April 2008
I was right. The issue in the Ebay vs Craiglist list -- essentially Ebay suing itself -- was a poison pill (among other things) instituted in clandestine fashion by the kids at Craiglist to protect themselves, as they saw it,...
The other morning on CNBC I told Sue Herrera that instead of Microsoft walking away, which was undoubtedly tempting, I had decided it was more likely Microsoft firmed up its Yahoo offer and added a few dollars. Turns out, according...
A map of potential wind power across the U.S. This figured was referenced in a talk at Milken yesterday by T. Boone Pickens where he talked about the wind channel (which I have circled in red) down the middle of...
I'm still traveling and out through rest of day today. I'm at the Milken Conference in Los Angeles. Will try to post some conference-specific comments tomorrow....
Here, courtesy of Matt and the fine folks at Hitwise, is yet more comparative data on what's happened over the last year at some major financial news sites (and at one upstart). Interesting stuff....
Here is a tag cloud showing the most common words generated from a transcript of President Bush's energy press conference this morning. action administration america americans anwr area bills blocked business concerned congress considering department domestic efforts elected electricity energy...
I have beaten this subject many times in the past, but it's irritating the crap out of me again today at Milken conference ... so, one unsolicited piece of advice on being a quarter-decent conference speaker/panelist. Here it is: Say...
Missed this yesterday, so just finished it moments ago: Marc Andreessen's legal-eyed analysis of how things are likely to play out in the Microsoft/Yahoo caper. It's very, very good. Read it....
Some interesting upheaval going on in traffic to online financial news sites. There is a real lead swap underway, with major online properties declining, and new sites and longstanding brands (FT/WSJ) growing smartly. I know, I know -- Compete data...
Intriguing stuff in a new TNS report on the rapid growth in mobile instant messaging, largely at the expense of SMS. ... MIM has become so popular, that now 11 out of every 100 messages sent by mobile devices or...
With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's comment yesterday that the California budget is $20-billion "out of whack", the bottom has officially fallen out on California state finances. Deficit estimates have escalated radically over the last year, from $9-billion to the current $20-billion...
One of the worst-performing sectors year-to-date has been leisure stocks, with casinos being crushed in the markets. Check this sector map: [via SmartMoney]...
As most readers will know, I'm hugely fond of these graphical sector maps, and I haven't put one up in a while. Here is the year-to-date performance map by sector, with consumer cyclicals leading the way. [via SmartMoney]...
To turn things inside-out for a moment, when does a falling oil price become bad news? Hard to imagine, I know, with oil banging against $120, but bear with me. Because an awful of things -- ranging from new tar...
Is no news good news? Most people expected something on the MSFT/YHOO front over the weekend, and such folks are generally reading the absence of information as bad news. I disagree, sort of. Ordinarily absence of news in a pending...
Sitting in the Future of Oil & Gas session here at Milken conference in LA. Lots of political posturing and expensive words -- paradigm! mindset! gestalt! disentangle! balzac! -- but precious little in the way of specifics. Shorter version: Government...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com. Jeremy Grantham say smarket are bad and going to get worse than most expect (GMO) Nouriel Roubini making the case for a U-shaped...
A nice graph of the heretofor unexamined relationship between drinking Starbucks lattes and and being an Obama supporter: [via Urbanspoon]...
FOLLOWERS: Hail Messiah! BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly! GIRL: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity. BRIAN: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me?...
I was checking out the schedule for next week's sure-to-be interesting RIMS (Risk & Insurance Management Society) conference in San Diego, and I was stopped cold by the following front-page image: Do we really want our risk managers to be...
There are major cross-currents on the Microsoft/yahoo deal after this week's earnings news from the two companies. What we discovered, in effect, was that what we have here are two drunks holding each other up. Why? Because both companies' businesses...
Assuming I haven't utterly messed up in creating this cartogram, the following figure shows startups per capita by state around the U.S. in 2007. My source for the data is the excellent new report on the subject from my friends...
Microsoft's just-released numbers look weak to me. Revenue was a little lighter than expected, while EPS was just okay. Guidance is decent on revenues, but no hell on earnings. Looks like Windows and Office were both somewhat sucky in the...
