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13 Signs of a Bull Market

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Mitt Romney’s candidacy has pushed the private equity industry to the fore of the political campaign. Romney isn’t basing his candidacy on his technocratic tenure as the governor of Massachusetts. No, he’s fleeing from it the way Captain Schettino fled the stricken Cost Concordia. Rather, Romney is banking on his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital — experience that his given him the knowledge to fix the ailing U.S. economy. What the country really needs right now, he argues, is a p.e. guy in the White House.

Detractors and supporters of both Romney and the private equity industry have tossed out a range of arguments, rhetoric and data to support their contentions. And if Romney becomes the nominee, as seems likely, it’s also likely that private equity terms of art such as “carried interest,” “dividend recapitalizations,” and “Further Lane” will fall into common usage. As the debate heats up, here are a few things worth keeping in mind.

Private Equity Pros are People. Private equity executives are not soulless, rapacious monsters who have no concept of how most Americans live. Well, not all of them. In twenty years working in New York, I’ve gotten to know a bunch of them. I’ve interviewed most of the biggest names, profiled some, visited their (massive) homes, observed them in their native habitats (Davos, Aspen, charity galas), shared breakfast with a couple who were interested in hiring me as a ghostwriter (I’ll never tell), and a lifetime ago worked as a research assistant for a book about one of the industry’s pioneers. Private equity firms contain the same mix of personalities and types you find elsewhere in the financial industry, and in the corporate world, albeit with better clothes and a lot more money. There are: Republicans and Democrats; sweethearts and world-class putzes; connoisseurs and philistines; public-minded spirits and greedy pigs. In and of itself, the industry isn’t evil or virtuous. It’s neither the savior of American capitalism nor the trigger of its demise. It just is.

Doing it for the People. Private equity depends largely on other people’s money. And in many instances those “other people” are what Mitt Romney might refer to as the common folk, if you will. From its inception, the private equity industry has relied disproportionately on public employee pension funds for its capital. Oregon’s state employee pension plan was one of the first major backers of Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts and remains a huge investor. Look at the annual report of the California Employees Retirement System. The section that details the pension funds’ holdings in “Alternative Investment Management” — i.e. private equity and hedge funds — runs 12 pages and amounts to tens of billions of dollars. (You can see it by clicking on the tab that says “Corporate Restructuring” and then scrolling down). The 2010 CALPERS report shows about $800 million invested in the Blackstone Group’s corporate restructuring funds alone. So, yes, private equity firms are trying to make money for themselves, but they’re making more money for DMV clerks in San Bernardino and teachers in Portland. The symbiosis between public employee pension funds and private equity firms is one of the greatest unacknowledged ironies in modern finance.

Whatever Works. Like Mitt Romney, private equity pros tend to be highly pragmatic. They don’t invest based on an ideology, or a social goal, or a cause. (When they do — i.e., when former Reagan official David Stockman set up Heartland Industrial Partners, aimed at reviving Midwestern industrial companies — they tend to strike out.) All this talk about whether private equity firms, or Bain, or Romney, created or destroyed jobs is irrelevant. Private equity firms exist to make profits. If they can do so by taking a small business and making it much larger and hiring tens of thousands of people, that’s what they’ll do. If they determine that the only way to turn a profit is to restructure and fire people, that’s what they’ll do. Raise wages or lower wages. Offshore or onshore. Innovate or milk existing technologies. Pollute the environment or clean it up. They’re like the honey badger. They don’t care. Methods and optics don’t matter. Only the result. Contributing to the public good and being a useful citizen is something you do with the fortune you’ve made in public equity.

Free Enterprise? Try Fee Enterprise. One of the most ludicrous parts of the private equity debate has been Mitt Romney’s efforts to equate an attack on Bain Capital with an attack on the free enterprise system itself. Yes, private equity firms rely on, and in some ways personify, the free market system. But there are plenty of aspects of the business model that Adam Smith might not recognize. In theory, private equity firms live and die based on the returns they generate for investors. They take 20 percent of the profits. Free Enterprise-y!

But fees that are totally unrelated to performance also play a very large role in the business model, especially for the largest firms. Private equity firms charge investors annual management fees of about two percent. The Blackstone Group says it had $37 billion in fee-earning assets in private equity funds as of September 30, 2011. In other words, Blackstone will collect a minimum of $740 million in fees — whether it has an up year or a down year. (Not so Free Enterprise-y!) And that’s just the beginning. Some private equity firms charge fees to investors when they execute a deal. Others charge fees to the companies they buy for providing management and oversight services. Again, these fees are paid regardless of performance. (Even less Free Enterprise-y!)

