Dick Bove

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...

Cost reductions and layoffs are the drivers for bank earnings... Watch those ski tips.  

No, this is not about Dick Bove's Buy recommendation of Lehman days ahead of the bankruptcy, or what seems like his "Buy" rating on Bank of America since the end of World War II, or 4 years after Bove's birth. No: we have a special surprise for readers out of the overhyped banking analyst, who still inexplicably appears on various TV outlets, even if the anchors have a tough time remembering just what firm he is with these days. So, without further ado, here is Bove's take on the single worst merger in the history of the financial industry: that between Bank of America and the toxic mortgage factory Countrywide Financial.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Halfway into the year, my warnings on the FIRE sector are starting to come into there own. The first look, banks and bank stock analysts!

There's a big, fat "I told you so" coming down the pike. 

Just As I Warned Of JPM's Exposure, Those Other Warnings Will Come To Pass As Well. I pull stuff out of my analytical archives and low and behold, who do I find?

It would seem, just as during the crisis in 2008/9, that now might be an opportune time to push for 'improvement' in how banks are regulated (and more importantly how the instruments they trade in colossal size are priced and marked-to-market). Rick Santelli believes now has never been a better time but as his guest Tim Backshall of Capital Context notes, regulation of the CDS market can be summed up in one sentence "Get Them On Exchange". Something we have been saying for years (and has been tried before) but with dealers holding all the keys (to market-making) and exchanges cowering for fear of losing clients, we remain less optimistic. Santelli and Backshall critically address the complicity of banks, regulators, analysts, and The Fed in giving 'banks the benefit of the doubt' with regard their use of the bottomless pit of capital they implicitly have but what is more important is for the hordes of sell-side analysts and buy-side sheeple to understand just what this JPM debacle exposes about bank risk (VaR is useless), bank transparency (mark-to-model or worse is widespread), and bank valuation (traditional Price/Book metrics have no merit anymore).

The Athens Stock Exchange broad index of Greek stocks just dropped to its lowest level since 1992. It is now around 90% lower than its 1999 and 2007 peak levels. The index of Greek banking stocks is rumbling along the lowest levels on record down over 97% from its 2007 highs. Where is the Greek Whitney Tilson (or Dick Bove) when they need him?