Speaking of scarcity, the Nintendo Wii is still in strangely short suppy. According to the Nintendo of America president, the average Wii sits on the shelf for a vanishingly short hour before being sold. I'm guessing it's only a matter...
Nice passage from the FT's Alphaville today that I'll quote in full here, touching on rising food prices, oil, etc.: Something is deeply wrong in the global economy as inflation and over-fast growth lead to strains in an ever-growing number...
My friends at TheStreet.com go on a rice-related humanitarian mission on the the street of New York. Their mission: To allay the current raging food panic causing so much rice hoarding....
The swamis behind the Fed Futures market are newly tipping the increasing likelihood of no Fed rate change at the upcoming meeting. I'm totally onside with that view, but am not convinced that the Fed is with us. Like usual,...
Not to econo-geek out or anything, but I'm pumped about the Milken Global Conference in L.A. the first part of next week. Sure, I'm on a panel with Felix and others on Monday, which will be good fun, but this...
This is the best thing I have read in ages. It is a quote from Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne speaking on the Fox Business Channel to Liz Claiman: I think that there’s been an unhealthy collusion developed between certain short...
if anything interesting comes out of conference call, I'll post it here. Unlikely, but possible. ------------------ - Apple just said on the call that iPhone 2.0 is due in late June. I had it in my head that it was...
Not even Apple can deliver unalloyed good results these days. The company beat on revenues, and did well as on Mac units, as well as more or less matching on iPhone units, earnings are a little light, at least versus...
Good piece in the NYT about another chunk of high-end discretionary spending being "cut", so to speak: Lasik. Although more than 800,000 Americans got Lasik surgery in 2007, a slight increase from 2006, the numbers started slumping along with the...
This is striking stuff from courier company's UPS's earnings conference call: Chief Executive Scott Davis: UPS's first quarter results illustrate the dramatic slowing in the U.S. economy. At our investor conference on March 12th, we told you that volume growth...
A few key quarterly metrics for Apple's earnings later today: Sales: $6.96B Earnings: $1.07 EPS iPhones: 1.8m Feel free to fill in others....
Apropos of nothing other than being on the run to a meeting and having it pop into my head, here is the Big Lebowski quote of the day: LEBOWSKI Bunny Lebowski. . . She is the light of my life....
I owe people an update on a somewhat personal post here of mine from a month ago. I was reminded of that this morning in reading a post from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, who has sparked an interesting...
Yesterday morning on CNBC's Squawk on the Street: Erin Burnett: The price of pot has really gone up over the last six months. Guest: [Long confused pause] Uh, how would you know? Erin: Just look at the ticker. Guest: Ohhhhh....
I'm at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco later this week. Am on-stage moderating a money panel on Friday afternoon. if you're there, come by and say hello....
Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me. Tanya: You haven't got any. Quinlan: What do you mean? Tanya: Your future is all used up. - from Touch of Evil (1958) The Yahoo Q1 conference call is underway....
Yahoo's first quarter results are now out. I'll have more color later, but here is the gist in tabular form: It is, as the numbers suggest, a beat across the board. Good for Yahoo, but not unexpected either. The Street...
Now this is a strange story. Apparently Craigslist's founders, never ones to follow the orthodox economic path, did something back in January to dilute Ebay's 28.4% minority stake in their fast-growing company. Here is a quote from the NYT: In...
Names aside in this latest list from Alpha Magazine of the highest paid hedge fund managers -- okay, John Paulson led the way with a $3.7-billion 2007 take -- I'm more bemused by the related factoids. Here are some directly...
Roger Lowenstein has a massive, must-read piece on mortgage markets in next weekend's NY Times magazine. Clocking in at more than 5,000 words, the piece is, well ... long, but it is Lowenstein, so it is worth reading in its...
Interesting data via the ever-amusing Google Trends on comparative consumer interest in Apple's iPhone and iPod over the past twelve months. Looks like iPod is in decline after a seasonal bump, and iPhone has flatlined at lower levels. And just...
The good people at S.Pellegrino have out their annual list of the 50 best restaurants in the world. I've been playing with the data, which goes back to 2002, to see if there is anything interesting in there. Here is...
Yahoo delivers earnings later today, so here is a quick cheat sheet of things to watch for. I will be on the quarterly call as well. In general, I'm not buying the interpretation of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's price...
