May 2008
Lots of people have been talking about the collapse of the auction-rate securities market, but related troubles in the catastrophe reinsurance market have gone largely overlooked. With credit markets gone AWOL, you won't be entirely surprised to hear that finding...
This commodities price chart got me thinking about physicist Richard Feynman's famous quote from the Challenger hearings: "I believe that has some significance for our problem."...
Locke: "Hey, was he talking about what I think he was talking about?"Ben: "If you mean time-traveling bunnies, then yes." - Lost, Episode's 13/14 (airdate 5/29/08)Wise words....
It is taking longer than expected to get everything back to normal here. Posting will remain slow for a while yet....
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com: NYSE trading falls to 7-year low, despite volume rising (Bloomberg) Following the money: I-bankers move to the Middle East (IDD) Betfair battles...
The following AP headline is terrible for we dyslexics: NASA Landing Phoenix Near Martian North Pole Sunday Night I had to read it three times before I figured out that NASA hadn't given Martians at the North Pole clearance to...
Real life has intervened and I'm going to be away from the post here for a bit. Will be back shortlybefore too long....
Lots of people newly discovering the entertaining games that raiders, like Carl Icahn, can play in hiding, ahem, their stock holdings in target companies until the last minute. In the case of Yahoo, for example, Icahn is sharing notes/stock/etc. with...
One of the main reasons Yahoo is celebrated, to the extent that it is (and celebrated is way too strong a word here), is because it leads this part of the solar system in web traffic. Or at least it...
I love when you get two contradictory headlines about the same piece of news. Case in point, here is my friend Barry on the latest housing starts data, following by a WSJ headline on the same nugget: With housing starts...
Apparently Yang Disease is spreading at Yahoo. Recall, this is a company that seemingly thinks that, despite being a struggling outfit presented with a 70% price premium over its then trading price, it is the one that gets to set...
Does the Sprott IPO issue today mark a kind of energy/resources market top, much the same way that Blackstone et al., going public did the same thing for private equity? After all, when a highly successful energy/resources fund manager decides...
My friend Doug Kass is calling a near-term "Trump top" in oil prices: Trump waxed enthusiastically about oil on "Squawk Box today," saying that real estate is not the business to get into as a young man -- now it...
Must amusing take so far on the proposed Icahn board slate for Yahoo comes from Breakingviews this morning. The folks there have done it as a winking take on the George Clooney flick, Ocean's Eleven, with Icahn in the starring...
One of the questions investors in early-stage companies -- both private and public -- often ask is this: What if the founder gets hit by a bus? It is, of course, an investor's way of saying, "How much of this...
I thought it would be fun to compare Yahoo's board, pre- and post- the Icahn proposed slate today. Here they are via some relevant metrics. Essentially, Icahn has put up a board of investors, eliminating insiders as well as the...
Nicely direct and non-nuanced letter from Carl Icahn to the malingering Yahoo board this morning. Carl minces no words, telling them that they have failed in their responsibilities to shareholders, and that he has been urged by some of those...
Some eclectic reading for those of you in the mood for some thought-provoking non-news-driven stuff: Should stare decisis doctrine apply to U.S. Supreme Court's doctrine of stare decisis? (SSRN) Top ten tech trends, according to VCs, plus some amusing riffing...
While I'm playing with job data, here is a recruiting-eye view of the private equity bubble. I'm not sure how much more obvious it could have been. Striking stuff. private equity Job Trends private equity jobs...
Now and then I like to check out recruiting trends, and today I compared two sides of the same employment coin: loans and collections. When things are going well everyone wants loans officers; when things are going poorly everyone wants...
According to Reuters late today, Carl Icahn has decided to go ahead with a full new Yahoo board slate tomorrow. Surprise, surprise. Many had thought he would do a partial slate, or maybe just push for change from the outside....
There is a thought-provoking new BBC special out called "The Curse of Oil". It is admittedly not going to satisfy all political sensitivities, but it is still worth watching and much better than 99% of fare on this subject. Here...
I was hoping for more neat maps and glossy pictures, but even without 'em the current National Geographic has a worth-reading article on peak oil. No huge revelations, but lots of useful context: Consider the issue of discovery rates. Oil...
There is impressive growth underway in the number and assets of commodity hedge funds worldwide. Check the following graph of the number of such funds extant. Doing the math, the above works out to roughly a 50% compound growth rate...
