Bank of America makes money and the stock market … dives?

What happens when one of the giants in the troubled banking industry reports much better than expected earnings?

If it’s the third Monday in April, the answer is that whole stock market takes a dive, as does the share price of the bank in question.

That was the story as Bank of America said it earned more in the first quarter of 2009 then it did in all of last year.

The problem: That $2.8 billion quarterly profit was dwarfed, in the view of investors, by the risks to the bank posed by rising loan losses on everything from credit cards to commercial real estate.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 290 points, or 3.56 percent, Monday. Bank of America, a part of the Dow index, lost 23.4 percent in the value of its shares.