elliotz

Two more publishers say they may yank stories off Google's (GOOG) search engine and hand them exclusively to Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing, following Rupert Murdoch's (NWS) lead. MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of the Denver Post, plans to block Google when it starts charging readers for online content next year. And Morning News owner A.H. Belo (AHC) says it may start charging online subscription fees and block Google.

No matter what people might think of him personaly, Murdoch is a top notch buisiness man and visionary. Murdoch can charge for his content because his content is that good and people will pay. I dont know if that model will work for alot of the other news websites and papers. This is a small step for bing in its attempt to take market share from google but i do not think it is significant in the longer term.

No bank - including JPMorgan (JPM) - is too big to fail, Jamie Dimon writes in a Washington Post op-ed this morning. "The term 'too big to fail' must be excised from our vocabulary,'" he says. Dimon's against artificially limiting the size of institutions, but says we need to develop a system that ensures even the biggest bank can be allowed to fail in a way that does not put taxpayers or the broader economy at risk.

I do not think you read the op-ed. He is saying to big to fail should not exist period end of story. He just disagres with breaking up the banks into smaller pieaces as do I. Again your facts are wrong his stockholders fared much better then most in the downturn, especally those who like myself bought on the way down( my cost avg came down to 17.78 per share). JP was never in trouble and JP will come out the strongest bank when this credit crunch comes to and end. The credit crunch was the regulators and the goverments fault. They are they once who gave banks free reign but for some reason they do not want to admit this( i guess those seats in congress are to comftable for them and they sure as hell do not want to loose em).


On Nov 13 09:40 AM zorrow wrote:

> Too big to fail bad. . . but except my bank. His stockholders didn't
> do very well. Most of them thought he was doing old fashioned banking
> until the crisis and reality hit. Then he cut the dividend and the
> stock plunged to as low as $15.00. It is only when it became apparent
> that the government wasn't going to let Jamie's bank go down (a political
> decision only insiders were privy to) did the stock recover. Meanwhile
> all the suckers who had invested for a safe dividend had sold at
> a big loss. Thanks Jamie.

Short Amazon: Risky Investment at Current Price

Amazon is a great company and will be around for a very long time. The problem is with the stock not with the company. The stock has very rich excpectations built into it for the company. Unfortunatley if AMZN disapoints but still has good growth of 10% in revenue the stock will tumble. AMZN was the first to get into e-readers(they deserve their due), they also proved that e-readers sell and there is alot of room for sales growth in that segment. Many are following them in. BKS has just came out with a statment that theyr NOOK e- reasder is selling better then excpected. APPL will surely follow suit and so might microsoft and well as others. This is the moment story stock after a great quater. Way to overvalued at these levels. I am short AMZN using derivatives.

A day after beginning deliberations, a jury finds ex-Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi not guilty on all charges (fraud charges that amounted to lying to investors about the health of two collapsing funds).

It was a very dificult case to prove.

Meanwhile, IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn says progress is being made on a possible financial sector tax, also known as the IMF tax, which would be an incentive to take less risks, but also create an insurance fund to be used in case of a future crisis.

I did not know we still take the IMF seriously!

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders introduces legislation that would give Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner 90 days to compile a list of banks, funds and insurers deemed too big to fail, and then break them up within a year.

Great idea??? I think this is a preaty bad idea and a lame attempt by Sen Sanders to attract the populist vote. Someone please explain to me how this is a great idea to take JPM and split it into tiny banks? How is that a great idea for me as a shareholder of JPM and since when do we live in a country where the govt can come up with any stupid idea thats on that weeks agenda, write the legeslation and make it into law even though it ifringes on all sorts of rights.

Also buried in Fannie Mae's (FNM) SEC filing yesterday was that it agreed to sell $2.6B in unused tax credits to unnamed buyers, and received approval (.pdf) for the deal from its regulator, the FHFA. The Treasury is thought to be leery of signing off on the sale, reportedly to Goldman Sachs (GS) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A).

Yea but why throw them in a waste basket? This is a good deal for FNM because these tax credits are worthless to them. So instead they can sell them for cash that they despertly need(they just asked for another 15B from the govt just yesterday). So in reality this is a good deal for GS, BH & FNM. Where things get complicated is the fact that the goverment owns FNM. So if FNM sells these credits to GS and BH, the Gov will loose out on that tax revenue from GS and BH. So i think this shows us just why govt should not own buisneses because conflicts of intrest just like this arise. It is a good deal for FNM the corporation but not a good deal for the owners(the tax payers).


