JP Morgan Trade Losses Could Reach $5 Billion… Or More
May 21st, 2012Via: Business Insider:
When JPMorgan first announced that its CIO office had blundered into a huge trading loss, the number was pegged at $2 billion, though the company said it could go higher.
Then the loss was reported to be $3 billion.
And now…
$5 billion or more?
From WSJ:
The nation’s largest bank has said publicly that its losses on the trades have surpassed $2 billion, and people familiar with the matter have said they could over time reach $5 billion.
But the losses could be even bigger if the company sells its positions into a market that has turned against its positions, some traders say. Improvements in the markets could slice the bank’s losses.
Microsoft to Charge Customers $99 to Remove OEM ‘Crapware’
May 20th, 2012This issue is definitely becoming more ridiculous as the profit margins disappear in the commodity PC meat grinder. I spend about fifteen minutes removing crapware from each new Windows based machine (Dell and Lenovo) that I prepare for use by a small company here.
The good news is that uninstalling the stuff is simple using the control panel in Windows, but the fact that people have to do it at all is absurd.
Now, why not hang a $99 price tag out there to remove garbage that shouldn’t be on the machines in the first place?
Innovation!
Maybe Microsoft is trying to grow Apple’s market share.
Via: ZDnet:
Will people be willing to pay Microsoft to remove the crapware that the OEMs install on new PCs? Microsoft thinks they will.
For around two and a half years, Microsoft has been offering what it calls Signature editions of certain PCs. According to Microsoft, these PCs give you faster and easier access to “the applications you want right away without getting sidetracked talking to trialware or other sample software”.
In other words, when you boot up your new PC, instead of having to deal with a blizzard of pop-ups and dialog boxes related to trialware and demo software — collectively known as crapware — the system boots to a clean Windows desktop.
U.S. Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban
May 20th, 2012Ah well, might as well make it official.
Via: Buzzfeed:
An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.
In a little noticed press release earlier in the week — buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations — Thornberry warned that in the Internet age, the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”
The bill’s supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are needed to help fight Al-Qaeda, a borderless enemy whose own propaganda reaches Americans online.
Robert Reich to New College Graduates: ‘You’re F*cked’
May 20th, 2012I’ve excerpted what I think are the key sentences.
Via: Robert Reich:
So much of what was once considered “knowledge work” – the kind that college graduates specialize in – can now be done more cheaply by software. Or by workers with college degrees in India or East Asia, linked up by Internet.
Related: The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps
Ireland May Need Second Bailout
May 19th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
Ireland may be forced into a second bailout by mounting loan losses in its banking system, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
Ireland’s bailed-out banks may need capital to cover as much as 4 billion euros ($5.1 billion) more bad-loan provisions than assumed in stress tests last year, Deutsche Bank analysts David Lock and Jason Napier said in a report published today.
Half of Florida High School Students Fail Reading Test
May 19th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Nearly half of Florida high school students failed the reading portion of the state’s new toughened standardized test, education officials said on Friday.
Results this year from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test showed 52 percent of freshman students and 50 percent of sophomores scored at their grade levels.
Students in the 10th grade must pass the exam in order to eventually graduate but can retake it if they fail.
U.S. Military Provides Healthcare to Rural Alabama
May 19th, 2012Maybe they could get corporate sponsorship for attractive triage tents.
“Brought to you by Brawndo – The Thirst Mutilator.”
How about handing out pHoods that make people obese, give them high blood pressure and rot their teeth, along with the goody bags of drugs?
You know, get your Pepsi, Poptarts and Plavix all at the one stop .mil triage tent.
For added convenience, Uncle $ugar could take the show on the road and set up these big tops in WalMart parking lots!
Ok, I’ll stop now.
Via: AP:
An Air Force dentist pulls teeth in the oil-stained garage where the town’s fire truck normally parks. A reservist in camouflage dispenses free medicine in the police department lobby.
The doctoring Wednesday was part of a military program to provide free health care in poor areas of the South and whose latest mission came to one of Alabama’s most impoverished regions, where the teams have treated more than 12,000 people in less than two weeks. The work helps fill a gap in an area with few doctors and a multitude of medical problems, many of them linked to the obesity that is rampant in the state.
Research Credit: tal
Precrime Raid Uncovers Enemy Combatant Homebrewed Beer Plot
May 19th, 2012Via: CBS:
Annusek was released Friday morning along with four others reportedly suspected of preparing molotov cocktails. At least one other detainee was released several hours later Friday.
Kris Hermes, of the National Lawyers Guild said: “There is absolutely no evidence of molotov cocktails or any other criminal activity going on at this building.”
A tenant who agreed to host the out-of-town protesters says the police did seize his home-brew making equipment, including buckets, beer bottles and caps.
“If anybody would like some, I would like to offer them a sip of my beer,” said William Vassilakis.
The National Lawyers Guild says the warrantless raid violated their clients’ civil rights.
