“Yandex NV, the owner of Russia’s most popular Internet search engine, is offering shares at about twice the price of Google Inc. relative to earnings.
The Moscow-based company, which has almost triple Google’s market share in Russia, plans to sell shares at a price equivalent to at least 23 times next year’s earnings, said two people involved in the sale who declined to be identified until the deal is announced. Google trades at 13 times expected 2012 earnings.”
Comments »“The euro slumped to a record low against the Swiss franc amid deepening concern Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis will worsen, reducing the appeal of holding the region’s assets.
The yen gained versus all but one of its 16 most-traded peers.Spain’s Socialist party suffered its worst electoral defeat in more than 30 years and Standard & Poor’s on May 20 said it may lower Italy’s credit rating. The Dollar Index climbed to its highest since April 1 as a Chinese manufacturing gauge fell to a 10-month low, boosting demand for the American currency as a haven amid concern the global economic recovery will sputter.
“There’s an element of contagion related to the European crisis and growth slowing in China” hurting the euro, said Sebastien Galy, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Societe Generale SA in London. The single currency may test its 100-day moving average of around $1.3969, he said.
The euro weakened 0.3 percent to 1.2393 francs as of 7:30 a.m. in New York, after trading earlier at 1.2324, the least since its 1999 debut. The European currency dropped 1 percent to $1.4015 after reaching $1.3970, its weakest since March 17. It slipped to 114.63 yen, from 115.69 yen. The dollar traded at 81.79 yen, from 81.70. The Australian dollar fell against all but two of its 16 major peers.”
Comments »Indices are down about 1.5% across the board.
Comments »Things will get exponentially worse should the ECB raise rates.
Comments »It’s being reported that Greece has less than 2 months worth of cash left. On that news, the euro is cratering.
Comments »Copper is down 1.4%
Crude is down 1%
Gold is down 0.33%
Platinum is down 0.68%
Related: S&P Futures are 11 points below fair value and the dollar is up 0.7%
Comments »Japan, Korea and Australia open down about 1.5%.
Related: the dollar is up 0.4% and oil is down by 0.7%
Comments »So the rapture has come and gone and another Monday is rolling around.
Feel bad for these folks;
“But he has acknowledged that his preoccupation with the apocalypse has alienated him from many of the people he loves. “It’s so bad, most of my family I can’t even talk about it with,” Camping said.
Tuter is bracing himself for the reaction among Family Radio listeners when next week materializes. “I think it’s going to absolutely devastate a lot of these people,” Tuter said. “You have people who have given up their jobs, sold their homes, maxed out their credit cards.” ”
Full article
“NEW YORK: Two defectors from Iran’s intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials knew in advance about the attacks of September 11, 2001, says a US court filing that seeks damages for Iran’s ”direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history”.
One of the defectors also claimed that Iran was involved in designing the attacks, the filing said. The defectors’ identities and testimony were not revealed in the filing but were being submitted to a judge under seal, said lawyers who brought the original suit against Iran on behalf of families of dozens of September 11 victims.
The suit says Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group with close ties to Tehran, helped al-Qaeda with planning the attacks and with the hijackers’ training and travel. After the attacks, the suit says, Iran and Hezbollah helped al-Qaeda operatives and their families to escape, in some cases providing them with a safe haven in Iran….”
Comments »“Let’s do some out of the box thinking here. Let’s say that the global economy is really slowing down. The demand for oil will fall. Let’s say that China continues to raise interest rates, slowing its economy further. Then Chinese oil demand starts to wane.
Then we bring on stream new US onshore supplies opened up by advanced technologies in places like the Bakken field in North Dakota. Then current high prices at the pump deliver a summer driving season that is a shadow of its former self. Next, the exchanges get religion and decide to damp down speculation in earnest by raising margin requirements on oil.
Now, let’s thrown in an outlier. Muammar Khadafi chokes to death on a bad falafel, bringing the Libyan civil war to an immediate end, and unleashing 1.2 million barrels a day of light crude on the European market.
