It always amazes me how "group think" sways the market to do stupid things, or at least jump to foolish conclusions.

Today it was announced that Goldman Sachs Group (GS) has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding investors alleging that they knowingly misstated and omitted key facts about securities tied to sub prime mortgages during the rupturing of the housing bubble when they structured and marketed a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) tied to the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is a financial stock, and as such, you've got a right to be cautious about it, considering what's happened to the economy over the last couple years. Today, however, the equity, whose colleagues include Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C), appears pretty appealing. Wall Street enjoyed the results of the bank's first quarter, expressing its opinion by sending in the buy order.

As of this writing, shares of the company are up well over 3%, on robust volume. The stock has been strong since its last downturn, which ended back in February, according to the one-year chart.

Florida's insurer for high-risk homeowner policies, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., is issuing a bond to beef up its balance sheet. The state property insurer, which takes on the risks that private insurers in the state will not, is looking to raise around $2.5 billion.

The "pre-sale" ends on April 6, 2009 and was called "very successful" by Citizens CFO Sharon Binnun, who continued, "We met our liquidity goal for the year." A quiet hurricane season in 2009 left Citizens, the largest property insurer in the state, with a surplus of around $14 billion.

Thanks to a trillion dollars in credit losses write-downs on mortgage-related securities in 2007 and 2008, financial companies around the world had a lot of capital to recapture. So, in the first half of 2009, they issued stock. More than half the new shares to come out worldwide in those six months were issued by banks and brokers. All this stock, of course, translated to fees for investment banks. In a strange way, consequently, the financial industry healed itself.

According to Bloomberg, investment banking fees surged 13% in 2009, from $53.1 billion to $59.8 billion. This is still far short of the $86.9 billion record set in 2007, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Even with the surge of bank and broker shares issued in the first two quarters last year, total activity was still lower than in 2008.

One of the true icons of finance, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), issued its Q4 report this morning. The stock has been weak off the numbers; at the time of this writing, shares were down well over 5%, and volume was very active. Looking through the press release, I didn't come away as bearish as the market. Then again, the session as a whole was rather choppy, so perhaps overall sentiment was exerting an influence. Still, a 5% sell-off is notable.

Let's look at some highlights. For the fourth quarter, Goldman, whose colleagues include JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS), made $8.20 per share. Last year at this time, the company reported a loss of $4.97 per share. Besides improving year-over-year, per-share profit increased over 50% on a sequential basis as well. According to Earnings.com, $5.20 was the number to beat.

Thanks to strong results from its investment banking unit, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) was able to turn in a fourth quarter profit of $3.3 billion. This is a profound increase from the Q4 profit of $702 million posted in 2008.

JPM, which is the second largest bank in the U.S. in terms of assets, has performed best throughout the financial crisis, as evidenced by its substantial year-over-year increase in Q4 profit. For the last quarter of last year, JPM generated $25.2 billion in revenue.

The bailouts of late 2008 and 2009 have cost the American taxpayers $61 billion, according to the Treasury Department, but the banks aren't to blame this time. The auto manufacturer bailout, which includes Chrysler and General Motors (GRM), has cost the country more than $30 billion, with American International Group (AIG) consuming another $30 billion.

Meanwhile, Bank of America (BAC) has already made good with the government, and several banks -- such as Capital One (COF), JP Morgan Chase (JPM) and TCF Financial (TCB) -- only have to clean up situations regarding the warrants they've issued. And interestingly, the losses from the bailouts on AIG and auto manufacturers are being offset by profits from the bank bailouts, which could generate additional funds of up to $19.5 billion.

The recent issue of Fortune magazine discusses how the best of the best train, guide and nurture top managers to become the leaders that will propel their corporations successfully forward. They list the top 25 companies, which I have used as the basis of a new review to see how they would fair against common metric screens.

In the past few months, many articles have posited that large-cap stocks should excel in the coming year based on their lagging the market behind smaller, more volatile stocks flying out of the March lows. I do not believe this is universally true. Plenty of large-cap stocks did well, such as Anadarko Petroleum (APC), Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), while many small caps went nowhere. Even among the large caps included in Fortune's "Leadership 25," some have doubled.

