November 2007
Earlier in the week it was New York that I was glad I wasn't flying out of, with brutal delays recorded at FlightWait. Today it's Las Vegas that's the problem, with nasty weather delays, as the following capture shows:...
I need a new word. What do you call it when you accidentally learn something, but then really and truly wish you could somehow unlearn it? I ask because the need came up recently while reading Brink Lindsey's otherwise interesting...
A quick snapshot of the best week on the markets in ... okay, only since October. But still....
Add your own caption to the following photo. I've seen it on the web today with "Goldman Sachs traders gather to protest bonus cuts," but I'm sure readers here can do better....
ABC has an interview out with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wherein he says that he thinks a deal to help subprime borrowers should be finalized soon, ideally by next week. More color: "This is not a government subsidy that we're...
Provocative speech by St. Louis Fed commissioner Bill Poole at the Cato Institute today. Among other things, he unapologetically confirms that a "Fed put" -- i.e., a predictable bailout to financial markets -- exists. Here is an excerpt: Did the...
I don't generally mention site-specific stuff here, but November has been an all-time traffic record here. The site is well over one-million page views now, and a few hundred thousand unique visitors. Thanks much to everyone. I appreciate the interest...
I won't even begin to try to explain why, but as a young guy I was fascinated with motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel. Seems almost indefensible now, but it is what it is. Anyway, sad news to hear that he died...
Passenger: Hey, you want to see something really scary?Driver: You bet. Passenger: Really? Driver: Yeah. Passenger: Okay. This is really-really scary now. Driver: I trust you. Passenger, Okay, pull the car over. Driver. Pull the car over? Oooh. Passenger: You...
New Citi report out from analyst Mark Mahaney explaining why mobile matters to Google. Pace some points I made on CNBC this morning, Mark argues alongside me that Google's spectrum bid makes sense, even if it doesn't really want the...
Insanely interesting global securities industry data out from SIFMA. Whole things is worth a scan, as it's a real eye-opener on how the industry is changing, become more global, less U.S.-centric, etc. Following figure is typical, and be sure to...
You had to know that Feds' leaked proposed plan for bailing out soon-be-reset-smacked homeowners wasn't going to be smooth sailing -- and that's not a bad thing: Industry executives, market participants and several analysts said implementing any plan would be...
After not having had real rain in more than eight months, and having had a year with less than half as much rain as usual, today's bucketing rain here in San Diego is causing some entertaining behaviors, as well as...
Just for fun, here is a link dump of some the things I had open in browser tabs from this morning while prepping for my The Call appearance on CNBC: Can GDP turn negative after two quarters of increasing growth?...
Goldman Sachs' tech group took down earnings and target prices across the board this morning for tech. Cited problems in the broader economy, and that's not helping tech and the Nasdaq today....
I'm guesting on CNBC's "The Call" for the hour tomorrow (11/30/07) from 11am to noon EST. Topics will include the Fed, financial sector, etc....
I was on a BBC radio program today talking at some length about stock valuation, then and now. It was good fun, and should be broadcast week after next. Will let people know more when I do....
The wags are already out in full force hoping for an "Apple Dubai"-style misfire from Fox Business News over the E-Trade deal. From an email today: am i the only waiting for fox biz news to report that Apple just...
I posted some (quick) positive aspects of the Citadel deal for E-Trade assets this morning, and now some more critical commentary -- as I listen, for the second time, to the E-Trade conference call. First things first, the price on...
I've been spending some time this morning mulling the Citadel investment in E-Trade. I'll post some positive components first, and then follow up with another post on some of the more worrisome aspects. On the one hand it is a...
Lots of interesting nuggets in McAfee's new online criminology report. Tidbits include the growth in markets for cyber exploits, with prices ranging up to $75,000, as well as full support services for some products/services. More here and here....
The last few days' wild action on the major markets reminds me of the great "Long Johns" skit on market sentiment, and how markets work: John Bird: You have to remember a couple of things about the market. They are...
Folks, I need an inexpensive and speedy researcher for a sizable project. Which one of the many service sites out there -- i.e., Elance, Craigstlist, etc. -- is best for that sort of thing, if any? Note that the project...
I literally laughed out loud at this finding from a paper in press at the journal Intelligence. Apparently it's not just my growing grouchiness as I get older: The world is becoming dumber. Hey, maybe that explains subprime. Dysgenic fertility...
While I'm not in Vancouver today, a colleague has sent a lovely photo from the downtown Ventures West offices there. There is nothing like a foot of new snow on the North Shore; I always love the whitewashed Neapolitan ice...
The fun and frivolity had hardly stopped with Fox Business News' "Apple Dhabi" incident, and we already have another FBN adventure in fake news. This time it seems that Fox got taken in while doing some "reporting" on the irritating...
This finding from Thomson's Science Watch is fascinating: The numbers of scientific papers published with more than 50, 100, 200 and 500 authors plateaued from 2000 to 2003, then experienced a sharp increase in 2005. That year, each group reached...
Worth watching video of recent speech by Tom "Valley Boy" Perkins of venture firm Kleiner Perkins fame....
In memory of Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin Dubrow, who died prematurely this past weekend -- and some boy's many and embarrassing long-ago air guitar moments growing up in small town Ontario -- this visit to the 80s hair band's...