Here’s something that is not at all Free Enterprise-y. To a degree, the incentives of the investment firms and their clients are aligned: The firm gets to keep 20 percent of the profits it generates. No profit, no performance fee. But there’s no loss-sharing to go along with the gain-sharing. If a private equity fund makes a series of bad investments, the outside investors’ downside is unlimited. But firms don’t “share” the losses with their clients, or refund fees.

Some Call it Profits. Private equity funds also have a funny way of defining investment returns. In theory, the model is rather simple: buy low, fix a company, build a business, make it more attractive to investors, sell high and bank the profit. It can take several years, which is why most private equity funds lock up their investors for several years. Historically, that’s how the most successful firms have conducted business. That’s capitalism. And it can be very hard work.

But in recent years, the industry frequently looked for an easy way out. Try this on for size: Buy a company for $200 million, putting $100 million down and borrowing $100 million. Once you gain control of the company, have it issue $200 million in debt and then use the proceeds to pay a dividend to the new owners — i.e., you. Boom: a 100 percent return, $100 million in profits. But it has nothing to do with the company’s performance. This is known in the trade as a “dividend recapitalization.” Bain Capital did it several times, and so has every other private equity firm. The problem? Well, if the underlying business sours, or if market or economic trends turn down, companies may find they can’t service the new debt and wind up filing for bankruptcy. And that causes all sorts of problems for lenders, employees, suppliers and the government. Besides, this isn’t really capitalism or investing. It’s just borrowing money and calling it income. Private-equity-backed companies that do dividend recapitalizations and then go bust are no different than homeowners who take home equity lines of credit on their already mortgaged homes, treat it as income, spend it elsewhere, and then walk away from the mortgage.

Failure is an Option. A certain percentage of private-equity deals fail. Not every investment works out. Many succeed, some tank. That’s a trope Romney has sounded time and again, and will likely continue to do, in his defense. But here’s the thing: In many of these instances, the investments failed because the private equity backers were simply unwilling to make the sort of efforts that other business owners and consumers do to make their financial ventures succeed. To a degree, the viability of the industry relies on being able to walk away.

Some of the people who fall behind on mortgages or other financial obligations default right away. But most people don’t. They do what is necessary to stay current. They cut spending elsewhere, stop saving, sell a car, or silverware, or jewels, or borrow from their 401(K)s, or put their ski house on the market. Private equity firms don’t do this. Let’s say a portfolio company runs into trouble, and needs $50 million to stay current on its debt, or to meet pension obligations. The company itself may not have the cash. But the guys who own it — the fund, the firm, the individuals behind the firm — certainly do. Cerberus, the private equity firm that sent Chrysler spiraling into bankruptcy, is run by a multi-billionaire, Kenneth Feinberg. Most of the private-equity-backed companies that filed for bankruptcy could have been saved. Their owners could have deployed unused cash in their funds, or sold successful investments within funds to provide new capital. Partners could have tapped into their own massive resources to help. But that’s not how they roll. Private equity is a highly unsentimental business, and one in which it is perfectly acceptable not to meet financial obligations. Private equity almost never throws good money after bad. And so we have this recurring dichotomy of companies controlled by private equity firms failing, refusing to make debt payments, ripping up leases, cutting off employees’ health insurance, and puking pension obligations onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. — all while their owners buy new jets, make splashy charitable donations, or spend millions running for elected office.

Taxing Issue. Finally, the special tax treatment that private equity receives is a joke. And it helps explain why Romney is a problematic messenger for a party that wants to cut taxes on the wealthy while reducing services to the middle class. Private equity firms take 20 percent of the profits they generate as a fee. It’s a fee they get paid for putting other people’s money at risk. But thanks to the “carried interest” loophole, it’s taxed at the low capital gains rate of 15 percent. In other words, the government treats this income as if they were putting their own money at risk. As one well-known capitalism-hating, left-wing class warrior tweeted the other day: “Can understand [Occupy Wall Street’s] resentment of extreme inequalities, but how about fund managers only paying cap gains tax without risking a penny?” Oh wait, that was Rupert Murdoch.

You have to feel for Romney. He didn’t make the rules, or invent the industry. He went into an established field, performed remarkably well, went into public service, and benefits from a tax regime that others put into place. And I don’t expect that, if elected president, he would run the country the way private equity firms run their own business. In the “quiet rooms” where he wants income inequality to be discussed, I’m sure he’d agree that it wouldn’t kill the industry to be taxed at a higher rate.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. That certainly applies here. But if the game is so unlovable, do you really want to put one of its best players in charge of setting the rules?

