June 2008
Got any friends that smoke? Buy them a mobile phone, ideally one with an expensive data plan, like an iPhone. Turns out that the incremental expense could save their life: Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 communities of...
Last week I cited a welling@weeden interview with two Credit Suisse strategists that made the case for inflation rapidly coming down, here is a Gavel report -- albeit somewhat graph-happy -- that makes the same case. The crux of the...
Admittedly I wouldn't want to be running a small U.S. bank right now, but you have to be in awe at downbound stats like these: ...more than half of those institutions with assets worth between $1bn and $10bn have commercial...
Whatever your feelings about the bankers behind the Bank of International Settlements, go read its just-released 2007/08 annual report. It's thought-provoking stuff, especially the discussion of recoupling risks, and of the totemic fascination with inflation that allowed interest rates to...
I call bullshit on naive contrarianism. There are too many people looking to take the rhetorical other side of every short-term blip in market sentiment. Every amateur contrarian -- many of whom admittedly talk a good game, but never trade...
Increasing number of data points suggesting that southeast Asia is under major stress. Currencies falling, countries are abandoning/cutting oil subsidies, and inflation is on a tear. Could we be at a breaking point? More reading: Poverty-hit Bangladesh forced into huge...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly weekend reading column over at TheStreet.com: TED spread is widening again (Bloomberg) Barclay's warns of financial storm as Fed's credibility tumbles (Telegraph) Will agri-business be the source of the...
I'm indebted to Bloomberg for first pointing this out, but if the current month ended today we'd be down 9.4% and have locked in the worst June since the Great Depression. Check the following chart for the painful picture. Granted,...
A friend of mine on Wall Street took these pictures of the Fox Business News gang setting up shop outside the NYSE as the market went to hell. Ouch. Bad timing....
Pace the weeden commentary I posted here yesterday, why do we generally only "find" rogue traders on the way down in markets, not on the way up? Hmmmmm....
Lately my six-year-old has taken to cheerfully wandering around the house skipping, dancing and singing "Had a bad day / You sing a sad song" etc. The juxtaposition of the sad lyrics and the happy-go-lucky demeanor always makes me laugh....
Among the best-received presentations at this year's TED conference was conductor Ben Zander's. While he claimed his goal was to have everyone leave loving classical music, I took it more as an exercise in the importance of passion in getting...
And here is Felix Salmon's reply as the next installment in the "analysts should own their stock picks" debate I'm having with the man from Portfolio: ------------ Hi Paul -- Sorry for the delay in replying, I was watching Germany...
A few weeks ago I wrote here that analysts who didn't own the stocks they recommended were not to be trusted. Today I see that Felix Salmon over at Portfolio has up his own take on the subject, more or...
Hugely fun and wildly bearish stuff in a recent issue of welling@weeden. The discussants are the co-heads of global cross-asset strategy at Societe Generale, and they are among the more bearish (in a nice and rational way) investors I have...
Call it the "Nuke" Laloosh rule: People who know what they are doing should just stop futzing about and get on with things. The preceding is the main finding in a fascinating golf-driven (!) new paper in The Quarterly...
While many people are focused on the silly idea that speculators (the von Trapps!) are the primary cause of current oil market advances, what if a more useful thing to think about was hoarding? What hoarding, specifically? Well, there are...
How ignominious things have become in financially struggling San Diego. To secure some loans, it has, in the past, put up as collateral the Torrey Pines golf club. Yes that Torrey Pines, the one that just hosted the Tiger-won...
I'm looking for a few good bloggers to fill in for me while I'm out on holidays in July. I have a couple of people lined up already, but I thought I'd open it up and ask for a few...
Great slide deck here from Jeff Rubin over at CIBC WM on the current "age of scarcity". Definitely check it out....
A wildfire popped up here in San Diego yesterday about 2 miles east of my house. It was more than a little unnerving, as the picture here from someone closer to the fires shows (courtesy of NBC San Diego.) I...
The IPO market sucks. Maybe. Mostly. Let me explain. Near as I can tell, there hasn't been a single venture-backed IPO in the second quarter of 2008, which would be the first quarter in which that has happened since ......
It's not often that Wall Street strategists notice the tiny semi-asset class otherwise known as venture capital. But that's what happened today as Merrill's Richard Bernstein wrote in a contrarian strategies report that it may just be time for investors...
Nice graph from the FirstRain research service showing employee turnover trends at Google and Yahoo over the last year. Red denotes turnover-related losses, and green denotes gains. While both companies have seen losses, the level at Yahoo -- especially in...
