Brokers downgrading brokers: Goldman downgrades Merrill

The game of musical broker downgrades continues.  Today we have Goldman Sachs downgrading Merrill Lynch to "sell".  Not only is it a "sell" but Goldman also elevated Merrill to its "conviction sell" list.  Analyst William Tanona expects that the firm will have even more credit related write downs:

``Merrill currently trades at the highest price-to-book multiple in our large-cap brokerage universe, despite having some of the most significant exposures to troubled assets such as CDOs, mortgages and leveraged loans,'' said the report, dated yesterday. ``With these markets still under pressure, we believe additional write-downs and book value deterioration will continue to plague the stock.''

Merrill Lynch Cut to `Sell' at Goldman on Writedowns - Bloomberg