Citigroup Rally: Pros Are Skeptical

CNBC with AP:

Wall Street got some good news from Citigroup and responded with a huge rally. But some investment pros are skeptical that the banking giant--or the market itself--had turned the corner.

"I've lost count of how many of these rallies we've seen over the last year and a half and I don't suspect we'll see anything different here," Mike Larson, analyst with Weiss Research, told CNBC.com. "Would I be chasing this? No."

Read the whole story: CNBC with AP

Comments

[Tulka2]

Main Street morale went up as B. Maddoff's head went rolling down Wall Street today. Did us all a world of good.

[SwingingFromCenter]

Well, let's put it this way:

I bought Citi stock the day I saw this site's headline about it closing at a dollar and being unsavable.

I turned a tidy profit today.

I'm selling tomorrow. Good luck to the saps out there who wanna stick it out.

[drymartini1]

Someones at the money call options just became in the money !! hehehe.

[PhilipTaylor]

What about the "Off-Balance-Sheet" accounting that the Zombie Banks use to FAKE their ACCOUNTING? Will that FAKE STUFF stay LEGAL? Or will the SEC stop this practice like Obama did with the NEW Budget?

How did Citi suddenly show a profit - they simply did ZERO or near zero write downs of there hidden toxic waste.

"Mark-to-market" should be renamed to VAPOR or "Value Accounting Price on Rules" since the Banksters skimmed off 50% of the value in Hidden FEES before the Banksters sold them.

[13lotus]

crooks. criminals. thieves.

[norkas]

The stock has NOT bottomed and here is the reason why.

1. Business across America are now going and will continue going bankrupt. This means that big banks and some smaller ones will be hit in the trillions because of the credit line defaults.

2. Comercial building will be bankrupt in the trillion plus range and that is consertive.

3. Credit card default will be in the trillion.

4. More forclosures in the housing sector and the very high end speculation will cost banks aleat another 2 trillion plus.

[funkalicious]

Isn't it illegal to pre announce earnings like Citi did?

How Large Are their Credit Losses how about the junk CDO's they are holding as housing continues to slide down hill? I see lawsuits when all this is reconciled....

Why did they do it?

Stock Black-out Period for most of the financial institutions before their 1st quarter earnings release. During the black-out period company employees are not allowed to trade (or dump) their own stock until after their earnings release. With the banking sector about to implode any day this will be the insiders last gasp at cashing out before the taxpayers ever will.

Where is the SEC... still asleep at the switch??

[ssfahrer]

Citigroup is, for all intents and purposes, a "penny stock"! Percentage increases for stocks around a dollar or less per share (the usual criterion for 'penny stocks') are MEANINGLESS! An increase from $ 1 to $ 2 is a 100% increase.... Looks good in a headline: "Citi shares double in value"-- but it's still a $ 2 stock (assuming this happened in the 'real world')!!!! One share of Citi can't even get you a ride to Wall St (to buy a share of Citi) on the NYC Subway System!

Pros (and even this amateur) are quite skeptical of ANY Citigroup 'rally'-- and so should you!

[AN2009]

What about the huge credit losses that Citigroup has yet to report...

[IntelligenceQuantifier]

So lemme get this, Citibank releases a report they made a profit and the stock goes up? Am I missing something? So basically TARP wasn't necessary, just a $6.00 ream of paper from Staples and a printer and VOILA, economic downturn disappears!

[AContrario]

Here we go for another round of spin...

I really want the Obama adminsitration to succeed in fixing the economy but
they are doing it the wrong way and if we go back to the insanity of the last decades
where Wall St 's koolaid was the economic barometer of the world's wealth, I am
afraid we are going to be in this mess for the long haul.

I say let these banks bloated of arrogance and money fail and focus on small
and medium business + taxpayers.

[Solja]

AIG has 70 million PLUS insurance accounts GLOBALLY. If they slide off the deep end, so goes the world markets. It's no joke. The answer should really be that these large banks need to be broken up by the government, especially since we own most of them anyway.

And since they made money, didn't the US government since we invested in them? I'm just askin'...

[Gould123]

Well Gas got under control, why not the stock market? Sink your money in an it might stay up!

[KillTheMessenger]

Gas never "got under control". It helped to collapse the economy, though. Spending $500 billion on oil imports in 2008 out of a GDP of $13 trillion turned out to be a poorly thought out idea.

[Brothaman2k]

No shock, the stock has hit rock bottom and the bargain hunters have come out.

[trollslayer]

If you think this is the bottom, you're in for a rude awakening over the next 12 months.

[Gould123]

YES! YES! YES!

[lvdragonlady]

Sounds to me like Citi has been playing with the numbers.
I think an audit is in order, because this is NOT what they want you to think it is.
I would bet money on an Enron move.

[SwingingFromCenter]

And tell me, oh swami, what glorious insight and information do you have that backs up this claim? None? Oh yeah I forgot, this is the internet where anyone can make a wha.cky statement and have it heard.

[jsarets]

Citigroup could very well have turned a profit of $8B based on all of their revenues, including public capital injections, and some of their liabilities, excluding the forced conversions of debt to equity and various government guarantees.

But these are accounting tricks derived from the government bailouts. The side effect of the bailouts is that the earnings reports of these zombie banks are now more fraudulent than ever. I suspect that the Big 5 will lie and deceive their way back from the edge of the abyss with the implicit support of the Treasury. The stock market and the financial-media complex will eat it up.

Meanwhile, all those recent conversions of public capital to common stock are starting to look good for us taxpayers. Is this prescience or is it really preconception on the part of the Treasury? Buy low, manipulate, sell high. Sounds like a plan, and nobody can get away with it better than the government.

The nature of banks is that if people think they're solvent, they're solvent, and if people think they're insolvent, they're insolvent. All the government has to do is convince us that the banks are making money even as the real economy continues to deteriorate.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the wonderful wizard of $ has everything under control.

[Eyeswideopen1]

and you got your phD in economics from where?

[jsarets]

You'd trust a phD in economics to critique the banking system? They're indoctrinated into false premises and faulty assumptions.

I'm a computer engineer by formal training. In economics, I'm self-taught, and the way I see it, that's the best way.

[climatebabes]

Wake up! Pump and dump..All (US) banks are zombies!

[Eyeswideopen1]

Nope. Citi perhaps but not all. Especially a lot of the smaller ones.