Andrew Clavell has the only lucid analysis I have seen on the Abu Dhabi [sic] cash infusion for Citi. Read it. Now....
Here is what happens when you leave Paul alone on a plane with laptop, and historical currency and crude oil data: You get a giant longitudinal comparison of recent crude oil price trends across ten major currencies. In essence, I...
Interesting that Markit's ABX index of the value of BBB-rated subprime has slowed its descent in recent week. Are we near a bottom? Unless you think it's all going to zero, at 20-ish cents on the dollar you have to...
There is a massive (5,859 words, if you must now) profile in Bloomberg of Jim Simons, the secretive founder of storied Renaissance Technologies. Simons' uber-quant fund has more than doubled assets in the last year, to in excess of $30-billion....
Long ago -- okay, March of this year -- there was much talk of a private equity put. That is, investors had it in their heads that, given nearly centi-billion-dollar private equity funds, pretty much every company in the world...
Right now politicos and commentators are applauding Abu Dhabi's [sic] sovereign fund's move in helping recapitalize Citi. But how long until the other political shoe drops? Because some noisy elected sorts had near heart-attacks at the idea of a Middle-Eastern...
While the Fed Futures rate may have priced in at 96% likelihood a rate cut at the Federal Reserve Board's December meeting, someone needs to tell the Philadelphia Fed's Charlie Plosser. According to a series of flashes on the wire...
This'll teach Ottoway executives for fighting the News Corp takeover: [DJ] Dow Jones exploring strategic alternatives for Ottaway 12:02 PM ET, Nov 27, 2007 - 10 minutes ago Translating Murdoch-speak: Strategic alternatives, like putting you on the rack, you trouble-making...
The TechMeme kids are all a-flutter at news of Verizon Wireless's new "Any Device, Any App" initiative. In principle it seems to mean that Verizon is dropping at least some of the walled-garden silliness that has characterized the cellular telephony...
Since the dearly-departed On the Money left the cable tubes, I've been on CNBC a little less frequently of late. This Friday, however, I'm guest hosting on CNBC's The Call for the full hour, from 11am to noon EST. Be...
'Tis the conference silly season right now. Today I count no less than three events capable of moving markets, plus a fourth later in the week: CSFB's tech conference in Scottsdale Dow Jones' Consumer Technologies conference in San Francisco The...
Worth reading presentation from Corning's CEO at an investor conference today. Highlights include: No turn in the telecom business Reiterating sales/earnings guidance Tight market for glass LCD panel makers are running flat out with shrinking inventories No credit concerns showing...
Am I the only one irritated by Southwest's new-ish queuing system for flights? Like many, I cordially disliked the airlines's prior A/B/C snaking lines, but I tolerated the damn things in the spirit of how the supposedly led to...
Others have captured why today's news that Google's long-rumored GDrive is finally coming is good for Google, and bad for Microsoft. My interest in the company's web-based storage service -- kind of a giant hard-drive in the sky -- is...
Okay, I'm becoming a compulsive air congestion rubber-necker via FlightWait. Right now it is basically calling the Eastern Seaboard a writeoff, with 2+-hour delays legion. Yuck. It maps pretty nicely, euphemistically speaking, onto the current weather radar (to indulge two...
Best subprime quote of the day goes to John Mauldin. He is paraphrasing Jim Grant, and Grant has been saying this for some time, but it still counts: The subprime problem, we were told, would not spread to other markets....
Just IM-ing back-and-forth with a colleague about deranged press releases from startups, including one that had SaaS, BI and stealth all in one headline. While that is worth big points, my Scrabble-addled brain immediately had me recombining things into a...
Like many right-thinking people, I descend to numerology and bad punning when all else deserts me during market meltdowns. So, I was staggered to have pointed out to me Google's $666 closing price today at 4pm, this coming during the...
A few people have asked, so here is my data on the longest S&P 500 streaks (since 1950) without back-to-back up days. Considering that there have been 14,565 trading days since January 1950, you can see how we're waaay out...
Assuming the current red ink on the major stock markets hold until end of day, the mixed-market streak is in intact. We will have hit 19 straight days on the S&P 500 without back-to-back up days. That's not a record,...
In his most recent commentary, Paul McCulley of PIMCO echoes an argument I've been making for some time: We need more inflation, not less -- at least more cyclical volatility of inflation. “The Fed can be too successful in cyclically...
I'm not convinced this is really a story, but it's kinda 50s SciFi interesting: How rampant home foreclosures could lead to a West Nile outbreak. In Contra Costa County, officials estimate they spent less than 1 percent of service calls...
I can hardly stand the thought of calling a tech vendor for support. I know I'm going to get some nitwit who immediately asks me to untie and tie my shoes, and then reboot my computer. Case in point: My...
Are venture capitalists leading, trailing, or oblivious indicators when it comes to technology trends? I got to mulling this question this morning when scanning a new Goldman Sachs report on trends in venture investing. In particular, the report looked at...
I know the intent of releases like today's from JP Morgan is to assure investors that they've changed and will go forth and subprime sin no more, but they generally have the opposite effect on me: About 40 percent of...
I'm having a schaden-flight moment today as I scan FlightWait and look at all the black, red, and yellow tracks through the North American skies. Granted, most of the trouble is on the east coast, but those problems are likely...
