Tag Archives | Investing

Wall Street Exploring Ways To Profit From Global Warming

By JacobSloan on March 11, 2013 in News 9

Turning lemons into really pricy lemonade. Bloomberg on the investment companies banking on massive windfalls as the planet heats:

Investing in climate change used to mean putting money into efforts to stop global warming. Now some investors are taking another approach. Working under the assumption that climate change is inevitable, they’re investing in businesses that will profit as the planet gets hotter.

Derivatives that help companies hedge against abnormal weather and natural catastrophes are drawing increased interest from big players. In January, KKR bought a 25 percent stake in Nephila Capital, an $8 billion Bermuda hedge fund that trades in weather derivatives.

Drought is helping spur business at Water Asset Management. The New York hedge fund, which has about $400 million under management, buys water rights and makes private equity and stock market investments in water treatment companies.

Ole Christiansen is also investing to take advantage of rising temperatures. “Last summer we were exploring in south Greenland, mainly for gold,” says the chief executive officer of NunaMinerals (NUNA), a local mining company.

… Read the rest

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Marijuana Dispensing Company’s Stock Is Way Too High

By majestic on November 19, 2012 in News 1

O'Dea (CC)

Last week we posted a story about legal ways to invest in the medical marijuana boom. One of the suggested companies whose stock is publicly traded, Medbox, says it’s stock price is now ridiculously high after climbing 3000%. Story from MarketWatch:

A company that creates medical-marijuana dispensing machines says its stock is getting way too high.

Medbox shares surged 3,000% this week — from roughly $4 Monday to $215 Thursday — before falling to $100 after executives sought to dampen investor enthusiasm.

In a news release today, the company said that the stock’s rocket launch, which sent its market cap skyrocketing from $45 million at the start of the week to a staggering $2.3 billion, was ignited by a MarketWatch story Tuesday on how to invest in legalized marijuana (see How to invest in legalized marijuana .) (That’s about double the market capitalization of retailer Jos. A.

… Read the rest

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How To Invest (Legally) In Marijuana

By majestic on November 13, 2012 in News 7

Mjpresson (CC)

You know a tipping point has been reached when the financial press starts writing about ways to profit from legalized marijuana! From MarketWatch:

Mark Twain is said to have remarked that a gold rush is a good time to be in the pick and shovel business. Investors may be able to apply that same bit of wisdom to the growing number of U.S. states that have legalized pot.

Although federal law prohibits the sale or possession of marijuana, Massachusetts last week joined the ranks of states — 18 plus Washington, D.C. — that allow its use for people suffering from chronic illnesses like cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. In Washington and Colorado, meanwhile, voters passed an initiative to allow pot for recreational use. Those changes have kickstarted a small but fast-growing medical-marijuana industry, estimated to be worth about $1.7 billion as of 2011, according to See Change Strategy, an independent financial-analysis firm that specializes in new markets.

… Read the rest

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A Thousand Pages Of Romney’s Confidential Bain Documents Leaked

By JacobSloan on August 24, 2012 in News 8

Gawker has obtained a vast cache of information on Mitt Romney’s finances, much of it involving the labyrinthine stashing of enormous sums of money in offshore hedge funds:

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher).

Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands.

Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama’s fiscal approach and his money managers’ embrace of those same policies.

… Read the rest

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At Bain, Romney Led Investment In Aborted Fetus Disposal Firm

By JacobSloan on July 2, 2012 in News 6

A couple of years before realizing that he was pro-life, Mitt Romney netted $50 million for Bain Capital in the aborted fetus disposal business. Chalk it up to one of life’s little ironies. Mother Jones reveals:

The Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics.

Documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the SEC—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners.

Despite the firm’s regulatory run-ins, the deal worked out well for Bain. In 2001, the Bain-Madison Dearborn partnership that had invested in the company sold 40 percent of its holdings in Stericycle for about $88 million—marking a hefty profit on its original investment of $75 million.

