There’s no doubt which firm stole the show in the most eagerly awaited and closely watched quarterly earnings season of recent times for investment banks. Goldman Sachs blew the market away with its third-quarter numbers. The firm, cast by its competitors as a highly leveraged hedge fund with a corporate finance arm attached, should have been most at risk in a quarter of sudden and alarming collapses in financial markets and constrained liquidity. But Goldman turned on a pin, producing not the worst results but by far the best. Its 32% return on common equity easily surpassed a still very respectable 21% for Lehman and 17% for Morgan Stanley.
Did it put a massive short on the mortgage market as a hail-Mary play to rescue its quarter? Goldman says it developed its bearish view over a period of time and went short across the entire capital structure...
