Ex-Goldman Programmer Is Arrested Again

I think they are making sure they’ve made their point.

The legal odyssey of a former Goldman Sachs programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, took a surprising turn on Thursday when the Manhattan district attorney charged him with state crimes.

Mr. Aleynikov was charged in state court less than six months after a federal appeals court overturned his conviction on federal criminal charges that he stole secret source code from Goldman’s computers.

Read the rest here.

Since Obama claimed credit for Stuxnet, does this mean he is responsible for spying on your trades?

BOSTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – A new cyber surveillance virus has been found in the Middle East that can spy on financial transactions, email and social networking activity, according to a leading computer security firm, Kaspersky Lab.

Dubbed Gauss, the virus may also be capable of attacking critical infrastructure and was built in the same laboratories as Stuxnet, the computer worm widely believed to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday.

Read the rest here.

Hulbert’s latest article makes this fascinating statement:

The stock market historically has performed better when earnings growth is slower than when it is faster.

Read the rest of the research here.

Jared Woodard from Condor Options breakdowns three investment themes for water then describes why the water investment well may still be dry.

Read the article here.

Bill McBride writes, If I’m correct about house prices bottoming earlier this year – and the CoreLogic report released this morning is another indicator that prices might be increasing a little – a key question is: What will be the economic impact of slightly increasing house prices?

It is a great question, and you’ll find his answers here.

Do stocks lead the economy or does the economy lead stocks?

After getting off to a stellar start at the beginning of the year, markets and the economy have cooled off.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV however, BMO’s Brian Belski says that despite the lack of investor confidence, stocks are set to do well.

Read the rest here.

Knight Capital Group officials raced over the weekend to negotiate a deal to save the crippled brokerage firm as new details emerged showing regulators rebuffed the company’s pleas to be released from errant trades it had booked.

Three hours after a software glitch unleashed a wave of erratic trades on Wednesday, leaving Knight holding at least $4.5 billion worth of securities it hadn’t planned to buy, firm Chief Executive Thomas Joyce was on the phone with Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read the article here.

It is a glorious development…Still, I wish Breitbart was around to see everything he has been able to accomplish.

Occupy Unmasked, a negative take on the Occupy Wall Street movement, will be distributed next month by Magnet Releasing.

In February, billionaire sports and media mogul Mark Cuban was seen hugging Barack Obama at a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser for the president’s re-election bid. On Monday, Cuban announced that one of his companies, Magnet Releasing, will distribute a film that heavily questions Obama, Democrats and the Occupy Wall Street movement the president has praised.

The film, dubbed Occupy Unmasked, is one of a few documentaries that Andrew Breitbart was involved with prior to his death five months ago. The film, from Citizens United Productions, producer David Bossie and director Stephen Bannon, seeks to document potential criminal activity at Occupy encampments and outline the movement’s allegedly radical-left underpinnings. Breitbart is featured prominently onscreen.

Despite the film’s political implications, Cuban told The Hollywood Reporter he remains largely nonpartisan.

Magnet is releasing the movie, Cuban said, “for the same reason we release all of our films: We believe there is a market for it. There has never been a film that I have been involved with that was influenced by any political beliefs I have because I don’t have any political beliefs.”

Nevertheless, conservative writers — primarily at Breitbart.com — quickly noted Cuban’s track record of financial support for Obama and the distribution of left-leaning films such as Jesus Camp and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room through his Magnolia Pictures, and they praised Cuban for rallying around the idea of “more voices, not less” with his embrace of Occupy Unmasked.

Magnet is planning a late-September limited theatrical release day-and-date with VOD.

“This film is controversial, and that’s exactly the reason we want to ensure it can find its audience prior to the November elections,” Cuban said in a statement announcing the deal. “I look forward to our partnership with Citizens United Productions and to getting this film out to the masses.”

Bossie told THR he expects a theatrical and VOD release on Sept. 21 and a DVD rollout — titled Andrew Breitbart Presents: Occupy Unmasked — within two weeks of that.

“We want to educate the American people about the insidious nature of the Occupy movement — what bad guys they are and what their true intentions are and what they want to do to America and to capitalism,” Bossie said.

“This is the first truly conservative film being distributed by a mainstream, independent, liberal-leaning company. Look at what Mark Cuban and Magnolia has released in the past,” said Bannon, whose previous movie was the pro-Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated.  “We’re really excited that Magnet sees the commercial value of the film, because they’re not into proselytizing, they want to make money.”

Source

Jez Liberty: The yo-yo is definitely back! May, June, July have started a new “trend” of a seesawing equity curve for the index – with relatively strong moves. This July rebound means that the index is now back in the “fairly comfortable” positive territory, although it will be interesting to see what August has got in store – especially since the equity curve seems to show signs of turning back down at the end of last month.

Read the rest including detailed analysis of multiple trend-following systems, here.

This is a follow up to TradingMarkets’ A Low Volatility Strategy for Trading High Volatility (h/t The Whole Street) in which they describe a strategy for trading vol-ETFs VXX/XIV based on mean-reversion and the short-term indicator RSI(2).

Read the excellent article here.

The government has estimated an average change of 149,700 jobs in the last 10 July jobs reports, but it has since revised those estimates by an average of 92,900 jobs per year. In other words, the initial estimate is generally off by about 62 percent.

In three of those 10 years — 2002, 2003 and 2007 — the agency wasn’t even correct about whether the economy gained or lost jobs.

So take Friday’s report with a measure of caution.

Read the rest here.

In the wake of the biggest housing bust ever, it’s hard to imagine that we would be walking right back into a housing bubble.

But that’s just the nature of bubbles: you don’t know if you’re in one until after the fact.

Robert Shiller, the economist who famously predicted the dotcom and housing bubbles, was on Fox Business News discussing the Case-Shiller home price index, which recently rose faster than expected.

Charlie Gasparinoreportson the trade that caused markets to go haywire yesterday, and which caused market maker Knight Capital to lose $440 million.

Read about this and  other team Facebook fuckery here.

Hat tip to Allahpundit:

Chik-Fil-A’s owner said they set a new world record for sales today.

Via Zero Hedge:

 The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office said Wednesday that ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars in assumed tax revenues may never materialize due to the continued slide in Facebook’s stock price.

Unexpectedly!

American manufacturing unexpectedly contracted in July for a second month, reflecting a drop in orders that threatens to undercut a mainstay of the recovery.

Read the rest here.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The New York City Fire Department said a large sinkhole opened up Wednesday afternoon in Brooklyn.

The 20-foot-deep by 20-foot-wide hole, which formed at around 6 p.m., is located between 4th and 5th avenues in Bay Ridge.

Read the article and see the picture here.

Faber reminds us that Europe is trading at levels which can only be described as “depressed” and may therefore be setting up for a great mean reversion play.

The strategy produced an excess return of 4.42% annualized for the period 1976–2011. With Europe trading at depressed valuation ratios, mean reversion suggests that the region is poised for long-run outperformance.

Read the article here.

A little commentary from Ritholtz about the Sell Side Consensus Contrary Indicator…

Read the article and see the graph here.