Thought Paulson & Co.'s 575% return so far this year from shorting subprime was jaw-dropping? Get over it already. Andrew Lahde's Santa Monica-based Lahde Capital -- set up only last year -- has apparently done a ten-bagger shorting subprime in...
Economist Larry Summers argues in the FT today that the odds now favor a 2008 recession in the U.S. Further, he argues that without "stronger policy responses" than have been seen by now, the impact will be felt "for the...
Okay, okay, even I'm getting a little subprime fatigued, but you have to be at least mildly chagrined/amused/appalled by the following quote from a story on the subject in tomorrow's WSJ: "There is a large amount of borrowers who...
It is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch to connect the following finding in a new NBER paper to the recent credit crisis, but it's plausible that the sector's sensitivity to cost of capital is being overlooked: In the current...
If you've been trying out FlightWait -- our new Interstate-style air-traffic congestion thingie -- and wondering why everything seems so placid 30,000 feet overhead, check it out today. On this Thanksgiving weekend Sunday, imagine air highways six miles above most...
Provocative piece in the weekend Barron's making the case for a big reversal in the dollar/Euro exchange rate. The essence: European monetary policy is considerably more profligate than critics think The Euro is not recession tested Rapidly-aging European populations and...
From a recent NBER paper on credit contagions and crises in banking markets: Ironically, the government safety net, which was designed to forestall the (overestimated) risks of contagion, seems to have become the primary source of systemic instability in banking...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend reading column over at TheStreet.com: No-one can stop American consumers during their appointed holiday rounds (Slate) Freddie Mac to raise $5-billion in preferred stock sale (Reuters) My P.F....
One hundred pages of high-level gloss from me, the FT, the WSJ, and everywhere else on the mortgage market don't beat one good I-Was-There piece from someone currently trying to get a mortgage. Two days before we were to sign...
In conjunction with my friend at Poly9 -- okay, they did all the great work; I just suggested it -- here is a useful and fun (if you're not traveling) Thanksgiving service. Called FlightWait, it is a live map, done...
I'm a kind of ticker afficionado, sometimes mentally reassembling them, Scrabble-style, into other words, sometimes just enjoying their creators' punning. Today's ticker du jour, however, goes to CUT, the new Claymore ETF following the global timber industry. Made up of...
There is something about the following tacit admission in a story about possible Andes water shortages that bugged me: Informed of the [possible water supply] threat, Quispe, a 37-year-old Aymara Indian, shows alarm on her weathered face. "Where are we...
Some might rightly say that "best" and "podcasts" in the same two-word sentence is a contradiction in terms, let alone calling any of 'em intellectually stimulating, but let's soldier on. While I still have a total of maybe 30 songs...
It's holiday anarchy the day after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. Some people are on holidays, some people aren't, and most of us have no idea how to know which things & people will be open vs. closed. You're open?...
As an exercise for readers, please tear apart the illogic in the following dubious statements by ex-Fed maestro Alan Greenspan. The subject, of course, is the ongoing housing/mortgage/subprime/economic meltdown in the U.S.: "The housing bubble is not a reflection of...
Awesomely nifty bit of eye candy from the Financial Times showing oil producers, consumers, and global trade movements. Check it out....
I have a number of friends among the cadre of NY Times business reporters, so I say this with love and undying affection, but does the NY Times hate business? I just scanned the list of 100 notable books of...
Catching up and emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: China's new love: black market iPhones (Wired) iPhone crushing all comers on the WSJ gift list survey (WSJ) Energy Select SPDR has year-to-date almost doubled (25% to 14%) the next best performing...
The most recent and comprehensive adjust-rate mortgage reset chart I have found:...
Catching up and closing some of my many browser tabs: The myth of U.S.-EU economic decoupling (Japan Times) Putting subprime in capital market context -- it's small (Financial Times) Bank of England's financial (in)stability report (BoE) The rise and fall...
Apparently the 80s hair band the Romantics band has filed a federal lawsuit against Activision, make of the popular "Guitar Hero" games. The issue: A version of The Romantics' 1980s hit "What I Like About You" on the new...
Charlie Rose's thirty-minute conversation with the director/producers Joel and Ethan Coen (Big Lebowski, Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, Miller's Crossing, No Country for Old Men, etc.) is a must-watch for fans of their work....
My favorite phrase du jour comes from a letter to investors from Scott Sipprelle, of the now-closing Copper Arch Capital: "Certainly there have been times (like the present petro-Google market) where we have looked hopelessly out-of-step," he said. Petro-Google. Nice....
Quick snapshot of current Thanksgiving traffic on L.A. freeways (courtesy of Microsoft's Live). Red is slow, and black denotes essentially stopped -- and note that we're talking about a roughly 1,800-square mile area marbled with stopped cars....
Alan Greenspan just won't leave his favorite phrases alone: Asked if China was in a state of ``irrational exuberance,'' Greenspan told a conference of insurance executives in Boston on Oct. 30: ``I think so.'' [via Bloomberg]...
By my quick calculation, we're now into the second-longest period in S&P 500 index history since 1950 without two up days in a row. Assuming today ends down, that will mark 15 trading days in a row without two up...
This story is woefully underreported in U.S. media, but Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is spiraling to unknown places. Here are some factoids: October's annualized inflation was 14,840%, up nearly double from September The highest paper currency, the Z$200,000 note, has almost disappeared...