From a few months back, a table of gas prices at the pump around the world: Note that among the countries with the heaviest subsidies -- that is, that are cheaper than the U.S. -- are most of the fastest-growing...
This year for the first time the collective oil appetite of emerging markets -- many of which don't pay the market price for oil -- will exceed that of the U.S. It is striking stuff, as evidenced by the following...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs of "end is nigh" material: Russia looks at using oil money to buy U.S. companies (Times) Japan's food shortages becoming more dire (TheAge) Food shortages -- okay, rice shortages -- have spread to the U.S....
Okay, no more eulogies for VCs please. Coming after all the overdone pieces over the weekend parroting the data-blather about a downturn in VC spending -- everywhere except Silicon Valley, where most of the VC spending happens anyway -- we...
The trouble with oil/dollar/etc. records is that once you're at a record the odds are awfully good you'll set another record. After all, if we assume that prices generally follow a random walk, the odds are darn close to 50%...
There is some fascinating data out from Verizon on the upsurge in SMS messages during the Boston Marathon today at key points along the route. In general, nearby SMS traffic was up 213% compared to the previous Monday, with the...
Here is what people say they plan to do with their refund checks. I'm guessing they will spend less than they think on bill payment, and more than they think of frivolity, but whatever -- it won't be saved. [via...
I've been arguing endlessly via email/IM with my online-advertising-conspiracy-theory minded friend Barry Ritholtz, which has gotten me looking at sectoral online advertising data. Some good stuff in the recent research report from online ad sorts Efficient Frontier, including this graph...
I resisted jailbreak-ing my iPhone for ages -- okay, months -- but finally did not long ago using ZiPhone. Man oh man, is it an eye-opening experience. While the iPhone felt like a platform before, now it is a platform,...
Is there anyone out there who's not long oil and short the dollar? With that in mind, OHAR (oil hit another record) today, this time touching $117.76, largely on the back of all the fondness for the stuff among...
There is a largely fact-free piece in the WSJ today about efforts to have a college named after super-successful Yale fund manager David Swensen. In case you have somehow missed it, Swensen has been among the most successful fund managers...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Employers stuck for trades people, technicians (Reuters) Debt costs rising for companies that must refinance (Bloomberg) Graph of Financing costs trends: Highest for corporates since 1997 (Bloomberg) Misplaced bets on the carry trade (FT)...
Here are slides from a keynote I gave in Pittsburgh last week at the Three River Ventures Conference. Unfortunately, no notes or audio, so you'll be forced to make up your own. Other than the Randy Newman / Bob Seger...
My friend Andy Kessler has an amusing series of interviews over at Yahoo Finance Tech|Ticker with Apple founder Steve Wozniak. If there were some way to embed 'em, I would, but there seemingly isn't. Check the latest one here, with...
Meant to post this sooner, but yesterday was kind of a mess. Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com. Wall Street braces for massive layoffs (Reuters) The TED spread's &...
I normally disregard these "Are you better off now than you were X years/months/minutes/seconds ago"? surveys. They are usually selective, small sample, tough to generalize, etc. But that said, this Pew summary of 40 years of such surveys among the...
Fascinating data out from iSuppli on iPhone usage compared to the average phone for typical tasks. Some eye-opening differences: The big differences? Internet use -- no surprise -- and music use, where iPhone is used much more often than other...
Couple more things worth reading: Frontiers of real-time data analysis (FRB of Philadelphia) Resolving the U.S. trade balance via the U.S. dollar (NBER/Feldstein)...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Did banks manipulate banking Libor index? (Marketplace) How cellphones are changing the third world (New York Times) U.S. patent chief says applications are way up, but quality is way down (EETimes) 10 Cleantech Deals from...
This morning on CNBC we were arguing about the blame to be accorded web traffic service Comscore in investors collectively leaning the wrong way on Google's earnings last night. After all, Comscore had tipped paid-click growth declining to 2%, which...
Pretty much everyone thought Google would miss tonight. And more than half of those people thought Google would, at least implicitly, guide down. Why was everyone wrong-sided on Google? Here are some possible explanations: Comscore data had people convinced that...
Hanging on the Google conference call. Nothing exciting so far. Being tipped that capex will likely continue to current levels or beyond. Sergey tipping 100 improvements in search introduced in quarter. Not to be rude, but does this deserve so...
