I'm not sure how bad their exposures are, but this move is just begging to be shorted. I got stopped out a few times when I tried shorting their last runup from 8 to 20 though, so I'm gonna wait a little longer. Wow, it's really crescendoing now.
Got this off the yahoo board: IN THE MONEY: Hartford's Rosy View Of 'Unrealized Losses' By Michael Rapoport A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG) boosted its earnings outlook Friday and said its businesses and capital position were solid, offering rays of hope to a market yearning for some. The company's market value more than doubled. But there's at least one assertion Hartford made that raises eyebrows - and if it turns out to be wrong, the consequences could overshadow any financial strength Hartford shows in its operations. Hartford said it "expects to recover the vast majority of its unrealized loss position ... even in a deep recession." Translation: Hartford thinks the losses it's suffered on its investments during the financial crisis will ultimately reverse themselves - even if the economy stays bad - and won't become long-term losses that would require the company to take big impairment charges against its earnings. That's quite a claim, and it may be too optimistic. Big chunks of those investment losses, which have grown sharply in recent months, stem from risky securities whose value may not recover anytime soon. Other portions of the unrealized losses have already hung around on Hartford's books so long that it's hard to think of them as "temporary," as Hartford maintains they are. Both of those factors suggest that a lot of Hartford's unrealized losses are here to stay and really should be treated as long-term impairment charges that would hurt earnings - though Hartford continues to resist treating them that way. "Unrealized" losses are a basket on a company's financial statements that holds investment losses the company deems to be temporary and recoverable; such losses lower a company's book value but don't affect its earnings until and unless the company determines they've crossed the line into "other than temporary" status and an impairment charge is needed. The thing is, it's up to the company itself as to when that happens - and companies tend to resist that for as long as possible. Hartford had $11.6 billion in net unrealized losses as of Oct. 31, up from $6.8 billion just a month earlier. Those figures compare to about $1.5 billion that Hartford expects in "core earnings" for 2008, excluding charges for investment losses and other items - so any impairment charges that are needed could swamp the core earnings. Of the $11.6 billion in unrealized losses, $652 million were from subprime mortgage securities and another $3.8 billion were from commercial mortgage-backed securities - items for which a recovery anytime soon seems questionable, at the very least. Those Oct. 31 numbers are mid-quarter - if you go back and look at Hartford's Sept. 30 figures for the end of its third quarter, it raises even more questions. Of the $7.8 billion in gross unrealized losses at that point, $4.1 billion had endured for more than a year, which doesn't sound like those losses should still be considered "temporary."
Well the market is teaching me something new now. This stock quadrupled and after a few days it still hasn't had a pullback? Maybe if it was a penny stock, but not for a stock over $10. Never seen that before. Until now.