Merrill Lynch’s (MER) Trading Lock Of The Week: Sell Merrill Lynch

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

MerrillMerrill Lynch (MER) came out with a clever bit of research this morning. As financial stocks take a sharp spike up due to the Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) bail-out news, use the bounce to sell shares in crummy financial firms.

According to MarketWatch, "The broker said traders might want to look for shorter-term "knee-jerk" reactions to the announcements, but rallies in the sector should still be used as opportunities to sell into strength."

Merrill may well be right. The action by the federal government will do little to solve the housing market’s fall and the underlying credit crisis.

Of course, since Merrill is as bad off as most financial firms, the recommendation means that the brokerage is advising that investors dump its shares as well.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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