Malaise Stays with Debt Purchasers? Stocks

The stock market’s confusion and malaise continued this morning with some blue chip companies rallying while debt purchasers failed to rise from their sell-off funk of the last week.

The stocks of major banks that account for 90 percent or more of the credit-card issuing market rebounded today from the recent bear market blues. Capital One, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo all saw their stocks in positive territory this morning. American Express and Discover Financial Services, which act as both card issuers and network operators, also were trading higher.

The stocks of the five publicly listed debt purchasers were down this morning including Asset Acceptance Capital down 1.8 percent, Asta Funding down 2.5 percent, Encore Capital Group down 1.7 percent, First City Financial down 0.8 percent, and Portfolio Recovery Associates down 0.6 percent.