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The big Wall Street banks have achieved so much control over their industry that they amount to an illegal cartel, says William Cohan, a former banker and the author of many books and articles about Wall Street, including “Money And Power,” a book about Goldman Sachs.

The pricing power and profits that the big banks have is similar to that of Standard Oil, Cohan argues, referring to the gigantic oil monopoly owned by John Rockefeller that was broken up a century ago.

Cohan observes that prices of transactions like IPOs and M&A deals are basically fixed across the industry and produce humongous profits. And smaller “boutique” firms are not able to compete on price because they lack the distribution and influence of the biggest banks.

Cohan believes that the government should intervene, breaking the cartel’s stranglehold. He notes, however, that a prior case brought against the industry 60 years ago failed. And even if the government were to successfully intervene, the specific remedy is not clear.

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Another one bites the dust.

Companies fail all the time, but the last few years have seen an unusual parade of marquee names that once transformed or dominated their industries headed for bankruptcy court: General Motors, Chrysler, Blockbuster, Borders, Circuit City, and of course Lehman Brothers.

Now Eastman Kodak has declared bankruptcy, yet another victim of a technology revolution that moved too fast for a big, lumbering firm to keep up with. Kodak, of course, dominated consumer photography for more than a century, first with its inexpensive cameras and then with its ubiquitous film and photographic paper. For years, Kodak was one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

As with many fading giants, Kodak’s demise took place over decades and was imperceptible at first. Kodak invented the digital camera in the 1970s, yet sat on the technology, fearful that filmless cameras would cannibalize its core business. Competitors such as Fuji, meanwhile, nibbled away at its market share, often undercutting it on price. By the early 2000s, digital cameras finally became affordable and commonplace, and film was out.

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Yesterday on Breakout we featured Yossi Beinart, the CEO of a company trying to get CFTC clearance to legalize the trading of futures contracts on the outcome of the 2012 elections. Beinart’s firm would allow traders to, in effect, wager on the winner of the Presidency as well as control of the House and Senate.

Suffice it to say Beinart’s is a controversial idea.

I sat down with my co-host, Matt Nesto to debate the merits of “wagering” on political events in general.

Taking the con side of the debate, Nesto’s arguments are as follows:

*The CFTC has a spotty, at best, record of regulating the markets that exist today. They have enough to do without adding a gimmick like election futures.

*Capping the nominal value of contracts purchased at $250,000 in itself invalidates the argument of the trading activity adding any economic value. Firms looking to “hedge” various outcomes need a much higher limit to impact their economic fate. Individuals have no way to justify bets of a quarter of a million on election results.

*There’s no economic need being met here; it’s simply wagering.

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The Baton Rouge dinner party in early 1860 had been enjoyable, but as it went on William Tecumseh Sherman couldn’t help but hear his name mentioned repeatedly down at the table’s far end. He suspected it had something to do with his position as superintendent of the newly formed Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (today’s Louisiana State University). He had held the post for a few months and was well regarded by those who knew him personally, but many who didn’t were concerned that the state’s only college was run by a Northerner whose congressman brother was seen across the South as an abolitionist.

The party’s host, Gov. Thomas O. Moore, finally invited Sherman to join the discussion. “Won’t you speak your mind freely on this question of slavery, that so agitates the land?” Moore asked. “You are under my roof,” he added, “and, whatever you say, you have my protection.” His guest wouldn’t need it. Sherman is remembered today mainly as the Union general who led marches through Georgia and the Carolinas that crippled the Confederacy’s war-making capacity and demoralized its people. But that evening, surrounded by some of Louisiana’s leading citizens, Sherman would prove how Southern his views on slavery were.

“The people of Louisiana were hardly responsible for slavery, as they had inherited it,” Sherman assured his audience. Further, while the well-being of field slaves might depend on “the temper and dispositions of their masters and overseers,” Sherman thought slaves who worked in family homes were “probably better treated than any slaves on earth.” When he explained that he favored keeping slave families intact and allowing slaves to read and write in order to increase their value as property, a fellow guest pounded the table in excited support of Sherman’s remarks. A lively but congenial debate ensued that left Sherman feeling relieved, “because at the time all men in Louisiana were dreadfully excited on questions affecting their slaves.”