It's still a tough time to be a CEO. In October, 89 top dogs moved on (by choice or not). Though this is 15% lower than the 105 in September and 29% off the whopping 125 CEOs who turned over a year earlier, it's still a sign that "stability" doesn't equal "recovery."

The latest study that Challenger, Gray & Christmas revealed to BloggingStocks reports that October was the eighth month this year in which CEO turnover was down year-over-year. Through the end of last month, 1,028 CEO positions changed hands -- down 18% from the 1,257 by the same point in 2008. In fact, the tally for the first 10 months of 2009 is the lowest since 2004, when the big office found only 561 new inhabitants.

The financial industry remains the toughest place for CEOs, with 19 leaving the job last month. Even though the situation has gotten easier, this industry still has the highest turnover. For the year, approximately 10% of all CEO departures (106) have been in the financial sector. "The financial industry is still incredibly volatile, as both October and September saw major announcements from leading companies including JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC) and last month's bankruptcy of CIT Group, which led to the exit of CEO Jeffrey Peek," John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says.

Tuesday morning greeted us with earnings from banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). The company said it earned $3.59 billion and that it nearly doubled the amount of money it saved for loan losses in the third quarter.

Breaking the results down into per-share earnings, JPM trounced the consensus estimate. The bank earned 82 cents per share, nearly double the expected 49 cents per share. Quarterly revenue increased to $26.62 billion from last year's same-quarter revenue of $14.74 billion.

Consumer bankruptcies have already spiked more than 30% this year, and it looks like the trend shows no signs of flagging. The American Bankruptcy Institute predicts that the tally could hit 1.4 million by the end of the year. So, although there are some experts signaling that the economy is on the upswing, the downstream effects of bankruptcy on consumer spending and corporate balance sheets are going to make it difficult for the market to turn the corner.

In July, more than 126,000 people filed for bankruptcy protection, and the filing rate was up 36.5% for the first six months of 2009 relative to the same period in 2008. The problem is affecting every rung of the social ladder.

Investment bank JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) announced that second-quarter earnings checked in at 28 cents per share -- or $2.72 billion. A year ago, the financial giant reported earnings of $2 billion, or 53 cents per share. This year's quarterly earnings included a charge of 27 cents per share after JPM repaid the $25 billion invested by the government in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). There was also a 10-cent-per-share penalty thanks to a special assessment from the FDIC. Expectations called for earnings of four cents per share.

JPM also reported record first-half revenue, stemming from "solid" performances in its commercial banking, asset management, treasury and security services, and its retail banking. That said, JPM expects credit costs to remain elevated in the "foreseeable future." No doubt that these results will lend some bullish momentum to Wall Street today, as JPM's earnings reinforce the quarterly results from Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) and the U.S. government can't seem to agree what the bank's stock warrants are worth. As a result, JPM has asked the Treasury Department to auction off the warrants publicly in order to determine a fair market price.

The JPM warrants were issued to the government under the terms of its TARP loan. Bailed-out banks have the option to repurchase their own warrants, but only if they can strike a deal with the feds regarding a reasonable price. However, many firms have complained that the Treasury is seeking too high a price for the assets -- putting executives in the awkward position of claiming that their stock just isn't worth that much.

In choosing the auction alternative, JPMorgan is waiving its right to repurchase its own warrants (it could potentially bid through the public auction process, but company executives have decided not to do so). If the stock warrants are successfully auctioned off to a third party, their exercise would be dilutive to existing shareholders.

In running a very tight stock screen recently for value plays Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) showed up on a list of 14 stocks. Interestingly all the large railroad stocks did. This reminded me of several stories I have done on the subject, the most recent being Chasing Value: Watch BNI -- the heck with Citigroup.

To summarize, about six weeks ago a Citigroup (NYSE: C) analyst declared it was time to sell the stock when BNI was trading in the mid $60s -- I said investors should do the opposite, it was a great value. Friday the stock closed at $76.98. Even at this price it is a value and ever more so with oil prices steadly creeping up.

It is being reported today in the Business Journal that the safest bank in the United States is Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC).

According to Global Finance, which will publish its analysis, "World's 50 Safest Banks" in its April issue, international banks dominate the rankings, which show the effects of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and credit crisis brought on by large Wall Street players. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is the top-rated U.S. bank at No. 21. European banks now dominate the rankings, with only four U.S. banks among the listing.