Depending on who you ask, holders of LEND were treated to either a great ride or a bad stomachache yesterday. The stock shot up over 50%, from a Thursday close of $6.50 to a peak around $10, then sold off gains to $8.66. The main reason for this rocket was an announcement that LEND had received approval from most of the states in which it operated to sell their business to Loan Star. Loan Star is a private firm which had offered a $15 / share price way back. This news came out during the day on Friday. The real intrigued occurred after hours, when two juicy bits of news hit the wires. 1) LEND is looking at a loss somewhere between 40 and 60 million this quarter (this one’s not really a surprise given the current status of the mortgage industry; 2) Loan Star is backing out of their contract to purchase LEND at $15. #2 shouldn’t surprise anyone — if that deal were going to go through, the stock would be trading a lot closer to $15 than it is currently. Obviously the big cats didn’t think it was going to happen. Yesterday, LEND ended up dropping over $4 from its 8.66 close in after hours trading — wiping out the gain of the day and then some.
Hopefully not too many people tried to hold on to LEND over the weekend — this chart has the classic look of “pump and dump”. I wish I had taken my own advice and shorted it. This stock will likely go to zero in a hurry. I wonder what that shill Jim Cramer will say about it now. He called the deal ‘ironclad’, but as I recall from history class, ironclads sank all the time in the 19th century. Maybe that’s what he meant?
