Market Recap: All Swine Flu, All The Time!

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 The Reformed Broker, AKA Daddy Long Legs, here with today’s Market Recap…

It’s Monday, so that can only mean one thing…Yes, that’s right!  A new restructuring plan for General Motors (GM)!  Maybe this, the third since January, will stick.  And BTW, they’re blowing out the Pontiac brand, which is a shame. 

The action today was dominated by the Swine Flu Hysteria, and of course, the small cap biotechs that may or may not (probably the latter) have workable drugs for it got the predictable pump-and-dump treatment…here is one such example:

I’m not playing that game this time around.  If you bought BCRX or any of the related names, you got smoked like a Camel Light…serves you right.

The positive news is that Bea Arthur, my adolescent crush from the mid-eighties hit TV show The Golden Girls, died peacefully of natural causes, not from swine flu as had previously been speculated.

Speaking of Swine Flu, Ken Lewis, the embattled CEO of Bank of America (BAC), is probably pleased as punch to have his headlines knocked out of the way, at least temporarily.  John Thain called him a liar in the press his morning and today would’ve been a nightmare for this guy.

In other news, Sheila “Build-A” Bair, the head of the FDIC, spent quite a bit of time on the business networks today, looks like the Stress Test Plunge Protection Team is already priming us for results that may not be either truthful or encouraging.

For a quick guide to Swine Flu Preparedness, see my earlier post here.

Thanks for reading, see you all here tomorrow!

Full Disclosure: I currently manage accounts that are long GM, no other positions mentioned.