Tag Archives | Stock Market

Free $10 Million Loans For All!

By on April 23, 2012 in News 22

Madoff JokerIf 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

Continue Reading · 22

Why Losers Stay in Wars and the Stock Market

By on September 10, 2011 in News 11

ShipwreckThis explains a lot. Via ScienceDaily:

Within hours this summer, 30 American troops died in a strike in Afghanistan and millions of American investors watched the Dow Jones Average shed an astonishing 634 points in one day. While it might be difficult to find similarities in the two events, social psychologists can detect a common theme: In each case, investments (money and human lives) were made, and those resources were painfully lost.

The ‘sunk-cost’ effect: Untold Americans experienced what is called the “sunk-cost” effect: Less a cognitive thought than an emotional one, this effect is the feeling that they are being wasteful if they terminate a prior commitment. Thus, they pondered: Stay the course and “waste not, want not”; or “cut and run.”

Such a piercing event as suffering the greatest loss of American troops in the nearly 10-year-old war might seem to serve as a catalyst for people to denounce the war and demand a way out.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 11

Brokers With Hands On Their Faces

By on August 9, 2011 in News 21

In need of a pick-me-up? The Tumblr Brokers With Hands On Their Faces offers an unending stream of more-pleasing-than-lolcats shots of Wall Street brokers smooshing and contorting their faces in their hands as they “find out the latest numbers” or some such. I like to think that they just realized that money is an imaginary social construct and can scarcely believe what fools they’ve been.

enhanced-buzz-24156-1312496286-0enhanced-buzz-24185-1312496450-3
____________

Continue Reading · 21

‘Herd-Like’ Financial Reporting Could Predict Stock Market Bubbles

By on July 23, 2011 in News 5

NasdaqVia ScienceDaily:

When the language used by financial analysts and reporters becomes increasingly similar the stock market may be overheated, say scientists.

After examining 18,000 online articles published by the Financial Times, The New York Times, and the BBC, computer scientists have discovered that the verbs and nouns used by financial commentators converge in a ‘herd-like’ fashion in the lead up to a stock market bubble. Immediately afterwards, the language disperses.

The findings presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Barcelona, Spain, on July 19, 2011, show that the trends in the use of words by financial journalists correlate closely with changes in the leading stock indices.

“Our analysis shows that trends in the use of words by financial journalists correlate closely with changes in the leading stock indices — the DJI, the NIKKEI-225, and FTSE-100,” says Professor Mark Keane, Chair of Computer Science in University College Dublin, who was involved in the research.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 5

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

By on June 20, 2011 in News 4

Ron Paul Gold CoinFrom 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

Continue Reading · 4

‘Ordered Fear’ Plays a Strong Role in Market Chaos

By on June 11, 2011 in News 1

The ScreamFrom ScienceDaily:

When the current financial crisis hit, the failure of traditional economic doctrines to provide any sort of early warning shocked not only financial experts worldwide, but also governments and the general public, and we all began to question the effectiveness and validity of those doctrines.A research team based in Israel decided to investigate what went awry, searching for order in an apparently random system. They report their findings in the American Institute of Physics’ journal AIP Advances.

The novelty of their study is the incorporation of time variation of “human factors” into mathematical analysis. The team, led by Dr. Yoash Shapira, former head of the Atomic Energy Commission Research and currently a guest scientist at Tel Aviv University, along with Eshel Ben-Jacob, a professor of physics, Tel Aviv University School of Physics and Astronomy, and his doctoral student Dror Y. Kenett, hypothesized that temporal order (arrangement of events in time) should be hidden in variables associated with fear, such as volatility.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

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

By on June 1, 2011 in News 15

matthew-tannin-in-handcuffs-accompanied-by-federal-agent-getting-placed-into-black-carCould 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

Continue Reading · 15

The U.S. Congress Does ‘Abnormally’ Well in the Stock Market

By on May 25, 2011 in News 31

Monopoly ManThis should be more troubling, but it feels like business as usual in Washington. Dan Foomkin writes on the Huffington Post:

Members of the House of Representatives considerably outperform the stock market in their personal investments, according to a new academic study.

Four university researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found what they call “significant positive abnormal returns,” with portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually.

What’s their secret? The report speculates, but does not conclude, it could have something to do with the ability members of Congress have to trade on non-public information or to vote their own pocketbooks — or both.

A study of senators by the same team of researchers five years ago found members of the higher chamber even better at beating the market — outperforming it by about 10 percent, an amount the academics said was “both economically large and statistically significant.”

Read More: Huffington Post… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 31

The Case Against Goldman Sachs

By on May 11, 2011 in News 10

mainIn his usual clear, profane manner, Matt Taibbi lays out why Goldman Sachs’s executives must face criminal charges as soon as possible. Via Rolling Stone:

America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 10