“It is outrageous behavior on the part of the City of Chicago,” said Sarah Gelsomino.
Facebook IPO
May 19th, 2012Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Some emails have been coming in about the Facebook IPO.
I don’t ever trade IPOs. As a 100% technical trader, there’s nothing to go on with an IPO. The values associated with the IPO are arbitrary and there is often VERY strong voodoo at work. These things are usually designed as scams to make the owners and underwriters wealthy, while treating investors as marks (although, this could be said about much of what happens in the market). Often, large blocks of shares will unlock and dilute the thing down the road. On and on.
So, no, I don’t go near IPOs.
With Facebook, though, I did watch a realtime price ticker once they finally opened it. Wow. What a show.
It came out of the gate at around $42 and people just sold the living shit out of it. These were the whale clients at firms who had access to blocks of shares before it was trading, dumping into the crowd.
We knew the issue price was $38, so I watched very carefully as it got down there for the first time. As the price dropped to exactly $38, it held there, absorbing, I don’t know, millions or tens of millions of shares.
“Squid on the bid,” I actually laughed out loud.
Day traders quickly figured out that someone with infinite ammo was defending $38, so the little guys decided to party like it was 1999, taking it long for a couple of bucks, shorting it back down, where the axe would open fire again and not stop until the herd learned that there was only one way to go from $38 on the first day, and it wasn’t down.
If you have tick data for FB from Friday, it would be worth replaying that on your time/sales screen to watch what happened around that $38 level. Get yourself a big bucket o’ popcorn ready because the “unseen hand of the market” put on a good one for those who knew what they were looking at. [Update: Scroll down for video.]
—
Update: It Was Morgan Stanley
I assumed that it was Goldman Sachs (Squid on the bid) holding that $38 level. It turned out to be Morgan Stanley.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Inc. took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss.
The stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook’s underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.
In the end, the bankers succeeded. When trading on Nasdaq ended at 4 p.m., the social network’s stock was up just a hair, 0.6%, at $38.23.
…
Facebook was also hurt by investors’ high expectations of a healthy first-day pop in the price, according to people familiar with the matter. When that pop didn’t happen, it prompted a selloff, these people said.
That’s when Facebook’s underwriters had to step in to support the company’s share price, people familiar with the matter said. In particular, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley MS was assigned to be the deal’s “stabilization agent”—meaning it was the firm’s job to keep the shares above the offering price, these people said. In that role, Morgan Stanley was forced to buy Facebook shares as the price slid toward $38 in order to prevent the price from crossing into negative territory, according to these people.
Morgan Stanley, which led the platoon of 11 Wall Street banks that arranged the listing, had to dip into an emergency reserve of around 63 million Facebook shares—worth more than $2.3 billion at the offer price—to boost the price and create a floor around $38 a share, according to people close to the situation. In successful IPOs, the reserve, known as the “overallotment” or “green shoe,” is used by underwriters to meet soaring demand but in this case, it was used to prop up Facebook’s ailing share price.
The process is common in IPOs and works like this: The underwriters have the extra shares available to either sell or buy for a period after the IPO. If demand is strong, they sell them like all the other shares. But if the stock price falls, they can buy them back, effectively creating a floor for the price.
Facebook’s price began falling almost immediately after shares began trading. It is unclear exactly when Morgan Stanley stepped in, but traders said that the price movements throughout the day, with the shares occasionally touching the IPO price but never crossing below it, suggested the firm was active throughout much of the session.
—End Update—
Update: HFT Tractor Beam in Facebook
Thanks to BW for sending this in.
Via: Premarket Info YouTube Channel:
—End Update—
Spain’s Intelligence Services Investigating Role of British and American Media in Fomenting Financial Turmoil
May 18th, 2012Via: Guardian:
It is the only economy in Western Europe still in recession: property prices are crashing, unemployment has risen to more than 4 million, and some are already muttering that it could end up with a financial crisis worse than Greece’s.
But at least Spain now has someone to blame: the country’s intelligence services are investigating the role of British and American media in fomenting financial turmoil, the respected El País daily reported .
The newspaper said the country’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) was investigating a series of “speculative attacks” against the Spanish economy amid bond market jitters about the country’s growing national debt.
“The (CNI’s) economic intelligence division … is investigating whether investors’ attacks and the aggressiveness of some Anglo-Saxon media are driven by market forces and challenges facing the Spanish economy – or whether there is something more behind this campaign,” El País said.
The report follows claims from prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s socialist government that speculators and newspaper editorial writers had launched a concerted attack.
The Financial Times has been especially critical of the government’s handling of the Spanish economy in recent weeks. It has been joined by the Economist and other publications which have questioned Zapatero’s economic management.
The newspaper said its report was based on “various sources” but said CNI sources declined to comment. Officials at the defence ministry, which runs the CNI, and Zapatero’s Moncloa Palace offices were unable to confirm or deny the report.
Related: They Made a Killing: The Use of Knowledge of Covert Operations in the Stock Market
