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Yearly Archives: 2013

SCTY: UPGRADED

$SCTY is going to go H.A.M. today.

upgraded @ GS to $18

upgraded @ BAC to $21

Upgraded by The Cajun at $13.

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Eyewitness Video From Flash Mob in Mall of Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, LA – The Mall of Louisiana was closed during a busy shopping time and evacuated after a fight broke out between dozens of young people Saturday evening.

EBRSO spokesperson Casey Rayborn-Hicks told WAFB-TV she’s not sure how many people were involved in the actual fight but up to ten people will face criminal charges.

Deputies were called to the food court area around 6 p.m. and said the troublemakers quickly dispersed to other areas of the mall. No injuries were reported though several ambulances were dispatched to the area and initial reports of shots fired were apparently incorrect.
However, at least one eyewitness reported a chaotic and scary scene in the second floor food court.

The woman, who asked WAFB-TV not to identify her, said she was in the food court with her young child in his stroller when a large fight erupted and people began jumping over and knocking down tables. She said she grabbed her son and tried frantically to exit.

Unchaperoned young people were brought to a couple of stores where parents were allowed to pick them up.

Traffic was sent out of the area with all lanes headed out and the exits to the mall being closed.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

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Flash Mob at the Mall of Louisiana

East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office responded at approximately 6:00 pm to the Mall of Louisiana in reference to a large fight involving juveniles in the food court area of the mall, as well as other areas outside the mall. Reportedly about 200 juveniles dispersed to various areas inside and outside of the mall. The mall is now reportedly closed, and deputies are investigating the incident.

SOURCE

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Documentary: Money and Speed- Inside The Black Box

A look at the flash crash….

Cheers on your weekend!

[youtube://http://ww.youtube.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq1Ln1UCoEU 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zPiQgUQt3E 450 300]

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Almost All of Wall Street Got 2012 Market Calls Wrong

“From John Paulson’s call for a collapse in Europe to Morgan Stanley (MS)’s warning that U.S. stocks would decline, Wall Street got little right in its prognosis for the year just ended.

Paulson, who manages $19 billion in hedge funds, said the euro would fall apart and bet against the region’s debt. Morgan Stanley predicted the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index would lose 7 percent and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) foresaw wider swings in equity prices. All of them proved wrong last year and investors would have done better listening to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, who said the real risk was being too pessimistic.

The ill-timed advice shows that even the largest banks and most-successful investors failed to anticipate how government actions would influence markets. Unprecedented central bank stimulus in the U.S. and Europe sparked a 16 percent gain in the S&P 500 including dividends, led to a 23 percent drop in the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, paid investors in Greek debt 78 percent and gave Treasuries a 2.2 percent return even after Warren Buffett called bonds “dangerous.”

“They paid too much attention to the fear du jour,” Jeffrey Saut, who helps oversee about $350 billion as the chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, said by phone on Jan. 2. “They were worrying about a dysfunctional government in the U.S. They were worried about the euro quake and the implosion of Greece and Portugal. Instead of looking at what’s going on around them, they were letting these macro events cause fear to creep into the equation…”

Full article

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U.S. Crude Supply Drops Sharply

“The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report this morning. US commercial crude inventories decreased by 11.1 million barrels last week, bringing the total US commercial crude inventory to 359.9 million barrels, still well above the upper limit of the five-year range for this time of the year. Dow Jones had a consensus forecast for a drop of just 1.3 million barrels…”

Full report

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The Fed’s Bullard Drops a Dime on Taking Away QE

“……..Bullard told Liesman:

I think unemployment will continue to tick down through 2013. If you look at the last three years – about seven-tenths per year on the unemployment rate – if we got that this year, we’d be down at 7.1 percent by the end of the year, something like that. That would probably be substantial improvement, and the Committee could think about removing accommodation on the balance sheet side of the policy at that point.

Liesman asked for clarification, and Bullard continued:

If you got down close to 7 percent, then you’re within a half a point of your 6.5 percent on the interest rate side, and I think clearly the intention is to pull back balance sheet policy sometime before you would start thinking about raising the rate.

Again, this isn’t inconsistent with what was said in the minutes, but it offers a big clue as to when the Fed might decide to pull back…”
Full article

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GARTMAN: The Gold Bug Thesis Is Officially In Tatters

 

“…….Commodity prices are falling and in some instances are falling quite sharply. Clearly that is the case with gold, for the minutes of the FOMC’s last meeting have shaken the hopes of the most violent “Gold Bugs” malevolently, and have shaken our gold position rather materially. We are, however, rather nicely insulated from the real damage being done to the simplistic gold bugs who have owned and who still own gold predicated upon their thesis that the Fed has lost control of the money supply. That thesis is now in tatters… or at least has been very badly torn in the past twenty four hours… following the single sentence from the Fed’s minutes noted at length above.

…Yesterday’s plunge has indeed left its mark and gold buyers in US dollar terms are going to have to prove the very merit of their case… and soon. Further, they are going to have to do so with margin clerks looking over their shoulders today. That is hardly the time to make one’s best case.

