Goldman Traders Had a Perfect Quarter 

A member sent in the following WSJ report and remarked, “Nobody wins all the time, unless they cheat…”:

NEW YORK—Goldman Sachs Group Inc. traders didn’t lose any money at the end of each trading day during the first quarter, a first for the Wall Street firm, which typically loses funds on at least a handful of days in the period.

Traders raked in more than $100 million daily for 35 days and made no less than $25 million daily during the rest of the three-month period, according to a regulatory filing.

The trading results during the first quarter handily beat results from longtime rival Morgan Stanley, which said it lost as much as $30 million daily on four days during the quarter. Morgan Stanley made between $60 million and $90 million on each of 16 days during the quarter, and between $210 million and $240 million on one day.

To which I replied, “Or they netted out on the plus side. If a firm is this good and it’s public, does it not make sense to own some?”

Or, if we do some math (using an extremely conservative assumption that GS trades $1 billion/day), that’s a profit of 6.88% over a three-month period. No retail investor would pay even $1 for a newsletter claiming this sort of return, but because it’s GS, there must be a conspiracy. ;-)