WalMart? Will he revert back from 'Dick' to Richard?

And so yet another saga of a trader who bet on AAPL rising, just before it tumbled, ends in tears, this time with what appears to be near certain incarceration of another small, 2-bit trader. As we previously reported, back in November, as AAPL stock was in freefall, none other than the firm of everyone's favorite financial permabull, Rochdale, ended up being a proud if involuntary holder of nearly $1 billion in AAPL stock. The scapegoat for AAPL's price drop: one ex-trader David Miller. What Miller is accused of, is buying 1.6 million shares of AAPL on the day of the company's last earnings announcement in hopes, of course, the stock would surge. It didn't. Furthermore, Miller was in reality executing a trade for a client who had only wanted to buy 1,625 shares, but Miller was confident enough the stock would go up, he bet the firm's money to buy the difference. Sadly, neither the AAPL earnings announcement, nor its stock price, did quite as planned. End result: $5 million loss, Miller terminated and now arrested and charged, and Rochdale left scrambling for a bailout.

Now that I've released my early Apple research and the collapsing stock cat's out the bag, I hear very, very few Margin Compression theory bashers. Crickets anyone? Let's dissect the near 25% drop and how I made the call.

Rochdale Securities executes a trade levered at 294x its capital base, in direct contradiction to BoomBustBlog research & FINRA arrives with a fire hose to wet the smoldering ashes.

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More of my contrarian, yet highly accurate Apple research released free to the public, unfortunately not in time to save Rochdale's ass...

The saga of Rochdale, or the firm that is now officially Too Little To Fail, following its hilarious screw up in Apple trading as reported previously, when it got the size if not direction of AAPL stock post earnings wrong, and as a result the guy who otherwise would have had a massive X-mas bonus has been outed as a "rogue trader", is nearing its logical conclusion.

• ROCHDALE SAID TO BE IN ADVANCED RESCUE TALKS AFTER APPLE TRADES
  
• ROCHDALE SAID TO POTENTIALLY ANNOUNCE DEAL AS EARLY AS TODAY

What happens next? DBRS buys them for their strong integrity and work ethic? The NYT gets a licensing deal and makes Dick Bove into a political forecaster taking advantage of his infallible predictive Black Box (see his Bank of America reco rating below)? Inquiring minds want to know.

What a roundtrip! After starting off November with a bang, and after nearly retracing all October losses in the aftermath of the NFP headfake in less than 2 trading sessions, the S&P futures literally imploded, and dropped 23 points from the intraday high, the same distance traveled as it crossed yesterday, only to the downside and on very strong volume for the second day in a row. While the 1400 support in ES is once again in play (ES closed literally on the lows of the session at 1405.5), as we suggested earlier, the far more ominous news is that the AAPL bubble appears to have popped (but, but, it is so cheap on forward multiple basis: guess what - forward multiples are based on forward earnings, which may very well never materialize! and thanks to the dividend, not even AAPL's cash hoard is the bastion it one was) and is now close to entering bear market territory, down just shy of 20% from its all time highs of $705.07 hit on September 12. Now with the 200 DMA taken out, the next support is the 20% retracement from the high which is at $564. After that it is freefall for a long time as a very deep gap needs filling. It is unclear just how much of the selling was there to cause max pain for Dick Bove and Rochdale, for whom every tick lower in the stock means a bigger margin call.Finally, news hitting literally seconds ago that MSFT may be launching its own phone if its partner strategy falters, means there go even more margins.

Moments ago AAPL broke the 200 DMA. Whether or not this was due to the earlier news from Rochdale getting caught with its pants down, and supposedly losing tons of money due to a rogue trader "buying" the stock as its proceeded to tumble from its all time highs less then 45 days ago (during which time it has lost more than 10 years worth of dividends in market cap), is unclear. What is quite clear, is the moment when the general market realized what had just happened. Sure enough, the jobs number came and want, and ES largely faded that move in under an hour. It remains to be seen if a technical indicator for the world's most widely held stock is more important to the general stock market than how many 60 year old workers the US economy added in October. Oh, and as for that whole iPad mini launch spectacle? Sorry. Time for the iPad Mini Magnum launch... or maybe even the maxiPad.

Bloomberg has an update on the most amusing story of the day, namely that Rochdale appears to have blown daytrading Apple. And guess what: taking a cue from SocGen, UBS, and JPM, it's all a "rogue trader's" fault. Of course, if the trade had gone the "other way", Rochdale would not be needing a bailout, and the rogue trader would be looking forward to a generous holiday bonus.

• Rochdale bought more Apple shares than the brokerage’s management intended around the time of the technology company’s Oct. 25 earnings report, two people familiar told Bloomberg’s Hugh Son, Saijel Kishan and Zeke Faux.
• Rochdale officials told employees a rogue trader amassed the position, one of the people said.

We wonder how many more such "rogue traders" who dabbled in AAPL, and blew up after leveing the house in hopes to make their year on AAPL soaring into year end, will emerge before the next week is over...

And it was shaping up to be a slow news days. From Bloomberg:

• ROCHDALE SAID TO SEEK CAPITAL INJECTION AFTER TRADING ERROR
• ROCHDALE EXECUTIVES SAID TO TIE CAPITAL SHORTAGE TO APPLE TRADE
• ROCHDALE SECURITIES ANALYSTS INCLUDE DICK BOVE

By that logic, can one imagine the epic bailout Rochdale would need if Bank of America trades back to its rightful price well over 50% below current levels? Also, why is Rochdale trading on its own account? According to an unverified rumor, a Roch trader was supposed to be buying 125 shares every half hour, and instead bought 125,000. If correct, oops: that's a $74 million margin call. Finally, the question of the day: How many more funds will claim they bought AAPL due to an "error" and now need a bailout?

Fed Chairman Bernanke should be impeached if he does not restore Fed surveillance over primary dealers immediately.

All you need to read.