For those of you not keeping track, it's worth noticing that troubled online bank/broker E-Trade has now completed a full 360-degree circuit. After falling 60% last week on an analyst comment that it might face bankruptcy, the company's stock rebounded...
This quote from a brief Matt Drudge interview on Sky News is interesting: Sometimes I find myself updating [the Drudge Report] hundreds of times a day. Hundreds of times a day. So it's to be completely live, almost as if...
The following data from a recent World Bank report caught my eye. From a larger study, I compare the the rankings of the top ten countries for ease of starting companies with the ease of closing companies in the same...
I'm reading Niall Ferguson's flawed but episodically compelling War of the Worlds. The long section chronicling the industrial genocide of the Holocaust, despite being a twentieth century evil about which I have read widely, required me tonight to close the...
... free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular. -- Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1824) The following is the most depressing survey result you will read...
There is an article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal on stock buybacks, with companies buying shares high and now, balance sheet weakened, selling low. Nasty stuff. But wait. According to the footer to the piece, there are some buyback-related blog...
I had a reader send the following article to me today: As defaults surge on mortgages made to borrowers with spotty credit and adjustable-rate loans, more people are noticing that their neighbors are caught up in the meltdown. Their misfortunes...
From a harrowing new Fitch report on the outlook for the title insurance business: Year-to-date Sept. 30, 2007 pretax earnings for all 6 publicly traded title underwriters fell by two-thirds relative to 2006 to $295 million or a very modest...
Sometimes the FOMC overdoes it with respect to how much information we want. The current October 31st minutes are a good example, with total information overload of data, models, opinions, and charts. So ... I have brought Microsoft Word's ever-useful...
The FOMC cheated in released the newly revised minutes. Instead of putting 'em out in a HTML form, it released them as a PDF. That's hardly fair: I couldn't bookmark the right location because the filetype had changed. Cheaters. More...
Inside CRM has out an amusing list of the worst venture investments of all time. While I don't disagree with the contents in general, I would put Webvan ahead of Ampd (even if Om might disagree). My other comment: Why...
Catching up and emptying my overflowing links: Fundamentally flawed indexing: The myth of how cap-weighted indexing is broken (FAJ) Highest price ever: The great NYSE seat sale of 1928-29 (FAJ) The collapse of the banking system 1930-33 (FAJ) Tariff incidence...
Alright, who are you damn HP computer buyers? The computer company delivers a beat-and-raise quarter -- it exceeded estimates, and guided upward going forward -- and I can't figure out who you people are who are buying the company's over-priced,...
Just so that I have an excuse to use this cover image from the current Economist, I'm going to link to the story "America's vulnerable economy". Most striking comment from the piece: The oil price has risen mainly because of...
Spent part of last week in Palm Springs (and why did I not know more about the magnificent aerial tram?), so was idly watching what was up in that property hotspot. Among other things, noticed lots of detached residences...
Quick survey: All snark aside, being a bear ain't easy. The market has been the triumph of the optimists over the last one hundred years, so betting in the other direction -- that stocks will fall -- isn't easy, even...
In reporting that New York's Andrew Cuomo is taking action and investigating the home appraisal industry for rigged estimates, Bloomberg TV just ran the following graphic: Whoa, mortgage market was "inlfated". Sounds very serious....
Catching up and emptying my overflowing link box: Interesting new BCG report on i-banks and subprime (BCG) Google continues to stomp competitors in search share (Hitwise) Google's secret 10Gb ethernet switch (Nyquist) Profile of Howard Marks and Oaktree (L.A. Times)...
In spelunking the Inc 5000 list of fast-growing small companies didn't realize Vizio had grown this quickly. Was there an acquisition in here somewhere, or did they actually grow to $676-million revenue in four years selling HD TV gear? Impressive....
Colleague of mine is at Whistler doing some early-season skiing. He says it's dreamy conditions. Wish I was there....
You can't buy better publicity than this: Writer Michael Lewis in Portfolio on why Santa Monica fund manager Dimensional Fund Advisors rules. The day I arrive at D.F.A.'s offices, I find 150 financial advisers in a glass box, waiting to...
This story pretty much tells itself: In the space of two minutes yesterday morinng Fox Business gets Apple news wrong (sez Apple is buying chunk of AMD), runs with it, gets a correction, gets that wrong, runs with wrong correction....
My friend Mark over at Citi has a strong and provocative call today on Expedia. He calls it an underestimated as play, with the company set to do $500m in revs from ads, putting it tight up there with mid-cap...
I'm traveling and in Palm Springs for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Jam-packed high-energy event. Hope the market survives in my absence....
Lots of heavyweight stuff going on in the markets these days, so time for a little laid-back fun. The first reader to post here with the correct answer to the following question wins a new copy of the book, I'm...
Lots of people quoting snippets from Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf's subprime comments today at the Merrill financial services conference, so here is the entirety of the insightful part that caught my attention: Question: Some guy You mentioned in your opening...
Some quick links worth reading: Mortgages are far easier to get than is common wisdom (Telegraph) How to talk about books you haven't read (Economist / Amazon) Four economic scenarios for what lies ahead (Alphaville) My Pynchonian theory for TheFunded.com's...
I'm not sure whether it's Google itself that is clouding men's minds, or just some algorithm at Google Finance, or maybe an errant headline writer at TheStreet.com, but the following set of scrambled headlines is currently on Google Finance for...