Have received a bunch of emails wondering at my absence over last three days. Headed out early Friday and got back last night from a family vacation weekend in San Francisco. Appreciate the concern, but all the alien abduction theories...
This "I quit" letter by my friend Stewart Butterfield is making the rounds. Stewart., the co-founder of Flickr, is -- how shall I say? -- smart, unusual and a tireless ironist. With that context in mind, his letter to Brad...
There is a feeling of Götterdämmerung around Yahoo of late. It's been intensifying this week with an accelerated pace of executive departures, rumors of a board overhaul and similar rumors of Jerry Yang's imminent shift out of the CEO spot....
Some quick links as I empty tab inventory at the end of the day: The new primetime is all the time: 4.5-million video streams were served during Monday's U.S. Open playoff (USA Today) We're going from 100 embedded devices per...
There is riveting reading in the just-decided case of CSX Corporation vs. Children's Investment Fund. Yes, it's a court filing, but nowhere else are you likely to get so detailed and lucid a discussion of how a major investor works...
Very nice interactive chart from Forbes showing crude oil prices in nominal and real terms from 1861 until today. Fascinating stuff. (Thanks to a reader for pointing it out to me.) [via Forbes]...
Interesting to look at the effect of today's Tiger Woods news -- he is taking the rest of the year off for surgery and rehab -- on Nike, his main sponsor. The story broke on Twitter around 11:30am EST, and...
My friend Jeff has two new missives up about his preparations and playing at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. If you recall, Jeff is a highly successful trader, both on his own and for a large asset...
I don't know do much (any) sports here, but I have to say I'm in awe of Tiger Woods. He won the U.S. Open last weekend despite an ACL rupture and a rehab-related stress fracture of the tibia? That is,...
A few more thinks worth reading this morning as FedEx f***s the market: Is post-9/11 paranoia causing a decline in tall building occupancy rates? (Harvard) Correlation between time spent watching television and on computer is not significant among obese people...
I got into a discussion yesterday with a colleague about financial performance measures. We started off talking about hedge fund managers being selective about such things, and then got to mulling venture capitalists comparing fund performance to public market indices...
Today's looking like another meeting-fest, so a few quick links that others may find interesting: What is the probability of the Large Hadron Collider destroying the universe? (Overcoming Bias) Consumers report feeling worse now than in other deeper economic downturns....
Eye-popping chart up over at The Oil Drum showing the extent of China's current cement fixation. Amazing stuff. What in the world are these people building? And if someone wants to put this into a Google Sheets animated bubble graph,...
You've almost certainly seen it: Every time an analyst on CNBC comes on to talk about a stock there is The Screen. We find out whether they own the stock, their family owns the stock, their firm owns the stock,...
Buried in meetings and travel, so a few quick links: The truce between humans and fires has burst in an era of megafires (American Scholar) Controversial stuff on VGchartz as NPD usurpers in market research (Radar) Special issue on angel...
Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column at TheStreet.com: Inside T. Boone Pickens' Brain (Forbes.com) Some are worried about a crude oil price collapse (New York Post) Microsoft seeks support against Google-Yahoo deal...
Interesting news: MacroMarkets is launching a housing ETF the price of which will tied to housing prices in ten major U.S. metropolitan areas. Of course, because of the way MacroMarkets engineers these things they can only fall 50%, so they...
I love these wonky discussions of "headline" and "core" inflation. The latter excludes inflation in food and energy, which are, of course, the things whose current price increases piss people off more than anything else. With that in mind, my...
While frontier markets in Africa are not yet the new Brazil, let alone the new South Korea, there are ample reasons to be optimistic about the economic resurgence in many African countries. Consider: The number of armed conflicts in Africa...
Words cannot expressed my indifference to the Yahoo/Google deal. Words cannot expressed my indifference to the Yahoo/Google deal. Words cannot expressed my indifference to the Yahoo/Google deal. Words cannot expressed my indifference to the Yahoo/Google deal. Words cannot expressed my...
Two quick media notes for people who have these things called "televisions" -- and I know that many of you don't. For the former group, I am guest-hosting on CNBC's The Call tomorrow morning from 8am to 9am PST. I...
Microsoft is doing some heavy-handed spinning of its new decision to not buy Yahoo at any price. Here is Microsoft from today's release: As stated on May 3rd and reiterated on May 18th Microsoft was not interested in rebidding for...
You have to shake your head at how this Microsoft/Yahoo misadventure has ended up. Yahoo turned its nose up at a huge 50% premium, then Microsoft handled negotiations about as clumsily as a contractor after Friday drinks , and then...
This quote caught my attention today on the ever-illiquid airline industry: Nine small airlines have gone into bankruptcy or stopped operating in the last six months, crushed by the doubling of fuel prices in the last year, but so far...
