Free Republic

Following its admission yesterday that it is now buying oil by telling clients to sell Brent to $105-107 a monther after advising anyone who cares Brent was on its way to $130, today we learn that Goldman is actively dumping its prop, pardon, there we go again, flow, FLOW, inventory of oil equities to idiots, pardon, clients. As to how dropping crude prices and thus collapsing profit margins is beneficial for energy producers, that is one we will long be scratching our heads over. From Arjun Murti: Potential SPR release consistent with expectation of tight oil markets: We recommend buying...

Does The Bond Collapse Signal Trouble For Gold And Yen Owners? Joe Weisenthal Sep. 10, 2010, 6:13 AM Once again, if you haven't seen the sharp fall-off in Treasuries, here's a chart. It's violent. Now the bond market is frequently described as being "smart" or a leader of equities and other markets. So if you think the bond market is selling off (and the reason for the selloff is unclear, but it looks like a "risk on" rally, as stocks are going up), then you have to wonder what's in store for holders of yen and gold, which have both...

Wu Qinyi, a 6-year-old girl, has become the youngest shareholder on China's Nasdaq-style growth enterprises board, as the Shaoxing-based Zhejiang Sunflower Light Energy Science & Technology Limited Liability Company (Sunflower) started its initial public offerings (IPO) Monday, Xinhua reported. Wu inherited 62,500 of the shares from her father, the former secretary of Sunflower's board, who passed away in a traffic accident last year. Sunflower's IPO price was at 16.8 apiece, bringing Wu's wealth to 1.05 million yuan, or more than 154,411 U.S. dollars, the report said. She has also broken the record for youngest wealthy shareholder in China, previously set...

RBS: Equity Investors Are The "Worst Cult In History," Prepare For The "Cliff Edge" The Pragmatic Capitalist Jun. 30, 2010, 4:59 AM I’ve read some alarming research in recent weeks and months, but this one takes the cake. RBS is sounding the alarm on risk assets with a call that markets are at risk of falling off the edge of the cliff. They refer to equity investors as the “worst cult in history….which has no basis in fact, or history, but yet seems universally accepted.” (There’s actually a strange truth in that comment). They believe the current downturn could very...

Friday's Controlled Descent in Equities: A Perfect Storm Is Brewing by: Bo Peng June 06, 2010 Friday's US equities market strikes me as being highly unusual. 1. S&P 500 followed a perfect straight channel down through out the day. 2. VIX only touched 36. In other words, there's never any sign of panic or crash, which is quite remarkable when the broad market is down 3-4% across the board; the Dow broke the symbolic 10,000 level, EURUSD broke the symbolic 1.2 level, interbank funding and corporate/muni bond markets have all but dried up, next housing sales are bound to be...

Equity Markets: Why It's A Long Way Down From Here Mike "Mish" Shedlock May. 7, 2010, 3:39 PM While everyone is cheering Friday's rosy job's numbers, the market responded with a big fat "so what?" Meanwhile, I have my eyes on a couple of charts that suggest "It Could Be A Long Way Down From Here" $NDXA200R: Nasdaq 100 Percent of Stocks Above 200 Day Moving Average $SPXA200R: S&P 500 Percent of Stocks Above 200 Day Moving Average (Click on either chart for sharper image.)For more on the jobs report please see Jobs Increase by 290,000; Unemployment Rate Rises to...

Market Collapse Day II: Equities And Commodities Now Falling Hard Vince Veneziani Feb. 5, 2010, 1:51 PM The market continues to tank, with the Dow currently down 135 points to 9868. The NASDAQ is down 23 points to 2102 and the S&P 500 is down 17 points to 1046. It's a total bloodbath. Commodities are down across the board (cattle, however, is up!). Oil is down 3.9% to $70.31 a barrel. Gold is down yet again. It's currently at $1050 an ounce, down $12. Silver is down 3.5% to $14.82 an ounce.

High Exposure To Equities? Be Careful Out There By: The Housing Time Bomb November 01, 2009 I just wanted to hop on tonight and issue a warning to anyone who has participated in this rally or has a high exposure to equities. The price action Friday was absolutely frightening! I guess it was perfect timing considering Halloween was Saturday night. IMO it is time to lighten up considerably if you are on the long side. As most of you know, this blog focuses more on the macro/long term outlook on the economy. I have remained consistently bearish because we have...

NYSE Euronext has launched a major renovation of its stock-trading floor. Over the next 18 months, the exchange operator plans to demolish much of its Main Room where NYSE-listed securities are traded and build large sit-down trading areas for brokers. The goal is to encourage brokers with existing floor operations to situate all or some of their upstairs trading operations on the floor, giving them a unified trading environment and, hopefully, generate more volume for the NYSE. "We are going to create a refreshed look for the floor trading community and create traditional trading desks," Bob Airo, a senior vice...