Peter Eavis at Fortune has a new piece up arguing that new math at Fannie Mae may be hiding sizable and steep credit losses. Read the whole thing, but here is the gist of Eavis's argument: Last week, as part...
Forecasting commodity inventories and prices is a little like (to adapt my CNBC commentating analogy) predicting impending Brownian motion in a coffee cup. We got another example of that this morning, with U.S. crude oil inventories coming in wildly different...
Frank Partnoy has a smart paper from 2006 on the role of credit agencies in capital markets. They are under increasing regulatory pressure right now, what with a sense in some quarters that the agencies have a modicum of blame...
And the one speck of food That he left in the houseWas a crumb that was even too small for a mouse. -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) by Dr. Seuss From email correspondent Aaron, on the Grinch-like...
Alright, I like writer Michael Lewis plenty, and he and I have even corresponded a little of late, but this is too much. He wants the Citi CEO job too? Get in line, buddy. I was there first, and now...
Good piece in Marketwatch on two hedge funds that have done well taking the other side of the subrime bet. Both Paulson & Co. (run, ironically enough, by an ex-Bear guy) and Scion bet that the lowest quality subprime...
Upon launch, the Murdoch-owned Fox Business News made much of being more business friendly than competitor CNBC. (It's an entertaining thought experiment, sort of like trying to imagine someone out-Chester-ing Chester on Looney Tunes, but I digress.) Anyway, it's...
Funny. I wondered what had happened to this leaked memo on Northern Rock. It was touted yesterday on FT Alphaville, and then it and the post disappeared. Now you can read it over at Scribd. [Update] As more than a...
My friend Nouriel Roubini of RGE Monitor is tirelessly banging the drum that things are worse than investors think. For a Tour de Nouriel of the apocalypse -- whether you agree with him or not -- read the following recent...
An eclectic list of a few things worth reading: CEA list of consumer technologies to watch in 2008 (CEA) The long tail of the stock market's new renaissance (Highmark Capital) I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, The Big...
With E-Trade stock now back within spitting distance of where it was before it got kicked in the shins by a Citi analyst on Monday it's worth musing what it all means. The online brokerage firm's stock was at $8.60...
I'm really hurt. Merrill has chosen John Thain as CEO over me? Yeesh....
In spelunking through the exhibits in the State of Massachusetts' suit against Bear Stearns for its credit hedge fund misadventures, I came across this snippet in an email from managing director Matthew Tannin to fellow directors as they were mulling...
Hey, happy FASB 157 day! The controversial new legislation comes into effect today -- almost certainly creating a buying opportunity in its market-worrying wake....
I love industry groups' pet economists. Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors' house economist is on Bloomberg right now, explaining that everything's good (or least less bad than it might seem), despite September pending home sales tumbling from last...
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's comment today that structured investment vehicles (SIVs) will "go the way of the dinosaur" is rightly getting people's attention. Evolution has nothing on financial markets, where a new thingie like SIVs can be created, grown,...
So, is tech cheap after the tech wreck? Depends what you mean by cheap. Because while you're not going to see tech suck in any deep-value investors, a number of names do look interesting in here, as the following figure...
For those of you playing the home E-Trade game, it's entertaining that after losing half its value yesterday on bankruptcy chatter, today the online broker's stock is up 30% on chatter that it will be acquired (or not be bankrupt...
Morgan Stanley 'fesses up, via a slide deck for a Merrill Lynch presentation, to a few billion more in losses in its subprime mortgage portfolio: Continued market deterioration since August reduces fair value of Morgan Stanley’s subprime exposure by $3.7Bn...
Yesterday it was Barron's where my site popped up, today I see that I am newly in something called Blog Bank over at Pension & Investments Online. P&I is a favorite site of mine, so it's nice that they're sending...
While I'm carrying all the negative news, I might as well point to this fairly dire piece in the FT today. The subject is the state of the U.S. economy, and the author makes some compelling arguments that subprime is...
Good and relatively sober-minded reading from the Levy Institute here on the current troubles in credit markets. Is it a Minsky Moment? Read the piece. From it, here is a quote from a recent BiS report: Who now holds [the...
I have received a few emails tonight about the troubles at E*Trade, and the implications for investors. Lots of people are in full worry mode, which is too bad, but also entirely understandable given the bottomless feeling of the current...
Lots of us like to blithely retail the cliche about people being more afraid of public speaking than death, but I was caught up abruptly by an analogous finding in scanning some market research today on senior citizens in America:...
I was having an otherwise pleasant and unrelated chat with an equities lawyer today and he asked me a question that caught me somewhat flat-footed: Why, he wanted to know, am I talking up OTC penny stocks on this site?...
This site got a mention in Barron's today. Thanks Mike. And congrats to my buddy Barry who showed up too, tagging along on my e-coattails :-)...
Okay, the commercial mortgage-backed market isn't going to zero, but it's sure in utter decline. This stat from Commercial Mortgage Alert corroborates something I heard a few weeks from a commercial mortgage market insider at a major bank: Issuance of...
Interesting that the main site I use for searching multiple travel sites, the excellent Kayak, isn't even in the top ten. I'm such a damn edge case. [via MarketingCharts]...
