Looking for Bright Spots

One thing that writing the blog has made me do is focus on the stock prices of banks; not only the local ones but the big ones. And what I can’t for the life of me figure out is why there is all this concern about the shareholders being wiped out. At the current prices for all the banks, the shareholders have been almost entirely wiped out already and, presumably, they will not be much more disadvantaged by the next 5% loss. Well, I guess the thing is that they won’t be around to participate in the amazing rise in bank prices that we will be expecting once we’ve actually gone through all this. Whenever that time might come. Doesn’t look like it will be any time soon.

Anyway, by now, for those of you who are interested in following this with me, Sterling Bank is down to $1.43 (from a one-year high of $16.63, and today’s Sterling sales volume is almost 2 million shares, way above their average volume of sales, but below yesterday’s peak volume of 6 million); Banner Bank to $3.02 (from a one-year peak of $24.50, and a current volume of about twice its average); Citigroup to $2.88 (from a one-year high of $26.81, and with about half its average sales volume today; and Bank of America to $4.58 (from a one-year high of 42.45, and with only a slightly above-average sales volume today).

What that suggests is that the lack of confidence in the banks continues to deepen. However, Banner Bank gained a few cents today, rather than losing value. By contrast, both Citigroup and Bank of America were taking price percentage losses larger than Sterling’s. All three, however, were losing much more percentage-wise than the Dow or the S&P 500.

And outdoors, here on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of B.C., it is a very sunny day, but there are still, still, still considerable areas of snow leftover from the December snowstorm. But there are also, in our yard, little patches of crocuses smiling up, opening their little petals to the sun. Unlike the banks, these are bright spots in our lives. (The crocuses are a very small variety, barely 3 inches from ground to the tip of the bud.)