Tuesday, December 15, 2009

BAC, C, WFC

"A few days later St. Paul very kindly came out with an announcement of an issue of its own; either stock or notes, I forget which. But that doesn't matter. What mattered then was that I noticed the moment I read it that the date of payment was set ahead of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific payments, which had been announced earlier. It was as plain as though they had used a megaphone that grand old St. Paul was trying to beat the two other railroads to what little money there was floating around in Wall Street. The St. Paul's bankers quite obviously feared that there wasn't enough for all three and they were not saying, "After you, my dear Alphonse!" If money already was that scarce—and you bet the bankers knew—what would it be later? The railroads needed it desperately. It wasn't there. What was the answer? Sell 'em! Of course! 
The public, with their eyes fixed on the stock market, saw little—that week. The wise stock operators saw much—that year. That was the difference."
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Chapter 8 

WFC joins the money grab and is looking to sell over $10.4B in stock quickly.  The banks are flooding the market with secondaries, by my calculations, the total dollar amount in BAC, C, and WFC secondary offerings is around $50B.  That is $50B that needs to be deployed to suck up the supply.   $50B that can't be used to buy stock already out on the market.

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