The IAB's latest Internet advertising data is out, and it shows that -- surprise, surprise -- Internet advertising continues to be up and to the right. What a surprise. I thought Cisco's results last week meant tech was in the...
I have had a few media calls today about Al Gore joining Kleiner Perkins as a venture partner. Some of the questions are about what it means to be a venture partner -- answer: whatever KP wants it to mean...
The FT has the news, but the Saudis are saying no increase to oil production quotas in this weekend's meetings. That won't make people happy: Saudi Arabia on Monday made clear Opec would not announce a production increase at this...
Fun, quotable stuff from Blackstone today during its earnings conference call. The (public)private equity company's CEO, Tony James, said the following about the mortgage business: ... the mortgage black hole is I think worse than anyone thought, deeper, darker, scarier...
An NPD analyst argues that this Christmas is going to be very different from the last one for retailers, with fewer must-have gifts:...
Goldman Sachs analysts have updated their list of tech stocks sorted by financial services industry exposure. Perhaps needless to say, it's a bad time to be an Indian IT outsourcer. Then again, see any sign of the worst-hit tech stocks...
With IBM announcing it bought Ottawa-based business analytics company Cognos for $5-billion, or 5x trailing revenues, software consolidation continues apace. A deal had been rumored for some time, and when tech was busy being wrecked last week that Cognos ended...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com: Interview with Sam Zell: no recession in 2008, the housing crisis isn't that bad, and yes, I top-ticked with my sale to Blackstone...
One of the unremarked aspects of the period from 2000-2006 for the financials was how the sector's share of the S&P 500 had grown well beyond historical norms. That trend is finally reversing itself, as the following chart from the...
I'll be on my friend Barry's favorite show, Kudlow & Co., on CNBC tonight. Talking, you know, financials, tech, currencies, etc....
Anyone out there using Dow Jones' new-ish News Analytics platform? I'm trying to get a sense of how capable/useful/sophisticated/robust it is....
I constantly get emails asking if they can get updates from the site via Twitter. The answer has long been yes -- I pump out site updates to Twitter (at http://www.twitter.com/pkedrosky), as well as updating Twitter now and then on...
After being seen as a subprime safe haven for some time, tech has newly become an investor wasteland. Cisco, Sun and Qualcomm have all disappointed to greater or lesser disagrees, and investors have taken the whole group out back and...
This seems overdone in anything other than the most superficial way, but the year-long run at First Solar has some calling the cleantech company the Google of solar. First Solar had an initial public offering in the middle of November...
I had an interesting chat on the phone just now with someone from BBC's More or Less program. The show's premise -- a weekly journey through the abused world of numbers -- is catnip for a data junkie like me,...
Fascinating piece in today's NY Times on China's rapidly growing crop of entrepreneurial billionaires. The country, with 100-ish billionaires, is home to more such people than any country in the world other than the U.S. Among the more interesting parts?...
Apparently even U.S. senators are having trouble getting mortgage credit at less than a 100-basis point premium. We need a new political mortgage market adage: Credit tightening: When a senator's constituents have trouble getting mortgages at less than a 100-basis-point...
A new stat out from Dow Jones has me puzzled: The median share of companies sold to investors in first rounds has declined to 38%, down from 50% two years ago. Company-unfriendly provisions that gained notoriety after the tech bubble...
Good discussion continuing here on my site on desert island wifi software. What software released since 2000 on web (or even, shudder, binary) would you bring with you to a wifi-enabled desert island? Feel free to add to it....
Catching up and emptying my ever-overflowing linkbox: Ben Bernanke's currently live on TV here (BTV) Say this ten times fast: Senator Sununu's subprime sophistry Taleb on the Black-Scholes myth (Breakingviews) Ten reasons why oil prices will fall (Breakingviews) Money is...
Oh, this won't help. In a speech today to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, French Prime Minister Nikolas Sarkozy warned that letting the U.S. dollar fall further could trigger an "economic war". Translation: He is worried about Airbus,...
We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked. -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) My addled synapses immediately flipped back to...
Economist and Nobel-winner Joe Stiglitz with a sure-to-be polarizing new article on the post-Bush U.S. economy: Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle...
Why the hell did I sell my Bindura Nickel stock so damn soon? Having banked a double on the stock, I missed the next 257,746% gain in Bindura this year. Crap. Alright, alright, I didn't really own it, but it...
The shift to online ad spending continues, and, according to a new study, it's set to accelerate. While we are currently at $21.4-billion in U.S. spending, that will double to $42-billion by 2011. Remarkable stuff -- more here....
A question I asked recently while moderating a panel: Other than Google, name one software application or web service launched after 2000 that you couldn't live without? What, in other words, would you take with you to a desert island...
In the spirit of full disclosure, I bought Digg earlier today. No idea how the story got out so quickly, but now you know. And it was $30 upfront, and $299,999,970 in back-ended performance fees largely tied to sunspot activity....
In talking to a few hedge fund managers today, it's interesting how many of them were really unsettled by the market action today. One of them used the expression "blank fear" to describe how he felt, the sense that things...
Another call for Yahoo to drop its search business: Breakingviews argues that it would increase search revenues by more than 25%....
With negativity running rampant on the U.S. dollar, and with virtually no-one on the bullish side, I thought it worth relating one factoid. One of the smartest fund managers I know conceded to me mid-day today that he is, as...
