Wall Street's curmudgeon-in-chief, Third Point's Dan Loeb, pens a letter critical of the President. A former Obama supporter, Loeb is turned off by the President's "smack downs" on successful Americans, otherwise "known as the 2%." His holiday gift for Obama's true believers: "He's Just Not That Into You."[View news story]
What part of the financial industry defrauding and destroying the wealth of the nation is confusing to you?
The thumbs down are not about "successful" versus "poor" this is about the buddy-buddy relationship between politics and a very, very, very small minority of the country getting in bed together to destroy the middle class.
I propose that as an investment oriented website you should be more aware of the fact that we come here cause we all want to make money, but when confronted with the BS that's has masqueraded as politics, the financial system, the economy, and the ways these things have played out in recent years, there is going to be some measure of righteous fury.
Your effort to define fellow SA members as "socialist" because of thumbs down lacks quite a bit of credibility.
The chances for a fiscal cliff deal in the next 48 hours are "exceedingly good," says Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News. "Hats off to the President, he won," Graham adds. "The President campaigned on raising rates and he's going to get a rate increase." [View news story]
That's the biggest load of bull I have heard this year.
The extreme right has moved the conversation so far to the right any rebound toward the middle is just nature taking its course. You clearly have no idea of what the real liberal left agenda is if you think moderate stances like those taken by the President are "the Progressive Movement."
So the U.S. lost S&P's AAA rating for the first time in a 70-year history; so what? Mark Thoma says this is S&P erring on the only side it can after blowing the pre-crisis situation. Always pragmatic Warren Buffett says solvency's not an issue when the debts are all in currency the U.S. can print; inflation, that's another story. Ready to buy on this coming dip? [View news story]
Solvency isn't the issue, clearly.
The problem is increasingly combative rhetoric in the DC which disallows compromise or progress at resolving any issue at all whatsoever in any meaningful way.
'Technical analysis' attempts to identify predictable patterns which repeat over and over in market movements.
One of the easiest ways to understand it is to understand what it attempts to predict. For example, let's say in a particular equity, folks have a tendency to buy after the stock price has fallen a certain amount, and sell to lock in profits after the stock has risen a certain amount.
Technical analysis attempts to predict those patterns so that a trader can take advantage of the momentum of the markets and increase their odds of making money.
But by studying the chart one can also see that there are certain price levels where there is buying interest and selling interest. By adjusting your entry to volume you have a better chance of the trade, or the investment for that matter, to not turn against you.
Your safest bet when investing in the market could arguably be based on a combination of the two: using fundamental analysis to determine if you want to take a position, and using technical analysis to pick a good entry, and a good exit.
The chances for a fiscal cliff deal in the next 48 hours are "exceedingly good," says Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News. "Hats off to the President, he won," Graham adds. "The President campaigned on raising rates and he's going to get a rate increase." [View news story]
The disconnect in those repeating the 47% comment, is that that was one of the most significant causes of Mitt's loss to Obama.
I heartily recommend the extreme right stay that course.
Third Point’s Daniel Loeb again wields his acid pen to criticize White House leadership: "It is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that while Washington burns, Pres. Obama is fiddling away by insisting that the only solution to the nation’s problems - whether unemployment, the debt ceiling or deficit reduction - lies in redistribution of wealth." [View news story]
I'll play this game. Since you are using a tired and lame 'talking point' I'm gonna be lazy and use some cut and paste....
Actually, they pay lots of taxes—just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax-free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more."
Another casualty of last week's commodity rout, Pierre Andurand's hedge fund loses $500M, or 20% of its assets from a bullish stance on crude oil. Sources say Andurand remains positive on oil and has exited only a few positions. Hedge fund? [View news story]
This is not a real world arguement. In the real world, the tools this guy thinks Governors have, are usually ineffective or useless. Just as a Governor may threaten "mass furloughs" or whatnot, the unions can always come back and say "just float a bond."
In fact it's probably easier in most cases to issue debt than to fight the unions.