For you conspiracy theorists -- Google's building a moon base! Google's building a moon base! -- here is the last five quarters of Google's re-spiraling CapEx:...
Here is how Google came in versus one cheat sheet (Mahaney's at Citi) floating around out there: Net revenues -- Forecast $3.54b / Actual: $4.0b Earnings -- Forecast: $1.76b / Actual $1.83b EPS: -- Forecast: $4.50 / Actual: $4.84 It's...
The Google results are out, and it's not nearly as bad as people expected. Matter of fact, it's damn good: Revenues of $5.19-billion; earnings of $1.55-billion. Stock is up 11% afterhours. More shortly. Here is the release....
Traveling today, so not able to weigh in on things the way I would like. For instance, I'm still irritated at all the people who are irritated that IBM isn't working as a tech market tell. Hello? Hello?! I will,...
You think you had no fun doing taxes this year? I captured this screenshot from live Help in Turbotax while doing taxes earlier this week:...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs (again): Startups shine at Vegas broadcaster show (TheStreet.com) Hedge fund industry assets rose 27% to $2.6 trillion in 2007 (MarketWatch) Yet another book reviewed on the credit crunch (Economist.com) Investment Bank Regulation Is Changed Forever...
Every time I turn around someone is announcing they'll grow more gain, and have fewer beef capital. The latest example comes here from Canada, but you can find this sort of story anywhere right now given soaring wheat prices.The trouble...
Lots of people crowing tonight about tech companies beating the street: CRM, INTC, and IBM in particular. So, what we are to glean? Has tech turned? I like tech, or at least parts of tech, but I have trouble with...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Aging process quickly hits homes in Las Vegas (Los Angeles Times) Brazilian oil mega-find less "mega" then previously declared (Bloomberg.com) Cleantech hits a first-quarter air pocket (Euromoney)...
Speaking of Google Trends data, this graph is interesting: It shows the diverging fortunes of Microsoft and Yahoo from a Google search point of view. Regular people -- who make up an ever-increasing percentage of Google users -- aren't very...
The current collapse in shoe company Crocs's stock has been nasty. It is off 73% this year, and 48% in the last week alone. So, was it predictable? In the broadest sense, of course it was. All such consumer fads...
A bunch of travel over next few days, so posting will likely be light here. Try to be nice....
Hey, good news in all the credit troubles out there: The credit derivatives business boomed in 2007. According to ISDA figures released tonight, the notional value of credit default swaps was $62.2-trillion at the end of last year, up smartly...
The first of what is almost certain to be a long line of post-subprime, chest-beating, the U.S. economy is ruined, the U.S. dollar is going to zero, and, by the way, America sucks, books is now out. It's author...
Worthwhile reminder in the continued collapse of the $330-billion auction-rate securities market that sometimes markets that fail for too long stay failed. That is more or less what is on the verge of happening in ARS, with this ceased market...
I'm largely tired of opinion -- my own included. I am, however, increasingly fascinated with capturing and incorporating useful, alternative data sources from the edge. You see some of that beginning to happen via Twitter (and I'm advising an interesting...
Huge congratulations to my friend Herb Greenberg for announcing something he and I have discussed many times in recent months: His desire to create an independent equity research boutique. It's now set to happen, and Herb is leaving traditional journalism...
The current ardor for a new Kenyan IPO lends some support to fans of so-called frontier markets: Taxi drivers, kiosk owners and street vendors have been queuing up at banks in downtown Nairobi to subscribe to shares of mobile-phone company...
It's true: Traders with bigger balls do better, at least as evidenced by this study of testosterone levels in London traders: Little is known about the role of the endocrine system in financial risk taking. Here, we report the findings...
Interesting take on the declining relative importance of social networks in this Hitwise release today on the continuing rapid rise of YouTube to online video dominance: Hitwise ... today announced that for the month of March 2008, YouTube accounted for...
Granted, it wouldn't dent UFC ratings, but it would be great to see ex- Fed chair Paul Volcker and current Fed guy Ben Bernanke going at it. It's becoming increasingly clear that the two men are not fond of one...
I've been saying all morning, in light of the proposed deal, that Blockbuster and Circuit City need to be jammed together with AOL and Yahoo -- an equally moribund combination -- so we can just call it a day. I...