I hadn't seen this before, but having been walked into three times in last 24-hours by Blackberry-wielding oblivious sorts, it's hugely overdue: Blackberry helmets....
I need a word coined, me-thinks. What would be a good word for a senior staff meeting where V.P.s laugh like drugged hyenas at all the CEO's unfunny comments? Ass-kissing seems too generic, and brown-nosing is boring. I need a...
I'm out and traveling today, and mostly in meetings. Posting will, in other words, be slow. [Update] Sorry, by the way about the market slide today. I can't be everywhere at once....
I had a good time at Eric Norlin's excellent inaugural Defrag conference earlier this week in Denver. I met some entrepreneurs doing great work, got caught up with other friends (entrepreneurs and VCs alike), and sat in on some fascinating...
Notes from the near Facebook future: Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia) has requested to add you as a friend. Reply 'a' to add, or 'info' to get profile. Oooh, I can't wait. [via WSJ]...
I love this result from a new Preqin study: More than three-quarters of global institutional hedge fund investors said returns matched or exceeded expectations, according to new data from Preqin Hedge. And that's their story, and they're sticking to it,...
Crude oil futures hit $97 today on its seemingly inexorable march to $100. Partly driven by the ever-weakening U.S. dollar, but the other culprit -- markets always find one of those -- was a rapidly strengthening North Sea storm that...
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke faces a Hobson's choice in picking between lower and higher a interest rates. On the one hand you have deflation, a screwed dollar, and an outside chance at preventing a recession (or worse); on the other...
The usually very-bearish Doug Kass over at TheStreet is newly ... somewhat less bearish. He argues that the market has so many well-known things to worry about that it's hard not to imagine it climbs at least a small wall...
The folks at the excellent ForeclosureRadar tell me that an early look at October numbers (not yet published) shows a 35% jump in California foreclosure sales, on $5-billion in properties. Nasty stuff, but it gets worse. The foreclosure sales we...
I received a thoughtful email recently from someone making a strong case in favor of the beleaguered bond ratings agencies. While many have beat up on the ratings firms for attaching investment-grade ratings to synthetics RMBS that contain a significant...
I can't figure out why Goldman Sachs keeps denying market rumors that it has a pending credit writedown coming. Either it does or it doesn't, and either way it would be better if it shut up about the subject. Denying...
Laugh-out-loud funny Michael Lewis piece up on Bloomberg about ex-Merrill CEO Stan O'Neal's on-course ruminations during his credit crisis golf games. Lewis's conceit is that he has O'Neal's scorecards on which, Lewis says (ahem), O'Neal scrawled notes to himself as...
The ever-bearish Jim Rogers is back on Bloomberg TV talking up the unwinding of the worst U.S. credit bubble in history.....
A few credit market people I know on Wall Street might considering downloading and listening to this interesting BBC radio special on the complex role of guilt in society....
According to the editor-in-chief of the Murdoch-owned Times Online, Google is "hugely dangerous" and coming after local media. What's more, the search company is "the number one topic of conversation at News Corp". More here....
It's like being a kid in an economic candy story today, with $100 oil pending, and Google on its way to $1,000. Mind you, CNBC is broadcasting tomorrow from the NYMEX in anticipation of $100 oil, so if history is...
Quick question: Why do so many Skype/webcam headsets suck so much? I'm looking for a better headset for audio/video conferencing, ideally something less obtrusive than the usual ear-muffs plus boom-mike crap I find everywhere. Perfect would be something like an...
All the usual caveats apply with respect to market research, but some fun factoids from this Netpop report comparing U.S. and Chinese takeup of Web 2.0-ish technologies: User-generated content (includes consumer reviews/rating sites, forum/discussion boards, Blogs, etc.) influences 58 percent...
Some quick stats on the outta-control Alibaba IPO today in Hong Kong: A triple on the day Raised $1.7-billion for 17% of the company's shares Trading at 320x 2007 earnings Earnings growth 62% Nutty, especially considering management went so far...
It's hard to figure how October isn't an awful month for retailers. Some causes: A rapidly weakening consumer The warmest October in history for much of the northeast, especially New York which was 7 degrees above the prior record A...
People are increasingly screwy about Google's near-$1,000 share price. The latest example: The hoo-ha over a Bernstein analyst upping his target on the stock from $720 to $850. Sure, $850 is a big number, but it's not that much of...
Goldman this morning is flipping Microsoft for Oracle on its America's Conviction Buy List. It's still calling Microsoft a buy, but argues Oracle is currently a better deal. The argument is largely about Oracle as consolidator in a mature market,...
While I had been expecting that California would see a state revenue shortfall in 2008 of around $8-billion (up ten-fold from this year), Governor Schwarzenegger announced today that the situation will be even even more dire. Fueled largely by housing's...
Exxon has out an interesting -- if fairly PR-y -- new report on global energy use to 2030. If you're anything like me, you immediately e-flipped to the section on global oil supply & demand to see what the kids...
The usual savvy Tom Foremski has up some questionable stuff today about venture firm Kleiner Perkins and Web 2.0. According to Tom, the VC leaders at KP have "stopped" investing in Web 2.0 companies, woe betide all trend-chasing entrepreneurs and...
Malcolm Gladwell is out with a new New Yorker piece on the troubles with FBI serial killer profiling, and how the whole thing can be led awry by adept "cold readers": Astrologers and psychics have known these tricks for years....