Bankruptcy offers an opportunity for no BS real restructuring.
Plan C. Acknowledging there is no time to craft a "grand bargain" before year end, the President urges Congress to pass a stopgap measure, saying he'll immediately sign a bill allowing unemployment benefits to continue and preventing tax hikes on those with income under $250K/year. [View news story]
Obama could very well sit pretty and simply do nothing, since it's the Republicans who can't get a bill through the House. And, of course, the sequestration is actually more damaging to Republican agendas than Democrat ones.
So, unfortunately for them, but its the Repubs who will bear the entire burden of the fiscal cliff.
No one wants to see the tax increases go through but if there's no bill on Obama's desk for him to sign - or not - it's pretty clear who failed.
Pac Crest has joined Deutsche and Raymond James in questioning the strength of demand for Nokia's (NOK) Windows Phone 8 hardware. Like others, it thinks initial sellouts were due to limited supplies, and believes AT&T is selling only 10K-15K Lumia 920 units/week. Altogether, it forecasts 1M WP8 shipments for Q4, with sell-through of roughly half that total. Meanwhile, Swedish carrier Tele2 says it has sold out its Lumia stock, but it received an initial shipment of just 2K-3K units. (Oppenheimer) [View news story]
What most NOK longs are looking for isn't instant domination but clear indications of profitability.
Asset sales and improving the smartphone business are just one part of the picture. My personal belief is that NOK will perform a slow turn around and WPhone will gain fans over an extended period of time (years). There is entrenchment right now in ecosystems that won't shake loose quickly or easily.
In the end I don't really care if NOK sells 2 phones or 2 billion as long as every month they are selling more than they did the prior month.
Bill McBride, channeling Krugman, is reminded of Wall Street's "dirty little secret": It likes the unemployment rate on the high side. It "keeps wage growth down, and helps with margins and earnings - and higher unemployment also keeps the Fed on the sidelines... a slowly declining unemployment rate (even at 9%) with some job growth is considered OK." [View news story]
So housing is no longer important, jobs aren't either, no one cares about preserving the purchasing power of the middle class apparently as well, or the savings of older folk.
Exactly what kind of economy do we think we are building here?
Meredith Whitney defends her 60 Minutes claim that a wave of municipal defaults will spark a selloff in muni bonds, hurting economic growth and causing "a lot of social unrest." And there won't be any bailouts, she says: "Who in Nebraska's going to want to bail out someone in Florida?" These 16 cities face bankruptcy without big cuts. [View news story]
NYC is a cesspool of subsidized and entitlement generated living, fraud, corruption... And it ain't even half as bad as it was 15 years ago, just think about that..
If Bloomberg started cutting some pork out of the system NYC would be making cash hand over fist.
Most recent: $80m in embezzled funds in a project meant to automate city payrolls and cut the lard. It's probably more than that in reality, that's just how much they found.
President Obama makes it official, announcing a "framework" for extensions of tax cuts, unemployment benefits and estate taxes, plus a one-year payroll tax reduction. But there's a downside: no relief for the ballooning deficit - estimated $830B for extending the tax cuts, $56B for more unemployment benefits. [View news story]
O should have stood firm, let the cuts expire across the board -both Bush's and his - and taken the heat for it next election. At least he could have hung it on the Reps.
Now, he looks bad to the left for providing welfare for the rich, he looks bad to the right for providing welfare for the poor, and he looks bad to the center for not trying to keep the deficit in check.
My sense is he is worried the economy is on the brink of collapse and wants to prop it some with money that would otherwise have been called "stimulus" but this way he appears to be a "consensus builder."
Greece might be finally turning things around, says Morgan Stanley analyst Daniele Antonucci. While the country isn't actually recovering, the huge uncertainty that was caused by fears of a Grexit and other factors, and which was destroying economic activity, has been removed. The recession is alleviating, Greece is becoming more competitive and it's almost achieved a primary surplus. [View news story]
Wow. Well, as someone with exposure to Greece I can say that yes, Grexit is gone, but that doesn't mean Greece is 'fixed' by any measure. The regulatory environment has not changed, public sector reform has only been performed in the most perfunctory window-dressing manner, and the institutions and central government are still controlled by the same people who screwed up the country in the first place....
