First Quarter Upset: Stocks opened lower this morning after a weaker than expected profit report from Bank of America. The bank says its first quarter earnings tanked 77 percent.

Bank of America's first-quarter earnings was forecast to be disappointing, but today we learned it was worse than predicted. Let’s take a quick look at why perhaps the subprime and credit crises are the blame.

Bank of America was forecast by analysts to earn a profit of 41 cents a share. Unfortunately this is not the case as the actual earnings yielded only 23 cents a share. Should this come to the investment community as a surprise? Not, banks still have a lot of problems to work out. Nevertheless, traders in this market have the tendency to forget about the bad news and look for a brighter future, which may be a good thing for Bank of America.