Citibank

spiderweb

spiderweb

Final Approach
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Feb 22, 2005
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Ben
Am I crazy for wanting to buy 100 shares? Seriously, the most I could lose is $150. I don't think the bank can fail (but what the heck do I know?), and I don't want it to, as I have a lovely citibank American Airlines credit card which has been very good to me.

So to those of you who know, what do you think?
 
It's kinda been my thought process recently that I might join in the market. I figured there's one of two outcomes... 1) the market recovers, and I make some money for retirement, or 2) the market collapses, and I've got much much worse to worry about.
 
OK,

The first two :crazy::loco: are for yes you are crazy.

The next one :frown2: is that while the Citibank itself may not fail, Citigroup, the holding company (which is what you get when you punch "C" into Yahoo Finance) is in serious trouble.

:vomit: is what I think of the stock.

P.S. This is not investing advice. :D
 
It's all about timing. I bought a few days ago and am now up almost 35%. Sold today....
 
Yes you are crazy.

There are trillions of dollars sitting outside of the stock market right now wanting something SAFE to invest in. If any of the managers of those dollars thought Citi was worth buying they'd be buying it.

Sorry.

Not that you couldn't buy your hundred shares, but consider the money as gone as buying lottery tickets.

BTW, you do own Citi common stock. The U.S. converted the preferred shares paying 5% to common shares paying nothing and possibly worth nothing in hopes it would convince Wall Street to be happy and buy in. It didn't.
 
spiderweb said:
Am I crazy for wanting to buy 100 shares? Seriously, the most I could lose is $150. I don't think the bank can fail (but what the heck do I know?), and I don't want it to, as I have a lovely citibank American Airlines credit card which has been very good to me.

So to those of you who know, what do you think?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have anything to do with them just because of the way
they operate. I have had a Citi credit card for a long long time. A
couple months ago they rate jacked it to 19.99%. Now that's about 8%
higher than a Chase one I've also had forever. I have a damn near
perfect credit rating. When I called them they just didn't give a crap.
Said that's what it's going to be. So I took the card out of my wallet
and put it away and will never use it again. I'll probably keep it
open till they cancel it just so they have to send me a statement
every month. AH's.

rt
 
If you consider the $200 (what it will really be) a pure gamble for the fun of it, go for it. There does seem to be a bottoming out on bank stocks. So, I can guarantee you that your stock will go up. or down. or stay about the same.
 

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spiderweb said:
Am I crazy for wanting to buy 100 shares? Seriously, the most I could lose is $150. I don't think the bank can fail (but what the heck do I know?), and I don't want it to, as I have a lovely citibank American Airlines credit card which has been very good to me.

So to those of you who know, what do you think?
Click to expand...

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I AM FINANCIALLY DUMB AND YOU SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO ANYTHING I SAY ABOUT MONEY.

<ahem> There. Now...

Like Mike said, if you treat it like sticking money in a slot machine -- meaning it's expendable cash and you fully expect to not get any return at all -- ehh, sure, why not. But then if that's the case, there are likely better picks out there. I don't know what they are, but (as Mike also said) the conventional wisdom and prevailing sentiment is that stocks like C are radioactive, so maybe it'd be wise to look at a different slot machine to drop it into.

DISCLAIMER: THE ABOVE WAS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I AM FINANCIALLY DUMB AND YOU SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO ANYTHING I SAY ABOUT MONEY.

Have a nice day. :D
 
Ben,

If it's $150 you can afford to lose, go for it! If you're gambling next month's rent money, don't. It's as simple as that.

While you're at it, buy $150 worth of Ford, $150 worth of Garmin, and $150 worth of whatever else you can afford to toss $150 away on, and your chances to come up with a positive result a year from now even if a couple of those $150's turn to $0's is greatly increased.