Here is a great factoid, if not entirely surprising, about the profits exchanges earn from trading versus trading data. The moves by NYSE and Nasdaq OMX come at a time when the exchanges are seeking to generate as much revenue...
Here is the flip side of my earlier chart on oil consumption trends from 1965-2007. This one is a dynamic look at oil production during the period. Don't forget to set the bubble size to "barrels", and you can hover...
Here is a nifty chart showing the declining percentage of global market capitalization made up by the S&P 500. I'd love to see something similar for trading volumes too, but this is still eye-opening. [via Bespoke]...
If you, like me, watch in gob-smacked amazement at the continuing impressive ratings pulled by the fantasy-land real estate shows on TV, then read a piece in today's NY Times. Among other things, it contains this keeper of an unintentionally...
I haven't been mentioning books here as often as I used to, so I'll try to get back on track. I'm just finishing up Rick Perlstein's fast-paced Nixonland, and I highly recommend it. It is either a fascinating look...
I've been messing with the latest data from BP's 2008 Statistical Review of Energy Markets. If I get a moment I'll do more, but here is an animated look (via Google chart widgets) at oil consumption and growth therein across...
Turns out that the Panama canal has been misbehaving in recent weeks, which likely hasn't been helping U.S. oil inventories. Transit times for the canal had ballooned to 10 days, and only now are they down to a more...
Nice of the fine folks at Pensions & Investments magazine to give my site a Silver Medal in their search for the best financial blog. If I have to lose to anyone, I suppose I can tolerate losing to my...
Nattering about Steve Jobs' health, as well as a WSJ story this morning about the cult of personality that grew up around Broadcom's Henry Nicholas, got me thinking about personality premiums at public companies. What U.S. public companies have the...
I'm on record saying that Yahoo and Microsoft would both be better off if their respective CEOs found non-company-related things to do with their time, but I was still interested to see this chart from the new Glassdoor.com service. It...
Missed this earlier today, but the editorial in today's FT by BP CEO Tony Hayward is worth reading in its entirety. He beats up on three myths, as he calls them, largely having to do with the role of speculators...
Here's a thought: Are too many countries playing a kind of economic chicken? Their refusal to control stimulative policies, despite increasing inflation and runaway oil prices, has them in a highly risky position. Many countries are already experiencing double-digit inflation...
A bunch of quick links that I have hanging around: Dana White of UFC on it going public: "I don't need any of the geeks on Wall Street telling me what to do" (YouTube/CNBC) Airlines are at a pricing/cost tipping...
The overnight 7.0% tumble (!) in the Shanghai Composite brings the losses since January in that formerly soaring index to 43.5%. Staggering stuff....
According to an early take on the bill-of-materials cost for the new iPhone 3G, its actual cost could be close to half that of the original Apple iPhone. Granted, this won't entirely support margins in the face of price cuts,...
I have nothing to add to the "Is Steve Jobs sick?" meme -- other than pointing out his gaunt appearance even made Drudge today -- but I'm puzzled at the football field worth of distance between him and Jim Goldman...
In case anyone's in the vicinity of their television tomorrow or Friday, I am on CNBC tomorrow at 10:20 pst talking tech for a short segment. And then I'm on again for an hour on Friday morning, from 8am to...
Nice chart from NPD survey research of how consumers are self-reportedly changing their behavior in response to higher gas prices. A cynic, which I am not (ahem), would point out that the top four changes aren't really much of changes...
Some places with live Apple WWDC coverage this morning. Festivities are already underway with people posting pictures of one another standing in line. Really. MacRumorsLive Tech Trader Daily Engadget Crunchgear TUAW (and a post-event wrap-up too using CoveritLive) If you...
A few quick links as I get ready for a morning of meetings: Using the iPhone and Sense Networks to mine data for fun and profit (GigaOm) The income-adjusted impact of gasoline prices across the U.S. (NYT) The only place...
The best iPhone prediction of what is likely to come out of Apple's WWDC event this morning comes via Engadget: In a surprise move, Steve Jobs says 'But wait: There's more!' instead of his signature 'Just one more thing,' then...
On-point Reuters piece this weekend talking about the above-the-ground issues curtailing oil supplies. The gist: resource nationalism -- countries nationalizing and controlling their domestic oil industries -- is changing the way global oil markets respond to higher prices. After all,...
Here is sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column over at TheStreet.com: Oil-price supernova spurs search for alternatives (Reuters) Time to put investment banking back in its box (Bloomberg.com) Water-Starved California Slows Development (NYTimes.com) Food Allergies...
