MER surged to new highs when fraud charges were brought against the company by the state of Massachusetts. Investors and traders began buying when they realized the joke was on Massachusetts as MER has no assets they could win in a lawsuit. Think of this a la Onion news.
Is it time to short MER? They have agreed to reimburse the city of Springfield, MA $13.9 million. http://www.huliq.com/49174/merrill-lynch-reimburse-springfield-usd-139-million Now anyone who bought CDOs from them will want to be reimbursed too. Or they will sue. ETA: OK, I just noticed that the source for the story was Pravda.ru, so take many grains of salt. Somehow I thought it was part of a Bloomberg article.