Bank of America

... how many of the top 50 holders presented below, will be forced to sell once we get a 4 handle?

They are, however, together with Morgan Stanley, Jefferies and all the other banks that have a gag order on Comcast, perfectly hedged... In other news, clueless copy and paste journalists turned financial pundits will still call bottoms.

Well, he may not be liquidating, and he may be telling others he has experienced barely any redemptions, but Paulson's gold share class, represented entirely by the fund's GLD holdings would beg to differ: as of September 30, Paulson's total holdings of GLD were down by a third from 31.5 million shares or $4.6 billion at the end of Q2, to 20.2 million or $3.2 billion. And as is well known, GLD is not an actual investment for Paulson, but merely a representative asset class for those who opt to have their fund holdings represented in gold (the smart ones) instead of in dollars. Indicatively the only Paulson & co investors who made any money, or at least did not lose much, were those who opted for a gold share class. Either way, it is now safe to assume that at least a third of the fund has been permanently redeemed, further confirmed by the drop in the AUM from $29 billion to $20.7 billion as per the actual filing. But wait, there's more: while Paulson was busy selling across the board, in the process liquidating all of his JPM holdings as well as his positions in Comcast (no CNBC for you), Savvis, NYSE Euronext and State Street, and following in Tepper's footsteps in selling across the board, the former Bear trader did what all other allegedly doomed institutions do and added to, you guessed it, the biggest loser Bank of America, increasing his position by almost 4 million shares... even as the total value of his 64 million BAC stake, which closed Q3 at the same price it is today, dropped by $269 million! And that's why he is a billionaire and you are not. At least we know who Tepper was selling to. But that's not all: Paulson also added 1.1 million share to his CapitalOne position, bringing the total to 22.2 million shares, even as the total value of his revised position dropped by $210 million to $880 million. And so forth. Some other names in which he took brand new stakes in (picture that: he did not spend all of Q3 selling) in Motorola Mobility, Nalco, Cephalon, AMC and a bunch of irrelevant others. So to all those who are now in the same place they were in 2008: tough, but at least your fees made JP into a multi-billionaire. Congratulations.

While the kindly and crony old Octogenarian Octopus of Omaha was telling everyone about how bullish he is on America, other, more capable traders were dumping everything and retracing assorted balls which are no longer to be found anywhere near walls. Case in point is David Tepper's Appaloosa, which of the 63 positions tracked by us, sold are all part of his holdings in 59 of the total, or 95% of total. Among these were full liquidations in Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Fifth Third, as well as Yahoo, Pfizer, Walter Energy, Metlife, Merck, Medtronic, Marathon Oil, Manitowoc, Frontier Oil, DR Horton, Alpha, ConWay and Cliffs Natural. Looks like Tepper is no longer betting that EVERYTHING will benefit on another global rescue by the Fed. And yes, for the record, he did establish new positions in BP, Dana, Calumet and Holly Frontier, which also happened to be the only positions he added to!

The bank that never, ever needs capital, but will dilute the living daylights out of anyone to get it, and will sell all of its actually valuable assets as soon as a buyer materializes, has just gone ahead and proven its critics right yet again. Several minutes ago Brian Moynihan's rotting carcass of toxic Countrwide Financial mortgages, which has some negligible banking businesses on the side, just announced it would sell about 10.4 billion common shares of China Construction Bank Corp through private transactions with a group of investors. The purposes of the follow up CCB disposition - to pump about $2.9 billion in additional Tier 1 common capital at Bank of America. And with this the easy disposition targets are gone. Next up: just how will Bank of America be able to spin off Merrill. Have fun with all those CDS successor issues. And once that phase is over, the debate over just how Bank of America will spin the hundreds of billions of legacy CFC contingency liabilities off into an "asbestos" trust will resume.

Want to be a consummate stock picker and investor? Forget all you have learned in business school, from fundamental or technical analysis, or from years of trading: the only thing that matters is the position of the sun: if it is rising, sell. If it is setting, buy. Rinse. Repeat. Bank of America explains it just slightly more scientifically.

Remember when even the worst of all trading desks on Wall Street, that of Bank of America could do no wrong and disclosed a trading quarter of pure perfection? Yeah, that's over. The bank, which just jolted shareholders with news of material common dilution, in the form of $2.5 billion in new equity capital to be raised, has released its trading days data for Q3. Per the 10-Q: "During the three months ended September 30, 2011, positive trading-related revenue was recorded for 69 percent (44 days) of the trading days of which 47 percent (30 days) were daily trading gains of over $25 million, nine percent (six days) of the trading days had losses greater than $25 million, three percent (two days) of trading days had losses greater than $100 million and the largest loss was $119 million." On the flip side, BAC had not one $100MM+ trading win. In other words, BAC posted losses on a whopping 31% of the trading days (compared to 0% two quarters ago), something that indicates a very violent return to normalcy: after all if banks, with ZIRP, legal frontrunning, profit from default risk surges, and POMO are unable to make money 100% of the time, who else, besides all the day traders on twitter and the fine men and women on Fast Money of course, will post flawless trading records in the future?