An eye-opening figure in a weekend LA Times piece about the downward spiral in fortunes for the Hummer:...
An important implicit question in the great interview with Goldman Sachs oil analyst Arjun Murti in Barron's this weekend. What oil price will make U.S. consumers change their behavior enduringly, versus simply adjust temporarily and then return to status quo?...
There is something about the conjunctival redness of this market heat chart (via Finviz) today that is overwhelming:...
Fenwick & West has out its First Quarter Bay Area Venture Capital Survey. Some highlights: Continued increase in Silicon Valley/Bay Area valuations, but rate of increase declines Up rounds exceed down rounds for 17th consecutive quarter - by 72% to...
Buried today, and heading off for quick trip to San Francisco. Back tomorrow. Be nice to one another....
Various and sundry links that I have hanging around: Richard Rainwater temporarily bearish on oil (Time) Nice primer on latest developments in solid-state storage (TBS) Google and the new headquarters indicator (GotAds) Any ex VCs/angels looking for a new gig?...
Two SEC events, one past and one upcoming, worth watching: Chairman Chris Coxe hangs with six former SEC chairs (link) Roundtable on interactive data (link)...
Here is an amusing and glib bit (including yours truly) on the TheStreet.com TV about the 2-for-1 real estate deal in San Diego that has gotten so much press....
Some quick links on a day that has me preoccupied with phone calls, tradespeople, and an untimely flat tire. Traders within 50 miles of New York outperform those further away (SSRN) Long memory and super-fat tails in financial markets (SSRN)...
The July issue of Vanity Fair contains a fascinating oral history of the Internet and the web. It tells how the former came to be, how it begat the latter, how the web boom played out, and it takes us...
Crude oil prices are off 2.7% percent today, touching $124.30. There has been a more or less straight line crude oil decline for two weeks now, dating back to May 21st, with prices down 7.5% in the period. Hmm, May...
I'm glad the courtroom kids in Canada are having a nice time ruling on the BCE private equity buyout. But I'm still puzzled. Ruling that the deal should go ahead strikes me as ruling that gravity should be different: You're...
Turns out kindergarten-ers get socked by the business cycle too: This study examines the impact of the business cycle on the timing of enrollment. I find that during economic downturns kindergarten enrollment increases. To explore a potential mechanism through which...
Further to my post earlier this week explaining why venture capital is an attractive nuisance, we have more evidence today. We now have the fine city of New York launching a New York City Venture Fund. New York City Mayor...
A developer here in southern California is getting lots of attention for a 2-for-1 deal wherein you buy a $1.6m house near Escondido and you get a $400,000 rowhouse for "free". While nothing is for free, and people haven't exactly...
Don't miss the fireworks today as hedge fund manager George Soros testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee. He apparently will say that oil is a bubble, and that commodities are not a legitimate institutional asset class. Right, but are commodities...
Spending a lot of timely lately mulling some issues related to catastrophe finance and spurious correlations. Anyone find interesting patterns in these two photos of burned homes from last October's wildfires in San Diego County? How would you apply risk...
With it having been German solar uber alles for some time now, it is hard not to wonder if the cuts to solar subsidies won't make it Germany "unter alles" for a while now. According to Bloomberg, big cuts are...
Judging by a self-penned essay in Portfolio, corporate ambulance-chaser Bill Lerach meant no harm. Here he is in one of the loopier passages explaining why he plead guilty: So why did I plead guilty? If you haven’t been a defendant...
Being "off the grid" is under-rated. I got to thinking about this while sick recently -- yes, my absence here was a result of a nasty virus and resulting series of opportunistic infections -- and not missing the grid much....
The shipping industry may be slowing a little, but it's still been boom times for five years now in that business. Ships are making a $100,000 a day in profits, and oil rigs are being leased out for $600,000 a...
Apparently Adobe (nee Macromedia) is having a Y2J problem. Check the following from its site: During the month of June 2008, certain product trials that are launched for the first time (regardless of when they were installed) will function for...
Lots of chatter today about the arrival of free, realtime stock quotes on major websites. For example, Google, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC have all added realtime quotes to their services. That's nice. Given that world operates in realtime,...
Venture capital, as an institutional asset class, is pretty much dead. Sure, you can get returns from some smaller and more aggressive funds, but any supposed institutional financial asset class that a) can provably thrive only with teensy amounts of...
Here is a sneak peak at some links from my weekly reading column over at TheStreet.com. A top trader (and good friend) blogs from the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas (Blogspot) What I've learned: J.R. Simplot on money...
Two figures from my weekend reading (via the Economist and FT, respectively) that show the skewed world of fuel subsidies worldwide:...
