Thursday's Financial Winners & Losers

Updated from 2:13 p.m. EST with new stock prices

The falling major indices, along with downbeat research courtesy of Goldman Sachs, helped to kick most of the financial stocks lower on Thursday.

The NYSE Financial Sector Index gave up 1.6% to 8,286.33 after a Goldman analyst said that effects from the credit crunch have yet to fully play out. That echoes the recent sentiments of a number of other analysts.

Goldman specifically pegged Citigroup's (C Quote) writedowns for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) at $18.7 billion, according to several published reports, which balloons from the analyst's prior $11 billion projection. And, notwithstanding last month's $7.5 billion cash infusion by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the analyst said those writedowns might force Citi to cut its dividend by 40%.

The Goldman analyst also nearly doubled his writedown forecast for Merrill Lynch (MER Quote) to $11.5 billion in that quarter, per Reuters, and fully doubled that for JPMorgan (JPM Quote) to $3.4 billion. Bottom-line expectations were slashed at all three New York-based firms.

Citi shares were sliding 2.9% to $29.56, pulling down the KBW Bank Index along with JPMorgan, which surrendered 2.9% to $43.64. The sector tracker was down 2.3%. The Amex Securities Broker-Dealer tracker lost 2.1% to 206.54 under pressure from Merrill Lynch. Merrill was off 2.5% after CNBC reported that the firm will lay off about 1,600 people, or roughly 10% of its work force.

Among the biggest individual price decliners, however, was Sallie Mae (SLM Quote). The student lender fell 11.2% after saying it will offer $2.5 billion in stock, consisting of $1.5 billion in common shares and $1 billion in mandatory convertible preferred shares.