And to think it was less than two months ago that Warren Buffett took a bath to provide the bank with capital it had "absolutely no need for" but was happy to take it anyway. Well, it turns out the firm is preparing to raise just a "little" more capital. From the just released 10Q: "During the third quarter, global economic uncertainty and volatility continued as described more fully in the Executive Summary – Third Quarter 2011 Economic and Business Environment discussion on page 7. Concerns over these and other issues contributed to a widening of credit spreads for many financial institutions, including the Corporation, resulting in lowering of market values of debt and preferred stock issued by financial institutions. The uncertainty in the market evidenced by, among other things, volatility in credit spread movements, makes it economically advantageous at this time to consider retirement of issued junior subordinated debt and preferred stock. As a result of these matters, we intend to explore the issuance of common stock and senior notes in exchange for shares of preferred stock and, subject to any required amendments to the applicable governing documents, certain trust preferred capital debt securities (Trust Securities) issued by unconsolidated trust companies, in privately negotiated transactions. If we pursue the exchange of Trust Securities, we would immediately use the purchased Trust Securities to retire a corresponding amount of our junior subordinated debt that we previously issued to the unconsolidated trust companies. These transactions would increase Tier 1 common capital and, on an after-tax basis, reduce the combined level of interest expense and dividends paid on the combined junior subordinated debt and preferred stock....We will not issue more than 400 million shares of common stock or $3 billion in new senior notes in connection with these exchanges."

As expected, following the complete failure of banks to institute an extortion cartel on debit account fees after two already defected, it was only a matter of time before Bank of America withdrew as well. Sure enough:

• BofA Drops Plan for $5 Debit Fee, Spokesman Says

Now, while this is great news for whatever deposits BAC has left (substantially lower than what it had at September 30, that's for sure), it doesn't answer the question - just how will the bank make money?

There is no shortage of hatred for the biggest banks. Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement is leading a national revolution against these byzantine, powerful Goliaths for the economic devastation they have caused. This makes it difficult to choose the worst of the bunch. That said, a strong case can be made that Bank of America deserves the title of the nation's most despised bank. Here are ten reasons to take your money out of Bank of America - and park it at a credit union or community bank near you. (And yes, that may be near impossible if you have a mortgage with them, as refinancing away from any big bank nowadays is a nightmare.)

I can honestly say that this is probably the hardest hitting (literally) expose on Bank of America Lynch[ing this] CountryWide you will ever come across. Here we illustrate exactly what BofA snuck into America

s savings accounts. It ain't just CDS and it ain't pretty!

Warning! Highly controversial post. Long. Thick (with information) & HARD [hitting]! Thus if you are easily offended by pretty women, intellectually aggressive brothers in cognitive war garb, government regulators selling you out to the highest European bidder, or cold hard facts borne from world class research not seen in the sell side or the mainstream media, I strongly suggest you stop reading here and move on. There is nothing further for you to see.

Any internal memo that is distributed on the last day of the week, and intercepted by American Banker at 5pm on a Friday, must surely be a portent of many good news for the bank which recently added a few trillion in derivative "assets" to match its OpCo deposit pool "liability". We can only hope that as a result of the restructuring, the company's retail banking website will no longer mysteriously crash following announcements of gratuitous debit card fees. Then again, any BofA announcement that has the following sentence in it, "remember, we have the best franchise, capabilities, and customer base in the industry" confirms that the level of mass delusion is unfixable, and that the website will most certainly be the first to go once the bank's $1 trillion in deposits realize they are the first line of defense to just a few extra trillion in derivative contracts.

Valueinvestorclub.com: the Gotham Capital controlled pseudo-secret portal where hedge fund managers everywhere would sell both their kidneys  to be members of, as pitched ideas tend to move markets on a regular basis, and never to be confused with Whitney Tilson's pale immitation, has just released a new thesis on Bank of America, which is oddly comparable to ideas suggested by Zero Hedge over the years. The thesis summary is rather self-explanatory: "Bank Of America equity is worthless. CFC-related litigation is going from bad to worse, it can lead to violent erosion of shareholders' equity which. Combined with the run on the bank that has slowly begun, the $53 trillion in derivatives, the lack of sustainable competitive advantages and the depleting political influence, I believe this is a terminal short." The rest is rather self-explanatory as well. Now: how many hedge fund managers will use this herd aggregation signal and pile in on the short side?

While Morgan Stanley only recently became a second derivative for everything European-related (thank you financial short selling ban in Europe, and also thank you Mr. Gorman for updating investors on your firm's $39 billion gross derivative exposure to French banks (not France the country). What's that? You didn't provide one? Oh, our bad, just as it is "anonymous bloggers" bad that your CDS blew out this quarter and generated over $3 billion in "income" for your firm - you are truly welcome), Bank of America has, for quite a while, been a proxy for all that is wrong with America's mortgage industry, courtesy of that most value-destroying purchase of the insolvent criminal entity that was Countrywide Financials. For a while the market was content that the proxy would not be in need of a shallow grave, unlike the US housing market (go ahead, ask where PrimeX closed today), after the bank managed to bribe enough "plaintiffs" and proceed with a quick and painless $8.5 billion settlement on all of its mortgage putback claims. A settlement that, however, had a very weak link: "Article 77", a critical provision enabling the deal in its current form. And as we first reported and explained back on August 26, said weakest link was attacked by David Grais of Walnut Place, who "filed a request to transfer the lawsuit from State Court to Federal Court where everything basically begins a new." Well, today Grais won, and Bank of America lost after US District Judge William Pauley ruled that "Bank of America Corp.’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage-bond investors must be considered in federal court instead of the New York state court where it was first filed." Not content with making a factual statement, the Judge proceeded to skewer the bank which, on top of evertyhing, recently decided to stuff its depositors with a bill as large as $53 trillion should things turn sour, added "The settlement agreement at issue here implicates core federal interests in the integrity of nationally chartered banks and the vitality of the national securities markets."  Integrity? From a bank which secretly, though with the Fed's blessing, has tried to put its client interests over those of depositors of over $1 trillion, and over the objections of the FDIC? Don't make us laugh.