What's changed is money in/money out, i.e. yes the primary surplus is almost a reality but its being funded not by economic activity but by savings, which are being depleted. What this means to me is the bottom isn't in yet....
The dozen 'temporary' taxes instituted to siphon money from the people to pay off the government's public sector originating debt don't reflect an improving economic environment that will increase revenues and balance the country's budget. Economic activity is depressed and people have run for the hills (moved to their farms to live off the land while taking advantage of tax incentives promoting agriculture activity).
The main reason the government is not pushing public sector reform is because of how large a part of the domestic economic activity it makes up. There's nothing to fill that vacuum if the government squashes it. Most Greek investment activity is now occurring outside the country in places like Bulgaria, because the Greeks themselves cant handle the regulatory and tax burdens of operating commerce in the country. And that hasn't changed either.
Observers watching the numbers will miss a large part of the reality. (GREK) has had a nice run over the last 6 months or so, but I'm not buying. That run was based on the Grexit coming off the table. In my opinion the real bull run hasn't started yet. I could be wrong of course, watching things from a small business perspective, and the GREK reflects much larger entities, who have direct lines to the government and political leadership, so do your own homework.
Wall Street's curmudgeon-in-chief, Third Point's Dan Loeb, pens a letter critical of the President. A former Obama supporter, Loeb is turned off by the President's "smack downs" on successful Americans, otherwise "known as the 2%." His holiday gift for Obama's true believers: "He's Just Not That Into You." [View news story]
The thumbs down are not about "successful" versus "poor" this is about the buddy-buddy relationship between politics and a very, very, very small minority of the country getting in bed together to destroy the middle class.
I propose that as an investment oriented website you should be more aware of the fact that we come here cause we all want to make money, but when confronted with the BS that's has masqueraded as politics, the financial system, the economy, and the ways these things have played out in recent years, there is going to be some measure of righteous fury.
Your effort to define fellow SA members as "socialist" because of thumbs down lacks quite a bit of credibility.
The chances for a fiscal cliff deal in the next 48 hours are "exceedingly good," says Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News. "Hats off to the President, he won," Graham adds. "The President campaigned on raising rates and he's going to get a rate increase." [View news story]
The extreme right has moved the conversation so far to the right any rebound toward the middle is just nature taking its course. You clearly have no idea of what the real liberal left agenda is if you think moderate stances like those taken by the President are "the Progressive Movement."
Comedy incarnate.
So the U.S. lost S&P's AAA rating for the first time in a 70-year history; so what? Mark Thoma says this is S&P erring on the only side it can after blowing the pre-crisis situation. Always pragmatic Warren Buffett says solvency's not an issue when the debts are all in currency the U.S. can print; inflation, that's another story. Ready to buy on this coming dip? [View news story]
The problem is increasingly combative rhetoric in the DC which disallows compromise or progress at resolving any issue at all whatsoever in any meaningful way.
Nokia: Is Now The Time To Cash In? [View article]
'Technical analysis' attempts to identify predictable patterns which repeat over and over in market movements.
One of the easiest ways to understand it is to understand what it attempts to predict. For example, let's say in a particular equity, folks have a tendency to buy after the stock price has fallen a certain amount, and sell to lock in profits after the stock has risen a certain amount.
Technical analysis attempts to predict those patterns so that a trader can take advantage of the momentum of the markets and increase their odds of making money.
But by studying the chart one can also see that there are certain price levels where there is buying interest and selling interest. By adjusting your entry to volume you have a better chance of the trade, or the investment for that matter, to not turn against you.
Your safest bet when investing in the market could arguably be based on a combination of the two: using fundamental analysis to determine if you want to take a position, and using technical analysis to pick a good entry, and a good exit.