… Read the rest

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Only on Wall Street: Lose $2 Billion of Your Company’s Money and Make $15 Million Yourself

By Join Or DIE on May 14, 2012 in News 6

Photo: Leoboudv (CC)

It’s great to have a job where even if you seriously screw up, you still make plenty of dough. Via RT:

Ina Drew helped make bank for JPMorgan Chase as the firm’s chief investment officer — until a blunder on her part cost the company roughly $2 billion. Drew resigned as CIO on Monday, but that’s not to say she is stepping down with nothing to show.

Despite being responsible for an in-house trading loss that totaled as much as $2.3 billion in losses for JPMorgan Chase, Drew stands to walk away from the Wall Street firm with a payout that could bring her as much as $15 million.

Drew’s departure from JPMorgan Chase was publicized early Monday, only days after she was named in a major economic goof-up that garnered criticism directed towards one of Wall Street’s most iconic institutions.

The bank is still slated to hold its annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday this week, with a new CIO already stepping up to the plate.

… Read the rest

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Free $10 Million Loans For All!

By Join Or DIE on April 23, 2012 in News 22

If you work on Wall Street it’s time to take Bill’s Hicks’ advice for advertising and marketers … because this will never happen. Sheila Bair writes in the Washington Post:

Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I’ve got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.

For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the “carry trade,” has been enormously profitable for them.

So why not let everyone participate? Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest.

… Read the rest

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Why Obama’s JOBS Act Couldn’t Suck Worse

By majestic on April 10, 2012 in News 9

Matt Taibbi bursts the bubble of all those gogo Internet companies and their bankers who are celebrating the JOBS Act, in Rolling Stone:

Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I’ve been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks.

Then the JOBS Act happened.

The “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market…

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Check Out Ron Paul’s Stock Portfolio (and for Other Members of Congress)

By BananaFamine on June 20, 2011 in News 4

From Linette Lopez’s article in Business Insider. Here’s what Ron Paul does and full article here.

Well, this is predictable …Today members of Congress had to reveal their stock holdings. We were curious what anti-Fed, pro-gold Congressman Ron Paul held, and no surprise, he likes gold. Lots of it. Here are the stocks he owns:

Agnico Eagle Mines; Alumina Common; Anglo Gold Ashanti Ltd.; BrigusGold Corp. Com MPV (formerly Apollo Gold Corp); Barrick Gold Corp.; Claude Research Inc; Coeur D’Alene Minds Corp.; Gold Corp Inc; El Dorado Gold Corp.; IAM Gold Corp.; Kinross; Lexam Explorations Inc.; Mag Silver Corp.; Metalline Mining Co.; Mutual Securities Inc.; Newmont Mining Corp.; Pan American Silver; Petrol Oil and Gas; Silver Wheaton Corp; Virginia Mines Inc.; Vista Gold Corp.; Viterra Inc; Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd.; Allied Nevada Gold Corp.; Hecla Mining Co.

Looks like he’s doing well these days.

Click here to see what some of his fellow Representatives are holdings as well.… Read the rest

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7 Ways The Hedge Fund Industry Is Built On Fraud, Lying, And Stealing

By JacobSloan on June 1, 2011 in News 9

Could the entire hedge fund industry rest upon tens of thousands of instances of lying, cheating, and stealing? Well, at least they’re immensely generous (with their political donations). Via Guernica:

1. Insider Trading. If the Feds could tape every hedge fund we’d get an earful of how hedge funds use “expert networks” to transfer bits of illegal information that provide hedge fund managers with knowledge of events that are sure to move markets and make them a bundle.

2. Ponzi Schemes. Madoff isn’t the only one. Hedge funds and Ponzi schemes are made for each other since the funds are designed to evade so many disclosure regulations. It’s virtually a sure thing that every new year will reveal another Ponzi scheme through which a hedge fund steals money from investors and then uses new investor money to pay returns to the old investors.

3. Tax Evasion. No surprise here. Wherever you find billionaire financiers, you’ll find schemes to move money around the globe to dodge taxes.

… Read the rest

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