U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Dallas, a member of the House Republican leadership, is accusing President Barack Obama of intentionally driving up unemployment and dampening stock prices in a bid to consolidate power. Sessions told The New York Times that the administration intends to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy. And he asserted that the Obama agenda is “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.” White House aides declined to comment. Other Democrats denounced Sessions for accusing the president of economic sabotage. Rep....

Buyers have steadily taken the stock market upward for almost the entire session. The major indices ran into a short bout of selling pressure after the opening bell, but stocks have managed to trend higher ever since. At its low, the stock market was down 0.4%. The tone remains upbeat, but the major indices seem to have stalled a bit. The Dow is working to break above the 9,000 mark and hold the gain, while the Nasdaq is fighting to hold gains above 1625. The S&P 500 is working its way over 930.

The shares of seven publicly held newspaper companies on Friday plunged to the lowest point in modern history in what Alan Mutter at his Reflections of a Newsosaur site calls "perhaps the worst single trading day ever for the industry." Here is Mutter's report: --McClatchy (MNI), Lee Enterprises (LEE), and GateHouse Media (GHS) hit all-time lows when their shares skidded respectively to $4.85, $3.11 and $1.55 in the opening hours of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Also hitting new lows today were: --Gannett (GCI) at $17.42, the lowest point since 1990. -- Media General (MEG) at $10.34, the...

BOND VIGILANTES POUNCE ON PRICES...WHILE CONSIDERABLY MORE UPSIDE STILL LEFT IN EQUITIES Friday May 18, 2007 By Mike Paulenoff MPTrader.com What a week! My sense is that the watershed event that occurred was the plunge in the bond market (climb in yield), which I suspect is the beginning of a relentless back-up on the long end of the curve in response to the "inflationary" environment exuded by equities and commodities that has resulted from the constant creation of money and easy credit for years. In other words, up until this week, it seemed to me that the bond market was...

If one had to pinpoint the birth of globalization, a good bet would be Aug. 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon dropped the U.S. dollar's convertibility to gold. This led to an irreversible breakdown of fixed exchange rates, initiated the modern era of globalization, and provided the rationale for the launch of financial futures by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). ...As the world left the gold standard in favor of the information standard, the U.S. had the so-called "first mover advantage." For the next three decades we dominated the world's capital markets, dwarfing everyone. With derivatives, the CME, Chicago Board...

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Investors are increasingly positive on euro zone equities and ever more negative on their US counterparts because of a more attractive valuation and a stronger earnings outlook, according to a survey by Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch's fund managers survey for April found that a net 18 pct of those polled think the US is the most overvalued equity market in the world, while a net 26 pct believe that the euro zone is the most undervalued. A net 38 pct of managers moreover believe the outlook for earnings is brightest in the euro zone, while 42...

Sun Microsystems Inc. returned to solid profitability Tuesday after years of red ink, easily exceeding Wall Street's tepid expectations thanks to the growing popularity of its corporate computers and its newest operating system. But many analysts remained wary of the notoriously cyclical company. They say Wall Street will only be convinced of Sun's turnaround when it posts healthy profits for at least two consecutive quarters. For the three months ended Dec. 31, the server and software maker earned $126 million, or 3 cents per share, up from a net loss of $223 million, or 7 cents per share, in the...

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Christopher Cox told a Senate panel his agency is currently investigating more than 100 companies for possible fraudulent reporting of stock option grants. The total is 25 percent more than the the agency said it was probing a month ago. "The companies are located throughout the country, and include Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller [companies]," Cox told the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. "They span multiple industry sectors." Cox told reporters in San Francisco on July 20 when he announce the indictment of former Brocade Communications Systems Inc. executives in connection...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors bid stocks higher Wednesday after the Labor Department reported tame inflation figures for the second straight day, boosting Wall Street's confidence that the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates steady. The consumer price index, which measures price increases at the retail level, rose 0.4 percent in July, slightly higher than June's 0.2 percent increase. But with food and fuel prices removed, so-called "core" CPI rose just 0.2 percent, less than the 0.3 percent economists expected. Combined with Tuesday's producer price index, which showed a decline in core wholesale prices, the data points to a drop...

Vonage is looking to raise $250m as part of an IPO, the US-based VoIP outfit revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The cash will be used to fund the continued marketing of the service, which boasts some 1.4m subscribers. According to documents lodged with the SEC, the broadband telephony outfit lost $190m in the first nine months of last year on the back of revenues of $174m. Separately, Vonage announced that founder Jeffrey Citron is to take on a new role as chairman and chief strategist. He'll be dabbling in areas such as developing new...

