First Estimate of Solar Cycle 25 Amplitude – may be the smallest in over 300 years
Comments »Yearly Archives: 2012
High Price Tag For Superbowl Tickets
Comments »The rematch of the 2008 thriller between the Giants and the Patriots is attracting huge interest on ticket resale websites, where thousands of seats originally priced at $900 and $1,200 are selling for $2,500 to $15,000. StubHub even listed a street level suite for $882,375 today, hours after the Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers for a berth in the big game. Full Article
S&P 500 Sector Percentage of Stocks Above 50-Day Moving Average
Gingrich and Gold: He Wants to Get Back to ‘Hard Money’
Charles Kadlec, Contributor
The biggest under-reported story of the South Carolina primary is winner Newt Gingrich’s campaign promise to convene a gold commission to “look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money.”
The only job of the Fed should be to “maintain the stability of the dollar because we want a dollar to be worth 30 years from now what it is worth now,” said Gingrich, pointing out price stability encourages savings and investment because people know what the dollar will be worth when comes time to spend it.
Monetary reform can be the issue that propels Gingrich above the tawdry attacks on his personal life and questions about his reliability all the way to the Republican nomination, because it puts him ahead of Governor Romney and Senator Santorum on a policy that enjoys a clear plurality of support among Republicans, Democrats, blacks, whites, hispanics and individuals across all income categories.
When the Rasmussen polling firm last October asked 1000 likely voters if they were “favorable or unfavorable about returning to the gold standard,” 44% were favorable versus 28% unfavorable. However, when the respondents were asked: Would you “favor or oppose returning to a Gold Standard if you knew it would reduce the power of bankers and political leaders to steer the economy?” those in favor increased to 57% versus only 19% opposed.
All the candidates agree on the need to repeal ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, to reduce the regulatory burden on American business and to cut corporate and personal income tax rates through tax reform. But, Governor Mitt Romney promises to follow in President Obama’s footsteps as a weak dollar President, especially relative to the Chinese. Senator Rick Santorum’s website is strangely silent on the issue of monetary policy, even though the gyrations in the value of the dollar have demonstrably hurt the middle-class and manufacturing more than any other single policy.
Gingrich has seized this opening to build his appeal as the conservative candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama by making monetary reform integral to his campaign to increase the prosperity, security and liberty of the American people.
Read the rest here.
Comments »Davos Dodges the Future of Capitalism
January 25, 2012
If you’ve come to Davos for answers, panels are not the place to start. An hour into the “TIME Davos Debate on Capitalism” there were, by my count, just two or three concrete proposals for creating jobs.
The panel included Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan; Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein; Ben Verwaayen, the CEO of Alcatel-Lucent; Raghuram Rajan, a renowned economist; and Sharran Burrows, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.
The focus of the panel wasn’t quite “Is 20th century capitalism failing 21st century society?” Instead, it was most certainly about non-specific change at the margins. Rajan called for better worker training, Burrows wants corporations to invest a portion of their income into job creation and a VC audience member bemoaned the U.S. immigration policy and a lack of skilled workers. Despite a few exchanges between Burrows and Alcaltel’s Verwaayen, there was almost nothing in the way of real debate.
Take the “too big to fail” banks, for example. When asked about the issue, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan claimed that his bank simply needed to be massive to serve an increasingly global economy:
Read the rest here.
Comments »Billionaires Occupying Davos as Richest 0.01% Bemoan Inequality of Incomes
By Matthew G. Miller – Jan 25, 2012 2:18 AM ET
Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk wants to talk about income inequality. So does Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien and Indian billionaire Vikas Oberoi.
The three are among a contingent of at least 70 billionaires who are joining more than 2,500 business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week, according to a list of attendees and promotional materials obtained by Bloomberg News. A half-dozen of the richest participants, interviewed in advance of the conference, say economic disparity needs to be addressed.
“Many who will be in Davos are the people being blamed for economic inequalities,” Oberoi, 42, chairman of Oberoi Realty Ltd. (OBER), India’s second-biggest real estate developer by market value, said in an interview earlier this month by mobile phone from his car in Mumbai. “I hope it’s not just about glamour and people having a big party.”
Oberoi, who’s attending Davos for the first time, and like- minded billionaires may have trouble finding the subject of income inequality on the agenda. While the forum’s Global Risks 2012 report, published this month, describes “severe income disparity” as the world’s top risk over the next 10 years, tied with fiscal imbalances and ahead of greenhouse-gas emissions, the word “inequality” appears only once in the event’s 130- page program, and that’s in the title of a panel about art.
Read the rest here.
Comments »The End of Mutual Funds is Coming
Pimco is launching an ETF to track the biggest mutual fund, its Total Return Fund. Will this portend the end for mutual funds? We looked into the future to find out, and this 2022 story tells it all.
By Joshua Morgan Brown, contributor
March 1, 2022
FORTUNE — Ten years ago, in March of 2012, the world’s largest mutual fund cloned itself as an ETF. It occasioned a small amount of business media attention at the time, but in hindsight, it was the event that changed everything.