Lots of my readers are poker fans, so here is one for you from the current issue of online stats/probability journal Chance: You may assume you are playing straight five-card stud poker (everyone gets five cards, all closed, no exchange)...
A reminder that I'm still running for the joint Merrill/Citi CEO positions. Along with my other campaign non-plans, I'm launching a new slogan: "Paul for CEO: He's no Fink."...
A fascinating new NBER report on how the world came to love the same monetary policy: The story begins with the muddled state of affairs in the late 1970s. It then asks: How did Federal Reserve policy produce an understanding...
Lots of people predicted this would happen because of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, but it still makes horrific reading: [1.4-million people have already been evacuated because of the dam, and now] the Chinese government says it...
Agree or disagree with him, but John Mauldin always pull together in his newsletter entertaining bears on the market. This time around it's one Michael Lewitt, who offers, at a BCA conference, a fairly apocalyptic view of credit markets. ---------------...
I'm just car-crash-watching, gob-smacked amazed at PetroChina's post Shanghai IPO market cap of $1-trillion. Despite having sold only 2.2% of its share capital on the public markets, and with much of its ownership hidden under mattresses somewhere in some Chinese...
A few people have sent me links to this discomfiting Goldman Sachs-authored report on the California residential real estate. It's 35-40% over-priced? Sounds plausible to me....
So, I'm at San Diego airport this morning, having missed my United Airlines connection and trying to catch a later UA flight. I'm admittedly somewhat vexed, because my car was smoked on the freeway at 70 mi/h by a runaway...
I am not particularly excited by the Gphone news today. New phone software platforms have a horrific history, and without a strong commitment by carriers to open up networks who the hell cares? My three-year-old had the best comment the...
Say what you will about cyclist Lance Armstrong, but he is damn fit. Check this on his NY Marathon performance: Lance Armstrong trained harder for his second marathon and it showed. Armstrong improved his time by 13 minutes at the...
The pace of new hedge fund startup has slowed slightly: New hedge funds are opening at the slowest pace since 2003 with almost all of the $164 billion of new investments going to managers with proven records, data compiled by...
The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers are out for the top 700 newspapers, and they're nasty: The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007....
In looking at the IACI divestiture plan announced today, here are two columns, the left one containing the company CEO Barry Diller's keeping, and the left one containing the ones he is spinning out as 100%-owned companies. Keeping Spinning Ask.com...
Personal computers are losing their luster everywhere -- blame better smartphones, net-enabled TVs, etc. -- but Japan is, as usual, out in front on the issue.Japan's PC market is already shrinking, leading analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com. Rumors rife of another failing U.K. bank (Guardian) Canadian currency (and others) disconnecting from U.S. economy (G&M) Some Vegas casinos are seeing lower...
Okay, a truly techie question, and likely a dumb one, but why can't I, via ftp and as admin user, create a new directory in the root of my hosted Unix account without a permission denied error? I can create...
A friend of mine here in San Diego sent me this photo taken shortly after returning to his home in Rancho Bernardo late last week. It is a power pole burned out where it touches the ground, leaving the remainder...
Newsflash: With word late today that Citi's Chuck Prince is planning to resign on Sunday over big losses in the company's mortgage portfolio, I've decided to run for both the Merrill and the Citi CEO gigs. With my ADD I...
Another weekend, another Red Flag Warning (i.e., wildfire warning) here in bucolic SoCal: RED FLAG WARNING NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA 351 PM PDT FRI NOV 2 2007 ...RED FLAG WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM PST SUNDAY...
In Legg Mason's Bill Miller's letter to shareholders today he says he will be reducing capital devoted to his top ten holdings, a tech-centric set of stocks. Here (via Eric) is the list: Amazon (AMZN): 8.8% AES Corp. (AES): 5%...
Storage stocks are soaring today on the back of WDC's results last night. Excluding one-time items, the hard-drive company handily beat both profit and revenue estimates, meanwhile seeing a 29% increase in units sold. While the hard-drive industry is famous...
There is a story out on VentureWire about how Calstrs (the California State Teachers' Retirement System) is proposing a fairly dramatic cut in its portfolio allocation to venture capital, from 15% to 5%. Dire stuff, right? Not necessarily. While in...
Compelling shot from San Diego Bay out over downtown and toward the wildfires approaching the city last week. [via SDSU]...
Bloomberg TV is apparently watching Fox Business News. The same way that Fox is making a point of trying to force guests and host to avoid biz jargon, or at least define it, in the last few minutes I have...
There is a intriguing story in today's San Diego paper about one Jeff Smith, a resident of Escondido, California. His house was about two miles from the further advance of the recent wildfires here -- and it was gutted...
Best quote from Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne in a WSJ story today: Investment-firm chief Alexandra Lebenthal brought her 11-year-old son to visit Bear a few years back. She says she introduced him to Mr. Cayne, who pulled her aside...
A quick Money:Tech conference update. Two stories caught my eye today with respect to my conference on financial technology and alternative data sources. First, today's Jimmy Cayne story in the WSJ about how the Bear Stearns CEO was, apparently, golfing...
Anyone out there have a good, free source for daily, historical WTI crude prices? I'm looking for something vaguely like Pacific Exchange, but for commodities....