I've been watching with steady interest the emergence and gestation of web-based video services like Mogulus. While such services won't let you create CNN-class eye-candy yet, they are getting better ever day, and today's announcements on Mogulus Pro drive...
Provocative piece by the AEI's Peter Wallison on the case against further securities regulation. The gist comes right away: Regulating securities firms the way we regulate banks, and giving them routine access to the Fed’s discount window, makes no practical...
Catching up and emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Felix Salmon reads Ben Stein so the rest of us don't have to (Portfolio.com) Supply index gauges product demand by engineers (EETimes) Winter is finally leaving the northeast (Hillcam) Arnold has killed...
From an otherwise-interesting release I received this morning from the increasingly-useful folks at FirstCoverage, an equity markets research firm: Overall market sentiment improves by 6.21%. What does that mean? How does anyone claim two digits of precision in their measurement...
There is an upside to the credit crunch: Less mail... Mortgage and home equity direct mail down (Source) Credit card direct mail declines continue into 2008 (Source) And this is with a mere recession. Imagine how peaceful it would be...
Lovely sunset shot tonight looking west from Vancouver over Georgia Straight toward Vancouver Island. The colors and textures are wonderful. [via Katkam]...
Failures rates in the badly-borked auction securities market are staying stubbornly high: [via Bloomberg]...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com. The commodities boom means giant tires are crazy scarce (BusinessWeek) High oil prices has California experiencing a mini oil boom (S.F. Chronicle) Among...
The quote of the day is slam dunk easy. It's from Techdirt, and it's on the proposed AOL/YHOO to fend off Microsoft: ...like trying to keep a wild animal from eating you by covering yourself with feces. Well, yes....
Every time I think I'm away from universities, I get dragged back in. I'm newly on the Advisory Board for Berkeley's new Center for Innovative Financial Technology. Okay, okay, I'm a highly willing "drag-ee" on this one. While in some...
Two points make a trend, and I've now heard today from people at two major IT services firms that business, especially in India, is slowing to a crunching halt. Can't be good news for Tata, et al....
I was talking to an entrepreneur yesterday who decided not to take money from a VC, in part because the VC couldn't really answer his question. And what was that? It was the "What can you do for me?" question....
I've been playing a lot with some Monte Carlos for another project, and along the way I got to messing with the old drunk/gutter/lamppost problem. You know the drill: A drunk starts at a wall X paces from a gutter,...
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Tractors on Ebay: Differences between Internet and In-Person Auctions (SSRN) Interview with Richard Russell (Investment Postcards from Cape Town) Why did no-one revise General Electric Q1 estimates sooner? (Bespoke Investment Group) Microsoft launches routing based...
Anyone have any ski resort lift passes around? I'm trying to figure out how many, if any, North American ski resorts give sequential IDs on their daily passes. From looking around at various images online, it looks like some do....
Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Jefferson Country, Alabama, teeters on edge of bankruptcy (Bloomberg) Latest issue of the always-excellent Chance News (ChanceWiki) Nifty bit of code to analytics on your own mail if you're a Gmail user (persistent.info) Historical trading...
Quote of the day comes in the dizzying Perils of Pauline-style adventure that is MSFT's attempt to buy YHOO. Recall: At the end of Episode 26 the evil MSFT had forlorn YHOO strapped to the tracks, saying YHOO has...
I'm out for the balance of the day in meetings. Behave yourselves, especially those of you along the torch route in San Francisco....
In case people hadn't seen it, here is a screen capture of the iPhone 2.0 microcode containing a reference to the presence of Infineon's 3G baseband chipset in that upcoming product. Nice catch by the folks at Ziphone....
Wish I had more time to look at the results of this paper, because its results strike me as entertainingly implausible -- not to mention sort of creepy and unhygienic -- but I'm at least intrigued: Experts Online: An Analysis...
Many people, myself included, worry about the politicization of the U.S. Federal Reserve. To what extent have recent decisions -- the bailout of Bear Stearns, introducing new lending facilities, etc. -- been driven by markets and economic need, versus being...
One of the trickier questions in the business of calculating default risk -- the likelihood of a firm missing payments on a credit note -- is in the feedback dynamics of the thing. Sure, you can estimate interest coverage, capital...
