For the investor, it does not get much tougher than this. Markets have been awful. Almost any news is interpreted as bad, and it is even regurgitated to reinforce the effects it created in the first place.
For example, on 6 March 2009, HSBC's share price declined on the news that Michael Geoghegan, its CEO, had said that it was closing down Household, its North American business. But exactly the same news had been included in HSBC's 2008 profits announcement on 2 March 2009. The news isn't even that bad. Everybody knew that Household had turned into a disaster and it was somewhat refreshing that the senior management of a large UK bank was prepared to own up to a problem in one of its businesses and write-off the value in its results. HSBC actually made over $5 billion in profits and th...
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