Bear Stearns stock first traded this week at $70.28 a share. Earlier today it was at $50.48 a share: basically a $20 drop in the space of three and a half trading sessions. Right now, it’s at $54.68, which puts it down 22% so far this week with all of tomorrow still to come.
Meanwhile, notes Paul Murphy, the five year CDS has gapped 120bp to 700bp, which is not the kind of level any bank wants its CDS trading at. And all this on strenuously denied rumors that Bear might be suffering from liquidity problems. If you believe the official story, Bear’s a screaming buy at these levels: its price-to-book ratio is just 0.73.