I don't get why people are SELLING now (except in Felix's case). My great-aunt just sold ALL of her stocks. If I had a job, I'd be buying like crazy. Some people are going to get very rich out of the mess we're in right now. :yes:
 
ReverendSlappy said:
the conventional wisdom and prevailing sentiment is that stocks like C are radioactive, so maybe it'd be wise to look at a different slot machine to drop it into.
Click to expand...
The other theory is that you do better being a contrarian than following the prevailing sentiment. I agree that if you want to gamble for fun, go for it but don't be surprised if you lose it.
 
Greebo said:
So we can ignore all your tax policy opinions then? ;)
:rofl:
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Absolutely not! And I'll make sure you can't, anyway. ;)

Everskyward said:
The other theory is that you do better being a contrarian than following the prevailing sentiment.
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Very true. But most of the time, the conventional wisdom gets to be the conventional wisdom for a pretty good reason. Not all the time, but most of it.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
Absolutely not! And I'll make sure you can't, anyway. ;)
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We shall see... ;)

Very true. But most of the time, the conventional wisdom gets to be the conventional wisdom for a pretty good reason. Not all the time, but most of it.
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I would say that *sometimes* CW is CW for a reason.
I'm not sure about most, if most is intended to convey a majority of the time.
 
Greebo said:
I would say that *sometimes* CW is CW for a reason.
I'm not sure about most, if most is intended to convey a majority of the time.
Click to expand...

About CW in general, I might agree. But when it comes to the markets, I'd say it's kinda rare to come across the proverbial diamond that most people consider to be a lump of coal; the market is pretty good at setting the price of things.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
If it's $150 you can afford to lose, go for it! If you're gambling next month's rent money, don't.
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??? If you're gambling next month's rent money, what are you doing spending money on flying? You're over your head.
That said, any investment that isn't a serious risk is a waste of energy -- there is no gain without risk. You would have better liquidity and access with the same gain by putting your money under your mattress. You just need to determine whether you can afford the loss.
 
Didn't I hear once that a chimpanzee was picking better than financial advisors and another time that throwing darts at the financial listings page did better, too?
 
Earlier this week Citi said it was profitable in the first two months of 2009 and is confident about its capital strength, easing concerns about the bank's survival prospects.
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/29665534

More importantly, Congress is now pressuring regulators to adjust, if not totally suspend, the controversial mark-to-market accounting rule, which may help the market deal with the pricing of toxic assets now held on the books of big, troubled financial institutions like AIG [AIG 0.4701 0.0601 (+14.66%) ] and Citgroup [C 1.80 0.13 (+7.78%) ] . Some change seems inevitable in the near future.
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/29659397
 
AuntPeggy said:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29665534


http://www.cnbc.com/id/29659397
Click to expand...

Those two stories impinge on each other. If Citi really had to value the toxic assets (at 0. Nobody wants to buy them, although they still obviously producing some cash flow.) they wouldn't have posted a "profit."

"Good thing" nobody really knows how much they're holding YET, huh?

Now you know why the stock broke a buck a share.

Geitner's "stress test" is supposed to see how much exposed they really are.
 
Earlier this week Citi said it was profitable in the first two months of 2009 and is confident about its capital strength, easing concerns about the bank's survival prospects.
Click to expand...
Several banks said that right up until the day before they were taken over by the FDIC.
 
mikea said:
Those two stories impinge on each other. If Citi really had to value the toxic assets (at 0. Nobody wants to buy them, although they still obviously producing some cash flow.) they wouldn't have posted a "profit."

"Good thing" nobody really knows how much they're holding YET, huh?

Now you know why the stock broke a buck a share.

Geitner's "stress test" is supposed to see how much exposed they really are.
Click to expand...

I'm highly suspect of anything coming from CNBC. They seem more like a 24 hour Wall Street infomercial than a source of useful information. No surprise, though - if CNBC were to actually say something bad about any company, they'd lose their access, and access is the only thing they have. It's not like they're really journalists...


Trapper John
 
Trapper John said:
I'm highly suspect of anything coming from CNBC. They seem more like a 24 hour Wall Street infomercial than a source of useful information. No surprise, though - if CNBC were to actually say something bad about any company, they'd lose their access, and access is the only thing they have. It's not like they're really journalists...


