Wells Fargo predicts 3 BILLION$ profit

[Sam Spade]

Wells Fargo is notorious for cooking their books more than any other bank in the profession (along with most other companies in general).  Be cautious.

I do like the *timing* - day before a three-day weekend before options expiration week when trading is usually light.  Nice short squeeze.

[Sam Spade]

and then there's that stress test and whatnot

The stress test is a joke.

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They have plenty of junk on their books - Wells Fargo's HELOC exposure is generally worse than anyone else.  Perhaps they aren't as bad as Citi and BoA, but they're still going to be garbage in the long run, IMHO.  I'm just saying that you have to watch out with Wells - they play accounting games to the hilt.

Wachovia is crap.  Probably worse than Wells was.  Their addition helps nothing and makes the whole bank crappier. 

One other general "bank" thing:  As I have said before, I would be generally cautious as to bank 1st quarter reporting, because I expect all of them to do better than expected.  There are a number of "one-time" reasons (i.e. technical adjustments that will only occur this quarter), but there are a lot of real reasons too.  One of them is that they're looting the consumer for one last time (with the help of our government) through credit spreads.

Anyway, back to your normal programming.