Merrill Lynch could not make it a hat-trick.

After Street-beating results from Wells Fargo and then JPMorgan Chase underwrote a two-day bounce in financial stocks, Merrill went the other way. Its second-quarter loss of $4.95 per share managed to miss even the most pessimistic forecast. Merrill has now lost a total of almost $19bn over four straight bad quarters. In after hours trading, its stock retraced nearly all of its recent 9 per cent gain.