Goldman Sachs (GS) upgraded Bank of America (BAC) to buy from neutral, sending BofA’s stock prices up more than 11% to trade at $11.92 as this story goes to press. “Our optimism is based on another solid mortgage and capital markets quarter, given observable activity levels since March,” Goldman said, according to a Market Watch bulletin. Goldman added BofA to its conviction buy list and estimated it may earn as much as $0.25 per share in Q209. It raised the price target from $7 to $15, estimating BofA’s common share count will rise from 6.4bn to 9bn after a new stock issue to be sold at market price in upcoming weeks. “Historically banks sell 5%-15% of total trading volume each day in these deals,” Goldman said, according to Market Watch. “We estimate Bank of America has been at the high end in a bid to get the deal done sooner rather than later in order to remove uncertainty. If this is the case, given large trading volumes in Bank of America’s stock, we estimate that $5bn of capital may already have been raised and that it may only take six more trading days to get to the bank’s approximate goal of $8.5bn.” Write to Diana Golobay. Disclosure: The author held no relevant investment positions when this story was published. Indirect holdings may exist via mutual fund investments.

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