Sherman’s comments shouldn’t surprise us, nor the fact that they were so well received. Though born in Ohio, Sherman had spent much of his life among Southerners. In 1836 he entered West Point, where the emphasis on hierarchy and obedience would prepare Sherman well to move later among aristocratic Southerners. Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman spent the next six years at postings across the Deep South, in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. It was especially while in Charleston that Sherman got to know the South’s aristocracy, attending parties and going on deer hunts along the Cooper River.

Sherman resigned from the Army after a posting in California and embarked on what turned out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful business career. With the help of old Army friends, he was hired in the summer of 1859 to head the nascent Louisiana military academy.

At Governor Moore’s dinner party, in fact, Sherman had if anything actually understated his views. For one thing, Sherman was a white supremacist. “All the congresses on earth can’t make the negro anything else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man,” Sherman wrote his wife in 1860. “Two such races cannot live in harmony save as master and slave.” In a letter to his antislavery brother-in-law about plans to bring his family to Louisiana, Sherman crassly joked about becoming a slave master himself. Making light of the problems he anticipated in keeping white servants, he wrote that his wife Ellen “will have to wait on herself or buy a nigger. What will you think of that — our buying niggers?”

Blinded by his implacable racism, Sherman could see no worthwhile moral or legal debate to be had over slavery. History had forced this institution on the South, Sherman thought, and its continued prosperity depended on embracing it. “Theoretical notions of humanity and religion,” he flatly declared, “cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with.” Further, Sherman believed that slavery benefited both races. In 1854 he assured his brother that blacks thrived in the Southern heat and later told David F. Boyd, one of his professors at the Louisiana military academy and eventual friend, that he considered slavery in the South “the mildest and best regulated system of slavery in the world, now or heretofore.”

Still, slavery did trouble Sherman in one way: He grew increasingly worried that the political fight over it would threaten the stability of the Union. However, while he occasionally singled out Southerners for overreacting to antislavery sentiment — once writing that they “pretend to think that the northern people have nothing to do but steal niggers and preach sedition” — Sherman overall displayed a clear sympathy for their side in the growing schism. He was emphatic in an 1859 letter to his wife that the South should make its own decisions regarding slavery and then “receive its reward or doom.” Sherman thus anticipated Jefferson Davis’ famous plea of two years later that the South simply be left alone.

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Recently, Paula Deen has admitted that she’s had Type II Diabetes for years. Accordingly, she’s putting out a cookbook of healthy food. Here are some excerpts!

FRUIT SALAD

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb. bag of Skittles

3 cups ranch dressing

DIRECTIONS:

Mix well. Serve room temperature.

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PAULA’S BROWN RICE

INGREDIENTS:

1 pilaf white rice

1 bowl melted Junior Mints

DIRECTIONS:

Cover rice in chocolate. Serve with maple syrup to taste. To splurge, top with a sprinkle of sausage calzones.

–

SCRAMBLED EGG WHITES

INGREDIENTS:

1 dozen (12) Cadbury eggs

2 lbs. Frito crumbs

1 package extra-fat pork lard

1 pilaf Paula’s brown rice

DIRECTIONS:

Break the Cadbury eggs and harvest the crème-filled white centers. Dip them in the Frito crumbs. Put the lard (make SURE to get the extra-fat kind or it will be BLAND) in a frying pan on high heat, and fry the crème centers until golden-brown. Serve on a bed of Paula’s brown rice.

–

PAULA’S GARDEN BURGER

INGREDIENTS:

3 bags Olive Garden® Endless Breadsticks

12 Olive Garden® Stuffed Mushrooms

1 plate Olive Garden® New! Baked Pasta Romana with Chicken

4 Olive Garden® Black Tie Mousse Cakes

1 slice American cheese (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Smash all of the Olive Garden® foods together until they resemble a large patty and top with cheese. For lowest calories, hold the cheese.

–

PAULA’S GUILT-FREE FAT-FREE® SMOOTHIE

INGREDIENTS:

34 lbs. sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Put sugar in smoothie glass and drink with straw, serve chilled in white wine tumblers or, for special occasions, lap from trough. This delicacy is guilt-free since you can make a conscious choice not to feel guilty about anything you put in your body like Paula does!

–

BUFFET AND A BURGER

INGREDIENTS:

1 burger

1 Las Vegas buffet

Christmas-themed elastic pants (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Go to Las Vegas buffet. Make sure the buffet has burgers, or provide your own. Do NOT walk around the buffet. Get a motorized scooter, or stay in one spot and use a jaws of life to pick some of each buffet food out of the tubs and put it on your burger. Elastic pants are nice because your gupa (gunt-fupa) stays nicely inside the stretchy pants except for a few folds of fat with stretch marks that seep out of the pants.

