Ouch. There will be those who are gleefully watching as Goldman Sachs’ stock gets pummelled on the back of the firm’s 1MDB woes. There will be others looking on more nervously, hardly daring to whisper “there but for the grace of God go we”.
Rarely has Goldman taken a beating as quickly as it has in the past couple of weeks.
On November 8, the stock closed at $231.65. The next day saw the unsealing of a court filing that unleashed more details of the guilty plea of former Goldman banker Tim Leissner, who admitted in August that he had conspired with others to conceal facts related to the bank’s work for 1MDB from Goldman’s compliance and legal departments.
By the close on November 12, just two trading sessions later, it was down 11%. Since then the rot has continued: at the time of writing on Wednesday, it was 17% below that November 8 close.
It is now the worst-performing stock in the Dow Jones this year, down about 25%.
Significance
But the significance of the current level goes beyond the absolute price.