The game has changed for gold if we are to believe the minutes of the FOMC meeting, and at the moment we’ve no choice but to believe them. The only hope for the gold/US$ bulls is that the newly constituted FOMC shall be more dovish than was the FOMC as constituted last year. That case can be made, but only at the margin. We shall accept the FOMC of ’13 as more dovish than was that of ’12, but only marginally so; not materially so….”

Full article

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$GS Puts Out a List of the 40 Most Under Valued Stocks

“The S&P 500 booked a nice 13 percent return in 2012.

For 2013, Goldman Sachs’ equity strategy team expects the index to hit 1,575 by year-end.

However, they expect some stocks to do better than others.

The firm’s recently released “US Monthly Chartbook” includes a list of stocks with the most upside opportunity relative to Goldman analysts’ price targets.

Many of these companies highlighted are either in energy production or energy equipment.

The stocks listed offer 24 to 44 percent upside relative to their current prices. We’ve arranged the stocks from least to most upside.

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$PNC Warns Clients of Cyber Attack

“NEW YORK (AP) — PNC Bank has warned customers that its websites are getting hit with high traffic consistent with computer attacks.

In an e-mail to nearly 5 million customers, PNC says the traffic is meant to cause delays for legitimate online banking customers. It says other banks are experiencing similar traffic spikes but did not identify them.

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer said in a story Thursday that in recent weeks, “websites of several of the largest banks have been hit sporadically by so-called ‘distributed denial-of-service attacks.’ The attacks flood the websites with so much traffic that it makes it difficult for customers to log into their online accounts or get information.” ”

Full article

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Reality Check: Paranoia Deep Destroyer

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Nxa3QrSNw 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKKvnA47aU 450 300]

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Family Dollar Shoppers Couldn’t Afford Toys This Holiday Season, Execs Say

“For the poorest Americans, this year’s holiday season offered little respite from the lingering Great Recession. Despite signs that the American economy has been strengthening in recent months, households grappling with limited means have seen little to no improvement in their fortunes, some economists say.

The latest sign came Thursday as one of the nation’s largest dollar store chains — which caters heavily to customers with low incomes — said that December sales had been meager, an indication that many families bought fewer toys for children, and likely scrimped to finance necessities, such as groceries, instead.

“On the low end of the spectrum people are still hurting quite a bit,” said Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight. “The median household income adjusted for inflation has dropped steadily over the past 3 or 4 years. Living paycheck to paycheck is more than a perception, it’s a reality.”

On a conference call Thursday, Family Dollar CEO Howard Levine told analysts that his company’s customers passed on toys in favor of “basic need” items. “Clearly [our customers] don’t have as much for discretionary purchases as they once did,” he said, citing economic pressures like gas prices and rising payroll taxes.

Other retail sales data released Thursday also indicated that many Americans abstained from lavish holiday celebrations this year. Target announced today that sales at its stores open at least a year were flat in December. At Family Dollar, sales at stores open at least a year rose 6.6 percent over the last three months of 2012. But in December, traditionally a busy shopping month, they rose only 2.5 percent. On Thursday, the company’s stock dropped 13 percent….”

Full article

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Gold and Silver Continue To Tank on Yesterday’s FOMC Minutes

“SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Futures losses in gold and other precious metals moderated Friday after U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased at a slightly lower pace than forecast last month.

However, gold and silver both traded down 1% in a second-day reaction to signs that the Federal Reserve could bring quantitative easing to an end this year.

Gold for February delivery GCG3 -2.03% fell $24.20, or 1.4%, to $1,650.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

That carried over from a $14.20 loss suffered in the prior session. At its lows Friday, gold had fallen more than $40, retracing below $1,630 an ounce….”

Full article

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Trillion Dollar Coin:A Treasury Loophole to Solve the Deficit Ceiling

“This is really thrilling.

An arcane idea that started on finance blogs in the summer of 2011– that Tim Geithner should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling — is now seriously taking off.

The premise of the idea is this: Although the Treasury can’t just create money out of thin air to pay its bills, there is a technicality in the law that says the Treasury has special discretion to create platinum coins of any denomination, and the thinking is that Tim Geithner could make the coin and walk it over to the Federal Reserve and deposit it in the Treasury’s bank account.

The first blog to really promote the idea was Cullen Roche’s Pragmatic Capitalist. We jumped on it soon thereafter, as did others. Of course, once the debt ceiling was solved, people forgot about it.

But there’s a new debt ceiling looming, and this time, LOTS more people are talking about it.

We noted our surprise back in early December that an actual 3rd party research firm brought up the idea.

Now it’s going even more viral.

Paul Krugman discussed it yesterday.

In an interview with Capitol New York, Representative Jerry Nadler came out in favor of the solution (Nadler has an above-average understanding of economics in our experience).

Josh Barro at Bloomberg is now endorsing it, and that’s spread a huge conversation about it among DC journalists and policy folks on twitter…”

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