Following sharp decline yesterday and poor reports and forecasts from Intel, Yahoo, and IBM (revenue miss). If it's any consolation, gold bullion is down to match.

Chinese solar firm raises $396 million, making it the top tech IPO so far this year.Shares of Chinese solar company Suntech Power jumped nearly 41 percent in the firm’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, reflecting high investor interest in solar power. The shares closed up $6.20 to $21.20 after pricing at $15 per share, which was at the top of the range that the company had raised Monday. The first day pop gives the company a market cap of about $2.3 billion. The IPO raised $396 million, with about $300 million going to the company. The...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Is Google Inc.'s incandescent stock a golden opportunity or fool's gold? Investors have been arguing that question since Google's initial public offering in August 2004. But the stakes have grown progressively higher over the past 11 months as the online search engine maker's shares zoomed past $200, then $300 and, most recently, $400, as the company firmly established itself as the gold standard in Internet advertising. ``With every $100 that goes by, the risk/reward ratio gets less appealing,'' said Hoefer & Arnett analyst Martin Pyykkonen. Just seven years after the company's inception in a Silicon Valley...

There are lots of bearish sentiment around. There are no lacks of bulls either. The stock market all around the world on the basis of constant dollar did pick in late eighties led by that of Japan. It is a mega bull cycle that started with the Roman Empire. Since then world never really saw a long term bull market. The market may have finally started topping out in that 2500 year cycle. But such mega cycles take an enormous time to top out. For a cycle that started 2500 years back, it is prudent to assume that it will...

As part of an effort to rehabilitate his image, Henry M. Blodget, the disgraced former Internet-stock analyst, has started a blog called Internet Outsider. In a "personal note" post on the site, www.internetoutsider.com, Mr. Blodget, who was forced out of the securities business as part of his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, writes that he is grateful "that so much of the feedback has been positive." "Of course," he allows, "some of the feedback has not been positive." By which he means it has been negative in the extreme. Much of the critical reader comment on his blog...

NEW YORK - Vonage Holdings Corp., the biggest provider of Internet-based telephone service, is planning to go public, according to published reports. The Edison, N.J.-based company is looking to raise $400 million to $600 million and plans to register its deal with the SEC within the next six weeks, according to The Daily Deal. Details of the plan were also reported by The Wall Street Journal. Vonage declined to comment about the reports. The company has in recent years privately raised about $380 million from venture capital firms including NEA Enterprise Associates of Baltimore, Meritech Capital Partners of Palo Alto,...

ASPEN, Colo.--Technology companies may escape the most harmful effects of accounting changes that force the expensing of stock options, one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capitalists predicted on Tuesday. Tom Perkins, a legendary venture capitalist and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said at a dinner gathering here: "We'll have to find some way around it. There probably is a way...I suspect something will come up." In December, the Financial Accounting Standards Board released its final regulations on expensing, which required companies to subtract the cost of stock options from their earnings. That disproportionately affects technology companies by...

Shares in PartyGaming PLC, the world's biggest online poker company, rose 6.5 percent Thursday as trading was opened to public investors. The stock was at 148 pence ($2.65) in afternoon dealing on the London Stock Exchange, well above its offer price of 116 pence at Monday's start of trading for institutional investors. The market value of the Gibraltar-based company now exceeds 5.7 billion pounds ($10.21 billion), making it worth more than British Airways PLC and putting it on par with Marks & Spencer. Analysts had originally expected an offering that would value the company at close to 5.5 billion pounds...

General Motors Bars Senior Executives From Buying, Selling Company Stock Indefinitely DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp. has forbidden senior executives and other employees with access to internal financial information from buying or selling company stock indefinitely, a spokeswoman for the automaker said Monday. GM spokeswoman Toni Simonetti said a memo was sent to senior executives May 24 barring them and some of their employees from buying or selling stock. Simonetti said she didn't know how many people were affected, but the company has about 400 senior executives. Simonetti said GM regularly has blackout periods when employees aren't supposed to...

Thursday, June 16, 2005 Establishment Beginning to Pay Attention Author: Jim Sinclair Since May the establishment has quietly begun to listen and will continue to do so. What I told you would transpire has in fact happened. You know this by the courage of Mr. Peter G. Peterson, a man of such stature that when speaking on financial TV he cannot be interrupted by producers who don't like his script. That is not to say that the drop dead, beautiful, central-casting interviewer did not try to place words in this gentleman's mouth. That strategy fell flat on its face. Mr....

