Repaying Trap is a Non-Event

Today the government announced some of the big banks that were allowed to repay Trap. I thought the banks would take that as an event to push their price up another step. But it turned out nothing happen. On the day when the government released the stress test results the market was like a wild horse. Today I feel it was like a turtle. Sometimes the market just behaves very calm and logical. It didn’t make sense the way that the market reacted to stress test results then but it made sense to me the way the market reacted to the government’s announcement today. After all we pretty much know which banks are able to repay TRAP.

I wanted to short Bank of America this morning but I wasn’t sure if today was going to be another wild day. I did not dare to do that. Thinking back I should have looked at the volume. If the volume is light then it is not going to be a big day. I wanted to take a long position but I didn’t feel BAC worth that much. After all it was not one of the banks that were able to repay TRAP. It should be categorized as a weaker bank.

Verisign Logo

In searching or a tradable stock I found Verisign. It was involved in a price fixing law suite and its stock price dropped 20% in a couple days. It seems to me that $19 per share is its support line so I got in at $19.07. I am losing money right now.


Verisign half year graph


Frankly I think the law suite has a lot of merits. Verisign owns network solution Inc which monopoly the domain name registration business. I didn’t understand why the market which was installed with anti-monopoly laws could allow a company like network solution Inc operated as monopoly in the first place. If you have an explanation of any kind I would love to hear it. I had the thought back in the DOT COM era that network solution Inc was a monopoly and would be suited. Basically everyone has to purchase domain name from them. I didn’t expect to wait till that long to see a law suite. That is one of the reasons I want to take a shot a VRSN. After all it down 20% and loss $1 Billion market capitalization already


Account Balance Change: -$79.49