One of the trickier questions in the business of calculating default risk -- the likelihood of a firm missing payments on a credit note -- is in the feedback dynamics of the thing. Sure, you can estimate interest coverage, capital...
The secret of Tiger Woods' success, according to former coach Butch Harmon: His work ethic on his golf swing, his work ethic in the gym, his mental toughness, his discipline, the way he budgets his time. On top of that,...
Quote of the day comes from a piece up on Bloomberg today. It is purportedly about the environmental consequences of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons, as the following snippet shows: A nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-size bombs would open a massive...
People outside of financial services are much more fascinating with hedge fund managers than are the rest of us. Like many/most of my readers, having spent an unholy amount of time with hedgies over the years, you realize fairly quickly...
Here is Reason #7,732 why Yahoo management is delusional, just in case you needed it: Yahoo Inc. Chairman Roy Bostock said the Internet company's plan to grow on its own received a "very positive'' response from investors, countering reports that...
I love teardowns -- taking apart consumer electronic devices to find what public company components are hiding inside -- and I'm doubly fond of fantasy teardowns. What are those? That's when analysts tear apart, metaphorically speaking, a product that hasn't...
While chairing Money:Tech 2008 I got to see oodles of early-stage financial technology companies, and many of the most interesting were in the New York area. It's nice to see New York leading in this area (along with doing well...
One of my favorite points with young growth companies, whether private or public, is that I focus on the people because the company almost certainly won't end up building what it says it will, so I better like you guys....
Rather than wasting so much time doing pre-emptive reputation management, as he did yesterday in the FT and today in the WSJ, ex- Fed chair Alan Greenspan might mull why so many people think he is so tone deaf to...
In scanning the Fed's minutes from its March meetings my eyes kept glazing over, even more so than usual for such turgid stuff. So I decided to check the document's readability, via the Flesch-Kincaid test. Here is the result: How...
I'm briefly on CNBC's Power Lunch today in about an hour, at noon EST. Talking tech stocks, earnings, GPS, etc. If you have anything particularly striking you think worth mentioning, feel free to post it here. [Update] Some stocks I...
I'm generally a fan of efficient market theorists Eugena Fame, but I have to confess his argument in a recent Minneapolis Fed interview that bubbles aren't bubbles leaves me cold. Region: Some economists—you know them well—say that the stock market...
Quote of the day comes from commodities markets -- lead, to be specific. Here is John Deave, a retired barrister and churchwarden in Stathern, England, talking about the spate of lead roof thefts at local churches. It is driven, of...
I'm seeing more and more of this sort of thing in existing home sales listings around San Diego. Not sure if it constitutes bottoming in the local market, but it is interesting: Sales History Historical home sale price (1): $736,500...
A few people are wringing their hands at news that Foundation Capital has raised a $750mm fund, using it as an excuse to wax despairingly about the disappearance of early-stage investors from the market. After all, you can't very well...
Good Charlie Rose interview with Blackstone's Peter Peterson. Subjects include bailouts, subprime, etc....
By all accounts Yahoo's Jerry Yang is a nice guy. But he is beginning to bug me, especially with his latest "Dear Steve" note to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Purportedly a calm and rational letter laying out why Yahoo continues to...
This is just too easy, but it's hard not to be amused at the mortgage troubles faced by the Mortgage Bankers Association. It is being forced to pay much higher prices than it expected on its new Washington offices, and...
Nice figure in a current IMF paper on the global boom-bust cycle in residential real estate. Here we can compare what's been happening in a host of countries all finding real estate going off the rails at once: Denmark, Spain,...
Apparently recent criticism of Alan Greenspan's March 17th column on risk in the Financial Times got under the ex-maestro's skin. He has responded today with a thin-skinned and consciously obscurantist defense, one that you would do well to read in...
The current issue of Alpha has the most interesting piece on quantitative investors I have read in ages. Lots of Money:Tech-style stuff about what's happening at the bleeding edge, right where technology and capital markets smack into one another....
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet. Hurricane price tags soaring on crowded U.S. coast (Reuters) Housing crisis is hitting the Mortgage Banking Association itself (washingtonpost) Inside the run on...
From the intro to Armageddon in Retrospect, the first collection of previously unpublished works by author Kurt Vonnegut since his death: The unhappiest times in his life were those months and sometimes a whole year when he couldn't write, when...