–

PAULA’S GUILT-FREE® PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLIES

INGREDIENTS:

1 peanut

18 sticks of butter, mashed

1 pair Jellies shoes

DIRECTIONS:

Cover the shoes with butter and top with the peanut, and then eat the shoes. If you eat shoes it’s like you’re exercising so it’s VERY healthy.

–

PAULA’S GUILT-FREE® PIZZA PANTS

INGREDIENTS:

10’x20’ swath of pizza

Another pizza to use as pepperonis on the pizza

Stuffed mushrooms

FYI the mushrooms are stuffed with smaller pizzas

Smuckers magic shell ice cream topping

Rolos

Coca-cola

3 bags gummy bears

Fondue

Caesar salad dressing

Wood chips (as a thickener)

Grenadine syrup

Butter-flour mixture

Pizza Pockets

1 sewing machine

1 sewing pattern for pants (size XXXL)

DIRECTIONS:

Mushrooms are a vegetable and there are definitely some mushrooms on that pizza so technically they are HEALTHY-style pizza pants. Take the really big pizza. Put all of the other ingredients on the pizza. Pour the coke on the pizza. Dip the pizza in the fondue, and resist eating it before you make it into pants, no cheating!!! Sew that pizza into pants using the machine and the pattern. Make sure to sew in some pockets so you can keep a few extra spare Pizza Pockets in your pizza pockets!!!! Then eat your pants!!!!!!!!!!!

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PAULA’S GUILT-FREE® TURTURTURDUCKDUCKENDUCKEN

INGREDIENTS:

3 turduckens

DIRECTIONS:

Stuff a turducken in a turducken in a turducken. While you’re waiting for it to cook, make your fat niece make you some pizza pants while you’re watching Pawn Stars and eat your pants and then slap your niece.

–

INSULIN AU GRATIN

INGREDIENTS:

1 insulin shot

15 lbs. block of cheddar cheese

DIRECTIONS:

Bury insulin shot in cheese. When you’re going into a diabetic coma, just eat your way to the shot!! Eat the cheese fast or you’ll die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

–

SPARKLING WATER

INGREDIENTS:

1 glass sparkling water

1 ham

DIRECTIONS:

Put ham in water.

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Bill Clinton, the original “comeback kid” doesn’t see much hope for a resurgence by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, dissing him in a new interview as a Romney clone because of issues the former speaker has flip-flopped on.

Clinton, who is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Esquire, puts down the speaker who has bragged on the campaign trail of how he worked with Clinton to reform welfare and balance the budget.[Check out the latest political cartoons.]

Clinton doesn’t giving any love back. In an excerpt provided to Whispers, the former president says, “As a private citizen he was for certain important health-care reforms and believed in climate change and believed there had to be a strong reaction to it. And now he’s just like Romney. Neither one of them can say what they believe to be true and get nominated. Romney’s still trying to figure out what he did as governor of Massachusetts and still appeal to this driving vituperative energy.”

Bubba also takes a shot at the GOP culture, charging that the Republican side of aisle has given up any pretence of moderation and bipartisanship. His key example is how Jon Huntsman was run out of the Republican primaries because voters saw him as a moderate and didn’t respond well to his work as PresidentObama’s ambassador to China.

“Huntsman’s economic record — and his positions on the abortion issue and other things — is every bit as conservative and considerably more consistent than the two front-runners. But he also doesn’t make any bones about being willing to work with people and thinking you ought to put your country first. When the president asks you to serve — to go to China, and you speak Mandarin Chinese and you think you can help American business and America’s national strategic interest by doing it — you do it.”

“But all of a sudden that’s disqualifying. So I think that it shows you, we’re, you know, we’re living in a time when the Republicans have only pushed harder and harder to the right. And every time the president adopts a plan that they once advocated, they abandon it and push farther to the right. But the voters can push them back.”

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The United States is becoming less economically competitive versus other nations, with political gridlock and a weak primary education system seen as the main drag, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

In particular, the nation is falling behind emerging market rivals and just keeping pace with other advanced economies, according to a Harvard Business School survey of 9,750 of its alumni in the United States and 121 other countries.

Seventy-one percent of respondents expected the U.S. to become less competitive, less able to compete in the global economy with U.S. firms less able to pay high wages and benefits, the study found.

The findings come at a time when high unemployment is a major concern for Americans, with 23.7 million out-of-work and underemployed, and the economy the top issue ahead of November’s presidential election.

