Sterling Returns

Just a little update on the Sterling Financial saga which affects us here in Point Roberts only minimally, except that it is happening to one of our two banks, and thus shows how even we are connected to the financial world's vicissitudes.  After a number of months of a sinking stock price, a continuing failure to pay either dividends to their stockholders or their TARP interest to the government, a starring role on the 'bad bank' list, and a warning from the stock exchange because of the company's stock price having sunk below a dollar a share, Sterling is making a reversal.

Despite the sinking of the Dow and the NASDAQ and the other averages these past few weeks, Sterling has been in an upward trend, closing today at 90 cents per share.  This has all been the result of two private firms agreeing to put many millions into Sterling in exchange for many millions of new shares of stock.  These are people who are definitely buying low and hope to be, eventually, selling high. Just goes to show that there's money around somewhere.  Anyway, if Sterling can get its capital situation improved sufficiently with deals like these, it goes back off the FDIC's 'bad bank' list.

And if we'd all bought shares when it was at forty cents, we could have sold them today at a significant profit.  But when it was at forty cents, it didn't look all that promising.  Ah, the nature of the stock market.