"Watching AIG news for option entry"
Be interested to know what specifically you're looking for. Given their track record, there's virtually no chance AIG will say anything further today when they've said nothing will be forthcoming before tomorrow a.m. If the SEC was going to act, it would have done so last night. If the Fed was going to act, it would have last night.
My sense is, any further news and developments on AIG will not happen before after the close, and probably not before tomorrow a.m.
The big question, though, IMO, is whether given AIG's $1 Trillion balance sheet, and given how far its tentacles stretch, and given that there is no "FDIC"-type protection for holders of insurance policies, will Treasury/Fed, etc. conclude AIG is "too big to fail" and come in with some action.
I'm leaning toward believing they will.
Incidentally, I see little chance BAC doesn't cut their dividend. Ken Lewis seemed to telegraph it in his current ongoing CNBC interview. He senses this as a tremendous, once in a lifetime opportunity for the strong to grab market share, and would clearly rather have the money for squaring up their ratios and potentially grabbing up a bunch of the smaller banks as they fail, rather than shipping the extra capital off to shareholders in the form of dividends. In fact, he was fairly straightforward in saying he thought it was in the shareholders' best interest for the money to be applied in those pursuits.
Maybe I'm wrong, but even when the smart money sees it coming, dividend cuts generally aren't greeted well.
AI
