Black Monday blues.

Bank of America claimed a $2.2 billion gain due to accounting adjustments related to its Merrill Lynch acquisition in January. BofA also notched a $1.9 billion gain from selling its stake in a Chinese bank.BofA, for instance, lost $1.77 billion on credit cards - one of its most important businesses - in the first quarter.
In all the bank's results declared so far credit quality has deteriorated especially in the housing and credit card portfolios. We anticipate the losses to rise further through the end of [the year.]"
In addition to bailout money, most banks are benefiting from the availability of short-term loans from the Federal Reserve at interest rates as low as 0.
Recent earnings reveal little about efforts to get billions in money-losing mortgage-backed securities off the banks' balance sheet - the problem that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's public-private rescue plan is intended to solve.
And Geithner - chief administrator of the bank "stress tests" - said that before the economy recovers, "there's going to be a period where it's going to feel very bad still and very uncertain."

Tracking the Dow on 20/04/09.(start of new futures month)

9:30am:--A 120.0 points gap down.

The bears are back.The White House will focus on credit card abuses.

Bearish bottom spin.
10:30am:--No sign of gap covering.

Now at session low.Bank of America (BAC) announced first quarter pretax, preprovision income of $19 billion, exceeding expectations. Enthusiasm for the bottom line results has been put into check since Bank of America increased its credit loss provisions by nearly $5 billion since the fourth quarter.

11:30am:--Graveyard dojis seen at this session low.

Just hitting news wires, leading economic indicators for March showed a decline of 0.3%. A decline of 0.2% was expected.

12:30noon:--Hangmans waiting at lunch break.

European Central Bank President Trichet that indicated any future cuts to Europe's target interest rate would be by 25 basis points.

1:30pm:--Bearish spinning bears.

Losses among small-and mid-cap stocks are outpacing those of the major headline indices.

2:30pm:--Graveyard doji again.

Stock market participants dump other bank stocks en masse just because of Bank of America announcement.

3:30pm:--It's injury time.Difficult to score any more goals.

Gold prices are also being bolstered by a strengthening dollar.

4:00pm:--It's a hell day.

It's the great work of the hedge fund vultures.Today financials hammering is ahead of Obama's stress test result.

They've cleaned up the whole week profits by selling on good news which they've priced in thru their various prior warnings.

Soon they are going to short-cover again when the bad news comes in.
They are very satisfied to bring the index back to the month's MAV.