Top faller in the Banking sector today with a 25% fall are they about to go bust as the housing market stalls .. are they another Northern Rock failure about to blow.

55 sounds a bit high, as they've touched lower - only picked up by cocerted effort over Bank Rights, such as HBOS - and look where that is!

What's yr view?

pcyam
Also looking to buy but it must be a punt IMO could recover to 200p in a couple of years.

If there is one thing certain, B&B will get taken over.

the problem is at what price. Wouldn't have thought it would be below the rights price but you never know!

For some reason the shares have stopped trading over the last week and appear stuck at 52p

atleast its not 48p

got one of those spread bet accounts- after reading all the advice from smart posters on this website I bought 2000 worth of HBOS today... wanted to keep it small to start with... off to the beaches with mcbarker tomorrow for some weeks to sap up the sun and find women....

Down 17% today and I never even noticed.

Love the smell of burning.

is this price rise the result of shorters buying out or has something fundamentally changed?
all the banks seem to have risen this morning surley the Dow coouldn't have had that much effect!!!
Alex

Up 80%.

..Again for how long?

Was 47p but now falling back.

robertalexander- see my Lloy post which I think probably explains it.

its a confidence trick, sucking new money in before an almighty crash. For all intent and purposes Shorting stocks had already stopped as the large pension funds would not loan their shares as finally realising the fee's they were making were nothing on the loss of equity from the turmoil. Despite this HBOS still traded nearly .5 billion shares. People will wake up and when they do it is going to hurt. Most people are stuggling to trade at these prices anyway because of the trading platforms so it is nothing but a paper illusion. IMO

Absolutely, but they have to find a way to protect the banking system and shift the burden onto the gereral public or taxpayer. Taxes cannot rise in this environment so currencies will take the brunt and some of the debt will effectively be inflated away over time. It will effect everybody.

This week will pass into history the banks that survive BB. for one IMO will slowly get back to normality and the sp back to 100p-200p + long term. accumulate while you can.

It has been an interesting week for all of us investors riding this roller-coaster ride.

I start the bidding at 20p.

Interesting article on short sellin which explains it better:

"Those who argue for unrestricted short-selling ignore the fact that the system is loaded in favour of the bears. If an individual invests 1,000, or an institution 1m, in the shares of a troubled company because they think in the long term it will recover, they have deployed their capital, and all they can do is wait. There is no more to invest; their resources are finite.
If a short-seller comes on the scene, his resources are in effect infinite because he first borrows the shares he then sells. Given that the revenue from the sale is more than the borrowing cost of the shares, he has no net capital constraint and can continue indefinitely - so much so that in one celebrated case a few years ago, one person shorted 250% of a company's equity, though he did get into trouble for it.

If the target is a bank, the dice are even more loaded. As the selling drives the share price down, two things happen.

First, the rating agencies announce a review of the credit rating, or worse a downgrade. This will force the bank to sell assets to shore up its capital position, and will set alarm bells ringing. At the same time, other banks will get nervous about dealing with it as a counterparty and either curb their business or charge more, thereby weakening the target bank still further.

Short-selling becomes self-fulfilling because the tumbling share price erodes confidence in the bank, and that weakens so it is worth less - until the ultimate cataclysm when people start queuing in the street to withdraw their money, at which point it is doomed and the authorities have to nationalise it.

However, in doing this it is politically impossible for them to bail out the shareholders. So they take the bank over for nothing - or get it rescued at a much-reduced price - thereby wiping out the long-term investors who are the bedrock of the system, handing massive rewards to the short-sellers who have done the damage and leaving the taxpayer to finance the clean-up.

On the way, they have destroyed a business that did not need to be destroyed. So yes. It is time short-selling of banks was banned. "

But say I have a very large load of shares in a company and decide I don't like its prospects and dump them in one go. Then other investors see my trade, review their position and follow suit thus probably dumping their holds. The SP plummets and then I decide that the price fits the fundamentals and buy am I wrong to. The results are similar to the people using derivatives and they are using other peoples shares and paying interest for the loan of the money.