Read the rest here.
Comments »Gold & Silver Miners Love Low-Rate Outlook
Comments »Silver and gold miners just got some great news today after having lost so much luster in recent months. The FOMC has now telegraphed that it expects that interest rates will remain exceptionally low through at least the end of 2014. Full Story.
Foxconn Employee Says 4-Inch iPhone 5 Will Be Released This Summer
Apple is preparing to produce its next iPhone model for release this summer, according to unnamed source at the China-based supplier Foxconn. While a number of varying sample devices are floating around, the next iPhone could include a 4-inch screen with a form factor unlike the current iPhone 4S.
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$POT Increases Dividend
Potash announces its Board has approved an increase of the co’s quarterly cash dividend from $0.07 per share to $0.14 per share, and declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.14 per common share payable May 3, 2012 to shareholders of record on April 12, 2012. (POT) 45.23 +0.80
Comments »McDonald’s Humiliates Itself on Twitter
Today’s Double Digit Winners
No. Ticker % Change
1 CTC 55.00
2 ILMN 46.19
3 ENMD 32.39
4 GENE 31.82
5 SYSW 30.30
6 XFN 29.27
7 TSON 25.66
8 NYNY 19.66
9 GNOM 19.20
10 NUVA 18.61
11 OPTT 18.00
12 LCC 17.32
13 FUEL 17.00
14 PACB 15.95
15 NFLX 14.98
16 TXT 14.62
17 FBN 14.57
18 GSS 13.37
19 NBG 13.17
20 CBPO 12.76
21 GBG 12.62
22 IDI 12.45
23 UXG 12.26
24 COOL 12.09
25 VALU 12.08
26 THM 11.83
27 TAYC 11.83
28 SQNS 11.30
29 USCR 11.29
30 CLR 11.11
31 MRTN 11.09
32 LGF 10.97
33 HOV 10.92
34 RGEN 10.83
35 AVL 10.73
36 GDP 10.69
37 ECA 10.61
38 EVC 10.49
39 SYUT 10.15
40 MDR 10.13
41 ICA 10.12
US Natural Gas ETF
UNG sets record daily trading vol. @ +52.8M as the ETF gains +7% on the day (UNG) 5.93 +0.39 :
Comments »E*Trade Financial Reports a Dismal Challenging Quarter
Sandisk Reports a 19% Jump in Revenue
NFLX Reports Better Than Expected Numbers; $0.73 vs Consensus of $0.56
The Clam Crushes the Bears; Markets Will Never Go Down Again
The markets were weak again this morning. Greek debt talks continue to drag on. The ECB does not want to take a haircut on their Greek Bond holdings. That caused the Euro to be weak and the dollar to be strong into the open.
Then the bearded clam comes out
and says were turning Japanese with low interest rates until at least late 2014.
The dollar goes negative, the Euro goes positive, and equities respond in kind with not just the paring of losses, but a rally to dance on the graves of the bears.
Bot some TZA, ($21.04,) for a trade into the am…even though the markets will never go down ever again. It’s illegal as per the clam and every central bank on the planet.
DOW up 81
NASDAQ up 31
S&P up 11
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEmJ-VWPDM4 450 300]
now for some real music….
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5AUm_xaE9A 450 300] Comments »Treasury Takes Money From Federal Pension Plans to Avoid Debt Problems
3PM Update
Comments »Only an hour remains in today’s trade, so many market participants are preparing for the next round of earnings results. Following the close, E*TRADE (ETFC 9.35, -0.19), Netflix (NFLX 94.47, +1.80), and SanDisk (SNDK 51.80, +0.61) are expected to report. Tomorrow morning brings 3M (MMM 86.31, +0.38), AT&T (T 30.15, +0.06), Bristol-Meyers Squibb (BMY 32.66, +0.41), Caterpillar (CAT 108.65, +2.56), and Colgate-Palmolive (CL 89.19, +0.94).DJ30 +55.17 NASDAQ +25.06 SP500 +7.85 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1500/1.38 bln/978 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2050/503 mln/905
Greenlight’s Einhorn Fined $11 Million in the U.K. for Trading on Inside Information
“David Einhorn and Greenlight Capital Inc. were fined 7.2 million pounds ($11.2 million) by the U.K.’s financial regulator for trading on inside information in Punch Taverns Plc (PUB) in 2009.
Einhorn, Greenlight’s 43-year-old chairman, was told of Punch Taverns’s plan to sell equity by a broker representing the company, theFinancial Services Authority said in an e-mailed statement today. He then sold more than 11 million Punch Tavern shares over the following four days, avoiding losses of about 5.8 million pounds for the fund, the regulator said.
“The big name and the big number” are what the FSA wants, Louise Hodges, a financial-crime defense lawyer at Kingsley Napley LLP in London, said in a telephone interview today. “It looks like it’s more a case of he should have known, rather than he did know,” his actions were illegal.”
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