I'm on planes all morning so you'll have to amuse yourselves for a while. Disappointing jobs report today, with 80k in losses. Haven't seen it, so what was the financial services contribution?...
NY Fed chief Timothy Geithner gave the most succinct explanation of what has happened in the banking industry of late. Read it twice. Or three times. As many as it takes. It is important to understand that investment banks now...
Quote of the day goes to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon today talking about the original $2 price he offered for Bear Stearns: The price didn't have anything to do with the value of the company. Precisely. And you have to...
Eye-popping traffic stats from Matt Drudge's Drudge Report in the just-completed March period. THANKS FOR MAKING MARCH '08 THE BIGGEST MONTH IN THE DRUDGEREPORT'S 13 YEAR HISTORY! MAIN PAGE LOADED 590,943,577 TIMES... TOPS MARCH 2007'S 425,371,511... TOPS MARCH 2006'S 287,443,312...
The shorter Jamie Dimon from part two of today's Senate hearing on the JPMorgan takeunder of Bear Stearns: You people asked us to do this, so don't blame us. It was better for you than for us, because we saved...
I've been pining for a better stock screener since Reuters shut down theirs and ruined 2007 for me. Okay, I exaggerate a little, but I was distressed. Now, however, we have Google Stock Screener. And my first reaction? I like...
In case people can't tell, I'm traveling and in meetings today. It's one of those days that Paul doesn't scale very well. Be nice to yourselves and to the market, etc....
While we haven't solved the Case of the Missing Oil yet, I do have an update, courtesy of a reader. Here is a recent Bloomberg screenshot showing it covering all bases, in a single headline screen attributing oil's prices change...
Quote of the day comes from an article on the brokenness of the venture capital secondary market. Never much of a market in the first place, it's no more fun than usual -- as always, the people who most want...
Great. Ben Bernanke has decided to steal a page from his predecessor and has started coining quotable phrases. Alan Greenspan had "irrational exuberance" and, yes, "infectious greed" to his name, and today Bernanke coins "chaotic unwinding". Do these Fed chairs...
This is sort of a zen question: What strategy does a hedge fund manager follow who has lost his fund because of investor redemptions? The answer forthwith: Daniel Zwirn, the New York-based manager who is shutting down a $4 billion...
I wrote yesterday about disappearing iPhones, so continuing on the Encyclopedia Brown approach to investing, let's talk about the case of the missing oil. With most major economies weakening, oil prices through the roof, U.S. refinery utilization at near-term lows,...
Despite weakening commodities and strong export ties to a stumbling U.S. economy, Brazilian markets are still motoring along. After being down for the first three months of the year, the Bovespa index is now flat on the year, and only...
With news today of major management changes at PMC-Sierra, plus Broadcom bouncing along the bottom, and issues elsewhere, am I the only one feeling like we should finally be seeing some consolidation? This sector, while marginally better positioned for...
Here is Bloomberg with the dubious financial headline of the day: Moody's Is Least Accurate Subprime-Bond Rating Firm Is that like being the least accurate earthquake forecaster, or more like being the least accurate millennial cult member?...
In a new and interesting interview in MIT's Technology Review magazine economist Robert Merton -- of Long Term Capital Management fame, and, oh yes, a Nobel prizewinner -- offers some musings on risk in the capital markets. He is a...
I don't often talk about tools and productivity stuff here, but I thought a quick digression would be in order. I consume a lot -- okay, an awful lot -- of information on a daily basis. Sometimes it gets overwhelming,...
This is a strange story: According to various sources, most Apple stores in the country are newly out of iPhones. While you can order them from the Apple Store with 5-7 day delivery, you can't get them in stores....
Doug Kass over at TheStreet/RealMoney has posed a kind of backdoor market Rorschach test today. By posted a faux conversion/confession on his supposed shift from bearishness to raging bullishness he got lots of attention -- and now bears and...
Great to see that I'm not alone in pillorying Henry Paulson's plan for regulation reform in the U.S. Damn investment bankers think every solution involves M&A or a takeover, and that's what Paulson is trying to orchestrate here. This thing...
The good people over at Bespoke have up a useful table of the best/worst performers of Q1/08 from the Russell 3000. Here they are, with an energy stock leading the way up:...
