Then:
Time.com: July 2007:
"Citigroup CEO, Chuck Prince, Wants To Keep Dancing. And Can You Really Blame Him?"
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance."
"his account amounts to quite an elegant explanation of why financial bubbles persist. Even if Citigroup’s executives were worried that private equity valuations have gotten too frothy and loan terms too loose, it would make little sense for them to pull back. Because they can never know for sure when the music’s going to stop, and they’d be crazy to forego all those underwriting fees for the year or two or three before it does. So they keep dancing."
Can you really blame him for tanking his stock 90% and laying off 50,000 employees, to gain an extra month of fees? After all, his retirement payout was $40 million just a few months later...
Citigroup stock:
Now:
“Human emotion, which is the biggest wild card in investing, can surprise you. There is still a lot of momentum trading,”
"earnings are terrible, the economy is slowing, and low oil prices may reflect lackluster demand in the world economy."
“We continue to invest, somewhat cautiously and only in defensive stocks"
P/E Consumer Staples "defensive stocks"
"According to American Association of Individual Investors, market participants shifted cash into equities last month, raising their stock allocation to 64%, above its long-term average of 60%. Meanwhile, cash allocation fell to 18.5%, below the historical average of 24%."
"You have to be an idiot while everyone else is being an idiot, otherwise you look like an idiot"
