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[littlefish]

Ya a complicated mess.

A lot of the small banks with TARP have been having the treasury sell out of the preferreds lately (last couple months).

Looks like in some cases the private sector snaps them up at Dutch auction and then sometimes the banks turn around and buy them post dutch auction.

Was looking at PULB (a small position of several small banks for me) and they did somehting like that today-

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pulaski-financial-announces-partial-repurchase-210500094.html

My guess is a lot of these preferreds are going to be bought back by banks with cash on their balance sheets as Jan 2014 rolls around (when div rates could go from 5% to 9%).

I was wrong on FCCO BTW, treasury is just now auctioning off those preferreds (think in prior post I mentioned it had already happened). If banks can buy back those preferreds at a decent discount to par then there is room for a one Q eanrings pop although I don't have time to go thru and look for it much. I think I recall one of my holdings having their preferreds sell at something like 70%+ of par so well below par.

May have to try to look for positions where bank is able to buy back at decent discount to par. But that'd only be a one time gain so maybe not worth the fuss.

Anyhow, good luck.