RIYADH -- Saudis and other residents of the oil-rich Gulf kingdom have gone on a stock-buying spree, hoping for quick gains but also inflating the Arab world's most capitalized bourse. Some are winding up small businesses and using the money to snap up shares, as the bourse's vagaries become the talk of the town. The new national craze has even created its own jargon, notably hammour - the big fish allegedly manipulating the market to swallow small fries. "Had the Islamic nation adhered to the real meaning of an Islamic economy, it would not have strayed from the right path...

'One way to expand the number of traders is to enhance the use of online trading'BEIRUT: Lebanese and Arab stock exchanges should reach out to millions of expatriates around the world to boost trading in local stock exchanges, Economy, Trade and Finance Minister Damianos Kattar said on Monday. "One way to expand the number of traders is to enhance the use of online trading. This method will surely encourage Arab expatriates to buy and sell stocks," Kattar told a conference on Arab stock exchange in Beirut. According to the minister, the Beirut Stock Exchange (BSE) will have an additional one...

Assume that City slickers are dumb and their effects on markets can be reproduced, according to complexity theory. Roger Highfield reportsYou might be forgiven for wondering if the best way to invest in stock markets is to consult a chimpanzee first - it has long been suspected that City hotshots are just lucky, overpaid fools who work in an industry where chance rules. Aping it: buying and selling shares is as much a matter of luck as rational thought Now science is beginning to support the idea that randomness, not rationality, exerts surprising sway over the markets. The insights have...

World's most widely watched market gauge posts biggest gain in four months; falling oil helpsNEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A broad stock rally Wednesday revived a battered market, giving the Dow its best one-day point and percentage gain in four months.The Dow Jones industrial average (up 135.23 to 10,540.93, Charts) jumped about 135 points, or 1.3 percent, according to early tallies. The gain marked its best single-session advance since Dec. 1.The broader Standard & Poor's 500 (up 16.05 to 1,181.41, Charts) index rose 1.4 percent, while the Nasdaq composite (Research) added 1.6 percent.A big drop in oil prices and a bounce...

NEW YORK -- Last week marked five years since the stock market bubble finally began to burst. The Nasdaq hit its all-time high on March 10, 2000, and then began a steady plunge that marked the birth of a long bear market. The long bull market that preceded it was a remarkable time, but also a costly one. On the plus side, we got a technology whose transformational effects can't be overstated. On the down side, the dawn of the Internet also spawned the dot-com craze, one of the loopier periods in American business history and proof positive that so...

HA NOI — The Hanoi Securities Trading Center (HASTC), Viet Nam’s second stock exchange, opened yesterday in an event that leaders hope will help Viet Nam’s transition into a market economy. At the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the market would be critical to helping the country’s transition and its equitisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs). "Stock markets are indispensable for Viet Nam as the country is accelerating its integration into the global economy and privatisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs)," said Dung. He added that after the launching of the first stock market in HCM City four...

I spent a good chunk of the 1990s writing mutual fund advertising, so much of it that the required caveats and footnotes still trip off the fingers: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." "The Fund is offered only by prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing or sending money." Financial services advertising, you see, is ringed about by careful regulation. You can't cherry pick and show off only one good year. You can't make false comparisons. And so forth. One home truth came through that long experience, and I share it here with doubters and fear-mongers who...

To no one's surprise, the AARP has come out against the Bush administration's plan to reform Social Security. Since last Tuesday, AARP has been running full-page ads in major newspapers warning against adding personal accounts to Social Security. The most disingenuous ad (so far) appeared last Friday. It shows a thirty-something couple above words that read, "If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots." Clearly, the AARP is betting (pun intended) that enough Americans can be fooled into believing that investing in the stock market is no different from spinning a roulette wheel. To see how wrong that is,...

WASHINGTON -- 'Tis the season to be giving. But when it comes to purported stock tips ending up on your fax machine, you better keep your cash in your stockings. First came the e-mails. Then there were the voicemails. Now, the new danger lurking for unsuspecting investors are faxes. The scheme always works the same way: You're the unintended recipient of a hot stock tip about an unknown company about to be discovered. Earlier in December, handwritten faxes addressed to a "Dr. Mitchel" have began arriving on fax machines across the nation, begging the doctor to turn on his cell...

Stocks closed sharply higher Tuesday with the S&P 500 regaining the 1200 level while an upgrade of Intel helped lift the Dow to a new 2004 high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 100 points, or 0.9%, to 10,762, passing its previous 2004 closing high of 10,737 touched in February and the best close since June 2001. The S&P 500 climbed 11 points, or 0.9%, to 1205 -- just shy of its recent 40-month high -- while the Nasdaq added 23 points, or 1.1%, to 2150. The 10-year Treasury note was recently up 2/32 to yield 4.17%, while the dollar...