A quick wander through some articles and things of interest: New DOE U.S. wind energy report (DOE) Great new series on geothermal/etc. underway at The Oil Drum (TOD) The future of energy (Mother Jones) Scenes from the tar wars (Mother...
Just to be somewhat more serious on this rumored Carl Icahn proxy tussle with Yahoo: Do I think it could a) happen and b) work out? Sure it could. And, given how much internal cleanup is going to be required...
Yahoo has been pounded by rumors ever since the Microsoft deal fell apart. There was the rumor that Microsoft would return. Or the one that it wouldn't return. Or that it had returned. Or the rumor that shareholders are suing....
I had noticed that Supreme Court justices were more frequently recusing themselves from cases, but it took the Washington Post to put it in context. It's their many investments that are causing the problem. I should have known that spending...
Despite prices rising and generally being in short supply, Toyota's Prius hybrid is turning in a standout year for the Japanese car company. Check the following figure from Bloomberg: In short, Toyota has sold more Prius cars in the first...
Airlines are in the middle of radical service cuts. Not just increasing prices, but reducing the amount of air service to large and small cities in the U.S. It is partly because of a weakening economy, partly because of higher...
Fascinating MIT presentation by Fred Salvucci out about the role of chance in transportation and oil/energy markets. The first commercial use of rail in the New World, Salvucci tells us, was to haul in granite for the Bunker Hill monument,...
Interesting piece picked up by The Oil Drum on the relationship between gas prices and real estate in Australia. It summarizes a study of the effect on commuting costs when considering various communities progressively further outside the urban/suburban/exurban horizon west...
I love this quote that Felix picks from a Brad DeLong commenter in the ongoing debate about whether Harvard's endowment gains should be taxed: Harvard is an investment bank with a mom-and-pop non-profit enterprise attached to it for tax purposes....
Now that OPEC is playing nice with one another, at least temporarily, there is lots of discussion about the price OPEC wants for crude oil. Everyone says that OPEC likes higher prices, to a point, with the implicit argument being...
Granted, it's nowhere near the absurdity of Nortel, which almost a decade ago was briefly more than 30% of the Toronto Stock Exchange's market capitalization, but RIMM stock is up to fun stuff. It's newly knocking up against 4% of...
Interesting that the day RIM announces latest and greatest 3G Blackberry that Apple says iPhones are no longer available through its online store. Just to get things going, here are the obligatory rumors: Apple is going to announce 3G iPhone...
Lots of Scoble-herded chatter on the interwebs about how news of last night's Sichuan quake showed up first on Twitter. Fascinating stuff. My point of view, which I have made a number of times in recent talks, is that Twitter...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly column over that TheStreet.com. Busting the non-cartel in semiconductors (Bloomberg) Solar industry in California is chasing madly after workers (S.F. Chronicle) Nuclear, tidal energy to supplement fossil fuels (Oil...
Great interview on energy markets with T. Boone Pickens from last week's Milken Global conference in L.A. I attended this one, and enjoyed it immensely....
My earlier post about the possible oil bubble seems to have touched a nerve, so here is more. The good people at Factset have out a fascinating new report on the same subject -- how energy markets are becoming awfully...
It is striking that three recent articles this week have struck the same note: The U.S., with its crumbling infrastructure and fearful politicians, looks increasingly like the third world. Airports are an embarrassment, bridges are collapsing, education is a mess,...
In the tragic and destructive situation around Chile's Chaiten volcano, which is currently erupting and has caused large-scale evacuations, some of the recent satellite photos have been eye-popping. Here is one from Tuesday just as the volcano shot a new...
Some useful gas/housing GDP sensitivity analysis from a new Milken report: - Each 10 percent decline in housing sales correlates in an 0.8 percent decline in real GDP. - Each $10 increase in oil price reduces real GDP by 0.2...
Some quick links that I had around: New Jersey principal gets out of auto lease by torching car (NJ.com) VCs Doerr and Moritz together on stage: Does anyone really care what these two think any more? (VentureBeat) Big growth in...
Quote du jour comes from Cerberus Capital head, and ex-Treasury guy, John Snow in a Bloomberg interview today: We don't have long, deep recessions any more in the U.S., as we have internal adjustment mechanisms that cause us to get...
The folks at Bespoke Research have out a fascinating new chart comparing the oil, housing, and tech runs. You can see duration as well as percentage gain -- and the oil price bubble/run just out-did the tech bubble. It has...
