Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros. will probably need to make a sizable writedown of their mortgage related assets. However they don't need to do it in middle of a fiscal year. They are taking their chances and hoping the market will make a recovery later on this year, thus waiting until the 3rd or last quarter to reveal their losses which they hope will be less than if estimated today. Risky strategy! It also proves that the intra-year financial statements of these financial institutions are probably not very reliable, and that's an understatement.