“The U.S. is losing out on business location decisions at an alarming rate” said Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor who was a co-author of the study.

U.S. companies, which slashed headcount sharply during the 2007-2009 recession, have been slow to rehire since the downturn’s official end and some have continued to cut. This month, Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM.N), Kraft Foods Inc (KFT.N) and Novartis AG NOVN.XV all said they would be cutting U.S. jobs this year.

Survey respondents said they remained more likely to move operations out of the United States than back in. Of 1,005 who considered offshoring facilities in the past year, 51 percent decided to move versus just 10 percent who opted to keep their facilities in the country, with the balance not yet decided.

Respondents, graduates of the prestigious business school who were polled from October 4 through November 4, were particularly concerned about how the United States was shaping up versus emerging nations such as China, Brazil and India, with 66 percent saying the United States was falling behind.

WEAK POINTS

Among respondents who had decided to move operations out of the United States over the past year, 70 percent cited lower wages as the reason they chose a new location, pointing to what is widely seen as emerging markets’ main advantage.

While the United States held up better compared to other advanced economies, with about 70 percent saying it was keeping pace competitively, 21 percent said the U.S. was also falling behind other wealthy countries, such as those in Western Europe and Japan.

The United States’ main disadvantages compared with other advanced economies were the complexity of its tax code, the ineffectiveness of its political system and the weakness of its educational system from kindergarten through high school.

Higher education fared better, with respondents citing high-quality universities as the nation’s top competitive advantage.

Asked what the U.S. government could do to improve its competitive position, respondents top recommendations were to simplify the tax code, reform immigration policies and reduce the corporate tax rate.

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(via TMZ)

Mark Wahlberg claims he could have done what hundreds of other doomed passengers couldn’t … fought off the multiple 9/11 hijackers and saved Flight 93.

Wahlberg just gave an interview with Men’s Journal … in which he states, “If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.'”

So the question … is Wahlberg’s braggadocio insulting to the dead passengers and their families?

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CNBC reports David Einhorn re-establishes long position in XRX, opens new long in DELL, & closes short position in DMND & FSLR

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9qVe_btwIQ 450 300]

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Good commentary here

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Richard Koo has taken a lot of experience and information out of Japan to apply to the U.S. problem… 

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Full article

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Gapping Up

XOMA +8.3%, LLTC +8.1%, HEK +4.5%, DB +3.3%, CCL +3%, ASML +2.8%, PMCS +2.7%, RCL +2.6%, UBS +2.1%, BHP +1.8%, TOT +1.7%, XOMA +8.3%,

ASML +2.6%, TSM +1.8%, NBG +6.7%, ING +5.1%, UBS +2.4%, CS +2.3%, DB +2%, KGC +1.8%, AG +1.7%, GOLD +1.4%, MT +1.4%, RIG +1.4%, BP +0.4%,

STM +4%, ADI +2.8%, FCS +2.2%, MXIM +2%, TXN +1.9%, ONNN +1.9%, CBRX +14.2%, XOMA +8.3%, UEPS +6.5%, 

Gapping down

COOL -14.4%, RIMM -4.9%, CREE -4.6%, NGLS -3.4%, ERF -1.6%,

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Source

Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL) Maintained Hold but cut estimates at Argus.
Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE: CHK) Cut to Hold at Brean Murray.
Cheniere Energy Inc. (NYSE: LNG) Started as Outperform with $13.50 target at Credit Suisse
Cheniere Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: CQP) Started as Neutral with $20 target at Credit Suisse.
Cree Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE) maintained Buy with $33 target at Canaccord Genuity; Raised to Buy at ThinkEquity; Cut to Neutral at Ticonderoga.
Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) Started as Underweight at JPMorgan.
France Telecom S.A. (NYSE: FTE) Cut to Sell at Deutsche Bank.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Cut to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Janus Capital Group, Inc. (NYSE: JNS) Cut to Sell at Citigroup.
The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) Cut to Market Perform at BMO Capital.
MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) Raised to Neutral at Credit Suisse.
Office Depot, Inc. (NYSE: ODP) Raised to Equal-weight at Barclays.
OfficeMax Inc. (NYSE: OMX) Raised to Equal-weight at Barclays.
PVH Corporation (NYSE: PVH) Started as Neutral with $72 target at Credit Suisse.
Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE: RL) Started as Outperform with $168 target at Credit Suisse.
Telefonica SA (NYSE: TEF) Cut to Sell at UBS.
Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.

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In Play

On the Wires

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