Trapper John
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If you think they're bad, watch Fox Business... Blech.

Bloomberg is pretty good, but I'm subjected to CNBC all day long in the office. :frown2:
 
ReverendSlappy said:
If you think they're bad, watch Fox Business... Blech.
Click to expand...

I did. Once. The bimbettes with their boobs falling out of their blouses were not at all impressive.

Bloomberg is pretty good, but I'm subjected to CNBC all day long in the office. :frown2:
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Well, at least CNBC is doing a terrific job of providing material for Jon Stewart!


Trapper John
 
I would treat it that way. I should have bought it on Monday. I would have doubled my money.
 
Well if you would have bought it on Friday for $1.75 you would have doubled your money by today. $2.44 currently was over $2.50 at times.
 
ron22 said:
Well if you would have bought it on Friday for $1.75 you would have doubled your money by today. $2.44 currently was over $2.50 at times.
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Doubled? I'm so old I missed learning the "new math". Or maybe I should have learned "Wall Street" math. :D
 
Gmaper said:
Doubled? I'm so old I missed learning the "new math". Or maybe I should have learned "Wall Street" math. :D
Click to expand...

Nope sorry not new math just bad math. :mad2: Sorry
 
I setup an etrade account. Aside from the 403B I have, I don't usually trade stocks. The last one was Apple, and I tripled my money on that. Since, however, I began with $2,000, it wasn't all that spectacular.
 
Up to 3.08 right now. Still not double (good math this time)
 
Guys, there's a big arb spread on Citi's common to preferred holders. It's caused a lot of convertible preferred holders to purchase common to lock in a spread which has lead to short covering in the common. If you don't know how all this works; you can wind up on the other side. One group purchased $5MM shares of common with 120% cost money; hope they know what they're doing. If the gov'ment changes the conversion value of the preferred, this could unwind very quickly.

OTOH, spreads are great for banks and those spreads will eventually recapitalize banks. Care what Jim Rogers says? He says it's way too early for banks like these for all but speculators.

Best,

Dave
 
Well even at th current price of $3 it won't hurt me to speculate 100 shares.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Guys, there's a big arb spread on Citi's common to preferred holders. It's caused a lot of convertible preferred holders to purchase common to lock in a spread which has lead to short covering in the common. If you don't know how all this works; you can wind up on the other side. One group purchased $5MM shares of common with 120% cost money; hope they know what they're doing. If the gov'ment changes the conversion value of the preferred, this could unwind very quickly.

OTOH, spreads are great for banks and those spreads will eventually recapitalize banks. Care what Jim Rogers says? He says it's way too early for banks like these for all but speculators.
Click to expand...
What effect did the Treasury trading preferred 5% shares for Citi common shares do?

That was supposed to make Wall Street happy and it didn't. It just took away the U.S. taxpayers' chance to make a return and not lose all of the $billions.
 
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mikea said:
What effect did the Treasury trading preferred 5% shares for Citi common shares do?

That was supposed to make Wall Street happy and it didn't. It just took away the U.S. taxpayers chance to make a return and not los eall of the $billions.
Click to expand...

Good point, except that it may (and I emphasize the word "may") be too early to say. Wall street's a bit happier these days, though I'm sure we'd all like to see it get cocaine-induced-high-happy like it was in the heady days of the 14,000 DJIA.

but yeah, that was a bubble
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Guys, there's a big arb spread on Citi's common to preferred holders. It's caused a lot of convertible preferred holders to purchase common to lock in a spread which has lead to short covering in the common. If you don't know how all this works; you can wind up on the other side. One group purchased $5MM shares of common with 120% cost money; hope they know what they're doing. If the gov'ment changes the conversion value of the preferred, this could unwind very quickly.

OTOH, spreads are great for banks and those spreads will eventually recapitalize banks. Care what Jim Rogers says? He says it's way too early for banks like these for all but speculators.

Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

Yep, a HUGE short squeeze going on - and a LOT of speculators still in the game.
 
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