Monday, April 13, 2009

If Goldman's Selling... Beware of Buying (GS)

If I had to go on record I would guess the markets hold together through Goldman's pricing of their stock issue. This morning's futures dispute me though, the S&P is down six points, the DJIA is down 47, premarket.
Looking back at the GS IPO, they priced at $53 on May 3, 1999 with the DJIA closing that day at 11,014. The first trade on May 4 was at $76, so they left some money on the table but versus the market they received a pretty good price. The DJIA reached it's bull market closing high eight months later at 11,722, a mere 6.44% higher.
The S&P only went 12.77% higher.
Of course the action in '99 was in the Nasdaq. From the date of Goldman's debut to the Nasdaq's ultimate high on March 10, 2000, the index ran from 2535 to 5048, an astounding 99% ten month run.
Here's EconomPic:

If I've learned anything, it is that when the "smart money" is selling, you SHOULD NOT be buying. The WSJ reports:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., riding a rising market, is considering making a multibillion-dollar offering of its shares to investors as part of an effort to repay a $10 billion government loan, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move, which could be announced as early as next week, comes as the firm prepares to report solid first-quarter earnings Tuesday. Goldman executives haven't determined the exact size of the offering, but it is expected to be at least several billion dollars, these people say. They caution a final decision isn't made, and will be based partly on market conditions.
Although Goldman's stock price has been far from immune during this global downturn, a sale at today's equity valuation would be a substantial improvement (more than 2x) than seemed possible just a few months back....MORE, including a couple pics and links to the ZeroHedge post that we were lucky enough to see Friday evening.