What I have just outlined here is a perfect storm for oil prices. It’s not that these are low probability events. They are in fact the most likely scenario that will unfold over the next three months. And they are all likely to hit at the same time, taking crude down to the bottom of the last year’s range of $84/barrel….”
Comments »“The year began inauspiciously for pharmacy-benefits managerExpress Scripts. First-quarter earnings were lighter than expected as fewer claims for prescriptions were submitted, partly because Wal-Mart Stores (ticker: WMT) no longer was among Express Scripts’ roster of clients. Profit as a percentage of each claim also fell short of expectations, and growth from existing health-plan sponsors and clients didn’t materialize as new hires failed to offset attrition, resulting in a lack of net new members.
Yet all isn’t doom and gloom for the St. Louis-based company. Far from it. First-quarter earnings were up a solid 20% from the prior year, as savvy expense management offset the shortfall in script volume. The rest of the year is looking much brighter, particularly the second half, when a raft of favorable developments is likely to strengthen the outlook for Express Scripts, a company with $45 billion in annual sales and a long history of producing steady and strong growth in earnings and cash flow.”
Comments »“(Reuters) – A powerful Republican lawmaker is investigating possible insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors LLP, highlighting increased public scrutiny of potential wrongdoing by hedge funds.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority last week provided Senate Judiciary Committee head Charles Grassley with about 20 instances of suspicious trading at the hedge fund, a spokeswoman for the senator confirmed on Saturday.
Grassley had asked Finra in April for information on any such trading at Steven Cohen’s $13 billion hedge fund.”
Comments »“Comcast has not lived up to its pledge to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after merging with NBC-Universal to air a minimum amount of local and Spanish-language news programs….”
Comments »“Three years after the financial crisis peaked, banks face a new wave of scrutiny and potential penalties for actions that contributed to the mortgage meltdown, possibly raising their costs for the cleanup.
The Justice Department has instructed federal prosecutors to be creative in adapting decades-old laws to take action against Wall Street over the $1 trillion mortgage machine that helped fuel the crisis.
“We’ve been…encouraging the use of familiar, affirmative civil-enforcement tools in new ways,” said Assistant Attorney General Tony West.
Prosecutors are responding by deploying some powerful laws—including the Civil War-era’s False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, a legacy of the savings-and-loan crisis—that have lower burdens of proof than federal criminal statutes.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is considering using tools such as the state’s Martin Act, which doesn’t require prosecutors to prove an intent to defraud. Mr. Schneiderman’s office has requested informal meetings with executives of Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and UBSAG, according to people familiar with the matter. Representatives for the banks declined to comment.
The escalating activity in recent weeks has…..”
Comments »“U.S. markets in the coming week may be slower heading into the first official long weekend of summer, but fidgety currency markets could keep the focus on Europe and geopolitical concerns.
Traders are also watching a smattering of U.S. economic reports, especially durable goods orders, to see if the economy continues to show signs of stalling.
Nobody expects a repeat performance of the high-flying LinkedIn IPO [LNKD 93.09 
-1.16 (-1.23%) 
], but there are a few initial offerings in the week ahead, including Russian internet company Yandex, already drawing good demand.
“I think the markets will continue to be focusing on what is or isn’t happening in Greece. We don’t think anything will materialize though,” said Robert Sinche, head of global currency strategy at RBS….”
Comments »“It is when, not if. Financial markets merely aren’t sure whether it’ll be tomorrow, a month’s time, a year’s time, or two years’ time (it won’t be longer than that). Given that the ECB has played the “final card” it employed to force a bailout upon the Irish – threatening to bankrupt the country’s banking sector – presumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.
What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:
– Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
– The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.
– The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.
– To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.
– Greece will redenominate all its debts into “New Drachmas” or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)
– The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.
– The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.
– The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.
– A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements……”
Comments »
