Whitney vs Bove: Round 2

Or is it round 3?

The recent rally in financial stocks has been brought to a rude halt by Wall Street's 'It Girl", Meredith Whitney. Her short term stance has been at odds with Dick Bove, who has been pounding the table on banks, but not the brokers, and was partially responsible for putting a bid under the financials over the past week.

She is taking her hatchet out again, and it ain't pretty:

Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, will post a quarterly loss four times as large as Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney previously estimated, she said in a revised forecast.

Whitney has already cut her estimates for banks in excess of thirty times since November, and is not done:

``This will not be our last reduction in 2008,'' Whitney wrote in the note. ``We anticipate further downside to both estimates and stock prices'' because banks will be under pressure to mark down assets to reflect falling market indexes. Bloomberg

The BuySide knows what they should do with these stocks, but the grandstanding analysts always control the short term moves. Her latest call might generate additional death threats, mostly likely from fans of Dick Bove, who will not be happy to hear the Meredith is calling this the biggest credit crisis in “generations”.

Citigroup Estimates Cut by Oppenheimer’s Whitney
Bloomberg

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