Before You Invest Your Money

Goldman Sachs shares tumbled in pre-market trading after the company reported earnings that beat Wall Street views, but revenue came in shy of what analysts had been expecting.The financial giant said its net income was 78 cents a share in its second quarter, compared with $4.93 a share this time last year.Excluding one-time items, Goldman earned $2.75 a share, topping analysts’ estimates.Sales for the most recent quarter reached $8.84 billion, down from $13.76 billion in the same period last year.Analysts who follow the company projected Goldman Sachs to earn $2.08 a share on revenue of $8.94 billion.Last week Goldman resolved a major headache by paying $550 million to settle the SEC case. The fraud charges stemmed from Goldman’s marketing and packaging of the Abacus collateralized debt obligation.Weakness in its trading and investment banking divisions also weighed on earnings.Goldman said earnings were also impacted by a $600 million expense related to the UK tax.”It’s a pretty significant slowdown in their overall business: Investment banking revenue was down 36 percent year over year, and fixed income, currency, and commodity trading was down 35 percent,” said Walter Todd, portfolio manager at Greenwood Capital Associates.