Blue chips soar to 31/2 year highs Intel upgraded; Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley top view By Susan Lerner, CBS.MarketWatch.com ENEW YORK (CBS.MW) - Blue chips climbed to their best levels since June 2001 Tuesday afternoon as investors stepped up to buy stocks in the hopes of capitalizing on a year-end rally. CBS MARKETWATCH TOP NEWS U.S. stocks climb; blue chips at 3 1/2 year high Pfizer shares enjoy bounce following naproxen warning IAC Interactive surges on Expedia spin-off plan Morgan Stanley fourth-quarter net income up 18% Chain-store sales pick up in last days before Christmas Leading the charge was Intel...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rallied on Tuesday, with the Dow touching its highest intraday level for 3 1/2 years, helped by a rebound in beaten-down drugmaker Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , while tech stocks got a boost from a broker upgrade of Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) . The Dow Jones industrial average was up 96.87 points, or 0.91 percent, at 10,758.47, after climbing to 10,765.27, the highest the Dow has been since June 14, 2001. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 10.69 points, or 0.89 percent, at 1,205.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index...

OLD JOESen. Joe Lieberman has already turned down two jobs offered by President Bush, so why not go for a trifecta? Lieberman again tops a list of folks being considered for head of the new national intelligence directorate, a job that Lieberman might actually have to seriously consider. He smartly turned down the Homeland Security chief job, and the U.N. ambassadorship just wasn't big enough for him, even if he would have been given an opportunity to work on the Middle East peace process a bit. But Lieberman did take on a large role in shaping the national intelligence legislation,...

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was elected Tuesday to serve on the board of directors of prominent investment company Berkshire Hathaway. In doing so, Gates will serve as an advisor to longtime friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. In a statement, Gates said he hoped his years of experience at Microsoft would prove to be of value to Berkshire's shareholders. "I am delighted and honored to have been asked to serve on the board of this very successful company," Gates said. Gates also serves on the board of Bothell, Wash.-based biotech company Icos. Despite being close to Gates, Buffett has...

The worst month for stocks is upon us. Will it live up to its reputation this year?NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When Wall Streeters get back to work next week, they may quickly end up longing for the lackluster trading of August: September is typically the worst month of the year for stocks. Since 1950, if you'd bought and held stocks only in September, you'd be a pretty pitiful money manager indeed, having lost 38 percent of your money, according to data compiled by the Stock Traders Almanac. The average September loss has been 0.7 percent, while the average for...

SHORTING the stocks of some of the largest companies in the United States is about to become easier. But shorting the stocks that some investors view as the most overvalued will become more difficult. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a new rule on short selling yesterday that for the first time in decades will allow some stocks to be sold short even though the price is falling. The original rule, which let investors sell most stocks short only when share prices were rising, was adopted during the Depression at a time when short sellers were blamed by some for...

Going into earnings season, the time of year when most companies declare their quarterly revenues and earnings and make projections about what they'll do in the future, investors watched Yahoo, the Internet portal, very closely. Along with eBay, Amazon.com, and a few other names, Yahoo had survived the Internet bubble market of the 1990s, become a real company, and started earning real money. Its market capitalization is $27.7 billion, it has 650 million or so shares outstanding, and it trades an average of 12.7 million shares a day. Granted it trades at 100 times earnings, but that's an Internet stock...

Like Lucy in the classic TV series, Alan Greenspan has some 'splaining to do. The Federal Reserve chairman needs to come clean before the Treasury market, that amorphous yet incredibly powerful body that is increasingly jittery about his intentions. Day one of Greenspan's two-day congressional testimony presumably didn't go according to plan: Treasury prices plummeted Tuesday, sending yields sharply higher. Stocks also slipped, but their decline was tame compared with a more-than 1-point decline by the benchmark 10-year note and a more than 2-point fall for the 30-year bond. Nonetheless, this increase in long-term bond yields indicates the yield curve...

Investor Asks Warren Buffett: Don't Fund Abortions ...It's Just Plain Bad For Business 5/10/02 Omaha, NE -- The world is running short of people and a major corporation shouldn't be giving away stockholders' money to groups that support abortion and other forms of population control that will inevitably reduce the number of the company's potential customers, a population research expert warns. In a resolution submitted to Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire-Hathaway, and the company's 10,000 shareholders, Population Research Institute president Steven Mosher proposed that the company stop making charitable donations, especially to such abortion industry groups as Planned Parenthood, which...