These twinned before and after images from Myanmar are fairly jaw-dropping. They help explain the scale of this post-cyclone calamity. [via NASA]...
Nice graph from my friends at Weather Trends on retail weather in March/April. As the company says in an accompanying release, March "was the coldest in 6 years, wettest in 10, snowiest in 12 and coldest Easter in 16+ years;...
Years ago I was an angry young man I'd pretend That I was a billboard Standing tall By the side of the road I fell in love With a beautiful highway - (Nothing But) Flowers, Talking Heads Here is...
If TechCrunch has this story right, it's big news. The gist: Mike is saying that a source tells them that Yahoo held a board meeting today and put Yahoo chair Bostock in charge in re-opening negotiations with Microsoft. If true,...
In thinking about higher oil prices today, and in scanning an interesting related story at Institutional Investor about proxies demanding more information on public company carbon usage, I got to wondering about something: In the same way that hedge funds...
Not to be hawkish on oil prices, but how much worse can it get for oil in the short run? While there are lots of things that can take prices into the stratosphere over time, let's count the new-ish short-run...
I'm nominated for best financial blog by a newspaper in "Canada". Vote early and vote often....
Anyone buy the following argument at all from NYSE CEO Niederauer today in favor of keeping floor traders around, despite a predicted 15-20% decline in their numbers: When you get into volatile periods, people want to use the floor more,...
Here is a graph of Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google from announcement of the failed deal to today. Note that only Google ended today up -- both Microsoft and Yahoo fell on the day. The latter wasn't a surprise, but the...
Alan Greenspan must have been up late in the bathtub again last night. In a new Bloomberg interview he coins yet another of his colorfully empty expressions: "pale recession", to describe the current economic weakness. That one now goes on...
Bill Miller of Legg Mason, Yahoo's sub-performing second-largest institutional shareholder, gave an interview today to the NY Times wherein he opined on opportunities missed, etc. in the now-defunct MSFT/YHOO deal. Some highlights, the first one of which in particular struck...
Amusing stuff, via Barry Ritholtz: "In response to recent events Federal Reserve Board voted unanimously to authorize the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to create Yahoo Lending Facility (YLF) to avoid significant stock market disruption and to support Yahoo!...
Kara Swisher remains waaaay plugged-in on this Yahoo/Microsoft deal. Beating Monday's papers (and her WSJ compatriots' inevitable Monday piece) by ... oh, 36 hours or so, she has up the first credible tick-tock of how the Yahoo/Microsoft deal devolved to...
So, what happens next? Microsoft has walked away from Yahoo, or at least from its current takeover offer, and is saying it will move forward organically -- and said word with its reek of cattle feces is appropriate here. Yahoo,...
This is rapidly turning into two post-tryst teens texting one another hate messages -- u suck! no, u suck! -- but Yahoo is now out with a response to Microsoft's response about its decision to terminate its takeover offer for...
Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to...
Here is the full press and "Dear Jerry" letter from Microsoft's Ballmer on calling it quits on the Yahoo acquisition. Via PR Newswire: Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! REDMOND, Wash., May 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today...
Microsoft is walking, it says, from its Yahoo bid. Not a surprise given the history and given Ballmer's confused approach, but it is an open questions whether this is mere stratagem, a "for keeps" move away from the entire transaction...
Interesting new paper out in the Journal of Law & Economics on the impact of post-9/11 airport security measures on the demand for air travel in the U.S. We examine the impact of two post-9/11 airport security measures—baggage screening and...
Economist Paul Collier, who gave a riveting talk at this year's TED conference, has an unsurprisingly clear-eyed take on one cure for the current escalation in global food prices: Broadened large-scale commercial agriculture. While that might seem obvious, it is...
Quote of the day comes from a WSJ story about Microsoft's ongoing tussle for Yahoo -- most of which is apparently happening inside Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's head: People familiar with the situation said that [delays] have been at least...
The following figure is from a new Mckinsey report on profligate power usage by data centers:...
Great analysis and figure from my friend Toby of the social networks among the public company boardroom set. Click for a larger version....
A while back Fred Wilson started a firestorm with a series of three posts (1, 2 and 3) about age and the entrepreneur. The gist: He was seeing more and more young tech entrepreneurs, most of them under 30, and...
Great new issue of O'Reilly's Release 2.0 magazine out, including extensive discussion of financial technologies (and an interview with yours truly). More here....