On Nov 06 11:24 AM davidbdc wrote:

> Well lets hope that Treasury says no. Simple enough. Shouldn't
> be able to sell tax credits that the government is basically covering
> through their bailout to other companies so that they can reduce
> their tax payments. Should the government just say....Hey we own
> these credits now and we just threw them in the wastebasket and they
> are dead!

The cost of doing better: UAW rank-and-file deal Ford (F) a fatal blow, overwhelmingly rejecting proposed contract concessions that would bring its costs in line with GM and Chrysler.

What I dont understand is doesnt the UAW see that my making concessions to bring their wage with the market rate, or the same rate that Ford competitros pay and were not even talking Toyota and Nissan, they will cause Ford to go down the same path as GM and that path wont be beneficial for anyone. Ford actually has a good product unlike GM and they are more innovative, but i dont think they can overcome the union.

Daily Earnings Trends

EPS is all good an dandy, but if someone has the time i would love to see the same graph but displaying the top line.

Amazon.com (AMZN): Q3 EPS of $0.45 beats by $0.12. Revenue of $5.5B (+28%) vs. $5B. Sees Q4 sales of $8.125B-9.125B vs. consensus of $8.11B. Shares +9.5% AH. (PR)

Good quarter for Amazon, but i think the quarter was mostly made by Kindle sales. There were not competitors to the Kindle during the quarter. Now B&N is coming out with their own E-reader and others will follow suite. I also think the price wars with Wall Mart and Wall Marts agresive move into online retail do not boade well for Amazon. After reading the report I will most likely begin to build a short position in Amazon. I think the valuations are insane showing that investors are excepting alot from AMZN and i do not know if medium term it can live up to those excpectations.

Bove says the quality of Wells Fargo's (WFC -5%) earnings was 'pretty poor': "If you take a close look at the earnings, what you can see is that the improvement is due to a hedging profit made on the mortgage service portfolio, about $3.6B. You can also see that they cut their tax rate." (previously)

Right but those hedging profits are not sustainable long term, plus WFC is not in the buisness of making money from hedging but rather from banking. All Bove points out is that the earnings were poor which as an analyst I must agree after looking the the financials and im sure you will agree as well. You are right that he didnt break any news and maybe the fact that the market overreacted. I personally thing WFC is overvalued at these levels and that there are alot more troubles ahead.


On Oct 21 04:24 PM Stone Fox Capital wrote:

> this is pure BS. The interview at 11:30 on CNBC with the WFC CFO
> talked about the hedging. The CFO expects the gains to continue.
> It'll likely continue as they build provisions which is all they
> need. Bove didn't break any big news. It just spooked the market.

In the latest in a series of China-U.S. trade disputes, China's Ministry of Commerce took preliminary measures to impose tariffs on certain nylon imports from the U.S. The ruling affects imports of Nylon 6, used to manufacture a variety of products, including toothbrushes and chiffon. Affected U.S. firms include BASF's (BASFY.PK) U.S. arm and Honeywell (HON).

I am very intrigued to see how this turns out. On one hand Obama has his core and their big union supporters who accuse China of 'stealing' their jobs and supressing their wages and on the other hand he has China who has about 2 trillion in reserves and with whome the U.S cannot enter into a tariff war with China will not boaed well the U.S especially since we need to bring down the defecit. Lets see what Barry does.

Some are taking the Lehman collapse anniversary as a time to go super-bullish. The Dow returning to 14,000, Jon Markman? "In three years? Not a problem. The signs are abundant, if you know where to look: in the corporate credit markets, in employment trends, in consumer credit trends, in government statements and in corporate revenue trends."

Wow I wonder why he didn't have the ability three years ago to tell us where the market is going to be. I guess he developed his psychic ability recently. Anyone who predicts where the market will be three years from now is a joke in my book

BofA/Merrill lifts Garmin (GRMN) to Buy and boosts price target by $15 to $45. Firm expects Garmin to benefit from the rebound in car sales. Shares +4.7% premarket.

Rebound in car sales? Besides the cash for clunckers I havent seen a real rebound in car sales

After a wave of redemption requests, Cerberus bars investors in two new funds from withdrawing money for three years. The multi-year lock-up is rare among hedge funds, but others may follow suit after $500B+ of industry redemptions in the past year.

This does not boad well for the hedge fund industry. If your confident in your abilities to outperform the market whther its up or down you shouldnt worrie about redemptions because once investors see your results they will flock to your fund. If i was an Investor in Cerebrus i wold be ticked off.