Ryan Yamada

Goldman Sachs (GS): Q2 EPS of $4.93 beats by $1.39. Revenue of $13.8B (+46%) vs. $10.7B. Shares +0.1% premarket. (Goldman press release (.pdf))

Firstadopter: I plan on cheating death. I imagine I stand a better chance if I never short GS.

Book Review: The House of Dimon, by Patricia Crisafulli

And I should emphasize that the anti-banker meme is worldwide and Main Street; I am not implying that the author of this article feels this way. For obvious reasons, I imagine he has tremendous respect for good bankers.

Book Review: The House of Dimon, by Patricia Crisafulli

I think if we get beyond the "kill the bankers" meme, there are some excellent points made in this article. I'll definitely read this book.

On a related note, I tend to tune out criticisms of articles or books that start, "I haven't read it, but...".

CNBC's upcoming special on pornography (actual porn, not money porn) has alienated at least one advertiser: Charles Schwab has pulled its sponsorship of "Fast Money" after a preview implied a connection between Schwab and the network's Porn: Business of Pleasure, though it still sponsors other programs.

Isn't Schwab THE sponsor for Fast Money? Curious - very mildly curious - what this means for the program combined with the Macke and Ratigan departures.

China is casting its own version of Wall Street's bull statue, in Shanghai - at 6 metric tons, nearly twice as big as New York's. "Sounds like bull envy," says a Clusterstock commenter.

So THAT's what they've got planned for all that copper they've been buying. Phew!

Madoff: "I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior. How do you excuse deceiving an industry you helped to build?" "How can you excuse deceiving a wife of 50 years?"

Given that his credibility is less than zero, I'd say that that last bit is more circumstantial evidence that she was in on it.

Ryanair (RYAAY) CEO Michael O'Leary on recessions: "I love recessions. You get the chance to kick the *** out of everybody." On Virgin Air founder Sir Richard Branson's recent warning airlines could go bust: "It's like a little chihuahua barking at a dying labrador. Nobody cares."

Whoa, looks like I've got someone to research. Who says CEO public statements have to be boring/disingenuous?

NY hedge fund manager Edward T. Stein pleads guilty to running a $30M Ponzi scheme. He faces up to 19 years in prison.

Moral of the story: if you plan on running a Ponzi scheme, make it a big one. This sentence works out to be $1.5M per year of prison (less parole). Definitely not worth it.

FT's Lucy Kellaway highlights how "the old relationships between work and leisure, and money and no money have started to break down" in the face of the new economic reality.

I love Lucy.

But this column didn't quite feel up to her usual level of delightful excellence. Wish she would've provided more numbers, and also made a nod to the fact that there are work hour adjustments being made by people for somewhat altruistic reasons. What about folks who agree to take a cut in hours to avoid layoffs? What about the few but important folks who are staying on, possibly without pay, because they'd rather do that than drive themselves crazy staring at Youtube and daytime TV during the day?

That said, she's spot-on that a voluntary-ish cut at higher levels would do much to help credibility and morale at most companies.

Munster wasn't the only one caught with his fly open in lowballing iPhone 3GS first-weekend sales. (also)

I find this pun a bit hard to swallow.

At The Big Picture, an analyst looks at PIMCO's record as a Fed forecaster and finds it wanting. "Whatever insight PIMCO gleaned from being the world’s biggest bond fund was consistently overridden by their talking their book," says Barry Ritholtz, who also points out the lack of incentive that TV channels have to question such a big advertiser.

I would use the data another way. Assuming PIMCO is talking its own book, one only needs to pay careful attention to infer its bets. Then, one must be on the same side of that bet. I don't frequently trade bonds, but this is how I would.

Treasury Sale: Does This Make Any Sense?

Great post, as usual Karl.

Though in my neighborhood, I see enough modified suburbans where an adult male could clear the footboard without much trouble.

One interesting consequence is that the next Italian bust of Japanese bond smugglers will probably confiscate legitimate bonds.

More seriously, we have a weeklong decline in international markets, a strengthening dollar, a strengthening equities market, AND a weakening Treasury market; strange times indeed.

Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing momentum continues through week-two since the launch, with U.S. search penetration up 0.9 percentage points to 16.7% - from 13.7% pre-Bing. Its share of search result pages also climbed 0.9 points to 12.1%, vs. 9.1% two weeks ago. (comScore) Meanwhile, shares of MSFT are +12.2% since June 1.

Love it - MSFT share gains track Bing's market share. A hell of a coincidence. You SA folks are awfully clever with your humor. :)

Dumb money indicator moves to bullish extremes.

Maybe so. As the "less dumb money" that has been trying with limited success to short the market, on and off, since about April, I definitely feel like "dumb money". I made money today, as did just about all bears, but it bears remembering to not fight whatever trend/range consolidation phase we're in. OpEx week is not, in my mind, useful data to test whether we've broken out of this sideways range.

What happened to 'All is fair...'? A cunning trade by a small Texas brokerage firm in two markets at the heart of the financial crisis has left some of Wall Street's biggest players crying foul.

Moral of the story: "Don't mess with Texas"?

Corollary: In NYC, Kicking someone when they're down is acceptable in most cases, but frowned upon if their assets exceed $100 million.