Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services. Company operates in over 60 countries and employs over 78,000 people.

            Red = 25 day moving average.           Green = 200 day moving average.

Barclays American senior executives should know the answer to you question.

over 10 ml buys after the close.

BARC is looking cheap.

Not according to latest JP Morgan downgrade.

They may look cheap to the heart, but the head looks at the balance sheet. As at 30th June, amounts outstanding under "Trading Portfolio Assets" were 217Billion, up from 178Billion at 31/12/2006 and they also had around 175Billion outstanding under both assets and liabilities for "Derivative Financial Instruments". I cannot begin to understand what these figures actually represent, but basic maths tells me that if even a modest percentage is written off, it would not need to be very high to wipe out shareholders equity (excluding minority interests) of around 20Billion. I remain a rather nervous holder, at present prepared to give the management the benefit of the doubt, but 19th Feb will be an interesting day and I hope the auditors earn their fees by putting their statement on the state of the accounts in terms a layman can understand.

partridge, a month or two back the Fed called in members of the top 7 US banks to discuss what their requirements might be in a possible liquidity problemin future. I dont remember any subsequent news coming out abt this, however(you know Im ggoing to say this!) Barc and RBS were represented because of liabilities of their wholly owned subsidiaries. I hope my suspicions are not justified. For Barc it could well prove to be a good thing they did not take over ABN, RBS being delayed in reorganising by having to wait a Dutch court decision. Any way the yeilds on the shs show the markets views on the risks, not a holder.

Honestly, I don't think anybody would know exactly the writedowns related to the subprime. As Bernanke has mentioned that the related financial products out there could amount to 1 trillion and a worst case discount would definitely be less than half of that. So maybe about 100 billion to 400 billion. The worms crawly out of the can so far has amount to about 175-200 billion. So now could be a good time to add some position?

Anyone joining the party? Bought in some more today.

Here we go! Seems like a rally for the next few days. Way oversold!

At this rate, vol may hit 150 mil by the end of the day!

The most direct beneficiary of such an emergency mega interest rate cut of 0.75% would always be the banks... Sort of turn the game around, make sense to be highly leveraged now.

Morgan Stanley has upgraded the bank sector and closed their short positions.. Here we go!

The market capitalisation of banks worldwide has been decimated in the past few months. Do not be surprised to see some M&A activity in this sector shortly.

Still early stage if you're still considering, don't wait anymore.

If the FTSE is on a spike I think this could fall further from Monday, as so will buy should the price fall to 400p. Already have BB. and RBS so not looking to take on further exposure in the sector at current prices or before we see just what regulation will be introduced following the collapse of the Rock.

Mark down today.

Dow down tonight.

More to come..?

Report in todays Times that Barclays close to buying a Russian bank. Following on from recent purchase of Goldfish credit card business, suggests they do not see any great liquidity issues of their own. Tempted to add before results next week (regrettably have sizeable holding, albeit did offload half above 7) but still have nagging doubt about the size of their "Trading Assets" and what sort of write down will prove necessary. On balance, will wait.