With oil above $104/barrel, the White House says it's "looking at all the options out there" to ease prices, including possibly tapping the U.S. strategic oil reserve. [View news story]
I say hell no, what are we, Mexico or India to subsidize our oil?
Pass the pain along or bad habits won't be broken.
The chances for a fiscal cliff deal in the next 48 hours are "exceedingly good," says Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News. "Hats off to the President, he won," Graham adds. "The President campaigned on raising rates and he's going to get a rate increase." [View news story]
I heartily recommend the extreme right stay that course.
Please continue, gentlemen.
Third Point’s Daniel Loeb again wields his acid pen to criticize White House leadership: "It is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that while Washington burns, Pres. Obama is fiddling away by insisting that the only solution to the nation’s problems - whether unemployment, the debt ceiling or deficit reduction - lies in redistribution of wealth." [View news story]
Actually, they pay lots of taxes—just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax-free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more."
Another casualty of last week's commodity rout, Pierre Andurand's hedge fund loses $500M, or 20% of its assets from a bullish stance on crude oil. Sources say Andurand remains positive on oil and has exited only a few positions. Hedge fund? [View news story]
Maybe it's tempting to stick it to public unions and fat pensions, but the idea of enabling states to declare bankruptcy is a "dangerous" idea that would roil municipal bond markets and create more problems than it solves. Politicians already have the power to fix these issues - they just have to use it. [View news story]
In fact it's probably easier in most cases to issue debt than to fight the unions.
Bankruptcy offers an opportunity for no BS real restructuring.
Plan C. Acknowledging there is no time to craft a "grand bargain" before year end, the President urges Congress to pass a stopgap measure, saying he'll immediately sign a bill allowing unemployment benefits to continue and preventing tax hikes on those with income under $250K/year. [View news story]
So, unfortunately for them, but its the Repubs who will bear the entire burden of the fiscal cliff.
No one wants to see the tax increases go through but if there's no bill on Obama's desk for him to sign - or not - it's pretty clear who failed.
Pac Crest has joined Deutsche and Raymond James in questioning the strength of demand for Nokia's (NOK) Windows Phone 8 hardware. Like others, it thinks initial sellouts were due to limited supplies, and believes AT&T is selling only 10K-15K Lumia 920 units/week. Altogether, it forecasts 1M WP8 shipments for Q4, with sell-through of roughly half that total. Meanwhile, Swedish carrier Tele2 says it has sold out its Lumia stock, but it received an initial shipment of just 2K-3K units. (Oppenheimer) [View news story]
Asset sales and improving the smartphone business are just one part of the picture. My personal belief is that NOK will perform a slow turn around and WPhone will gain fans over an extended period of time (years). There is entrenchment right now in ecosystems that won't shake loose quickly or easily.
In the end I don't really care if NOK sells 2 phones or 2 billion as long as every month they are selling more than they did the prior month.
Bill McBride, channeling Krugman, is reminded of Wall Street's "dirty little secret": It likes the unemployment rate on the high side. It "keeps wage growth down, and helps with margins and earnings - and higher unemployment also keeps the Fed on the sidelines... a slowly declining unemployment rate (even at 9%) with some job growth is considered OK." [View news story]
Exactly what kind of economy do we think we are building here?
Meredith Whitney defends her 60 Minutes claim that a wave of municipal defaults will spark a selloff in muni bonds, hurting economic growth and causing "a lot of social unrest." And there won't be any bailouts, she says: "Who in Nebraska's going to want to bail out someone in Florida?" These 16 cities face bankruptcy without big cuts. [View news story]
If Bloomberg started cutting some pork out of the system NYC would be making cash hand over fist.
Most recent: $80m in embezzled funds in a project meant to automate city payrolls and cut the lard. It's probably more than that in reality, that's just how much they found.
President Obama makes it official, announcing a "framework" for extensions of tax cuts, unemployment benefits and estate taxes, plus a one-year payroll tax reduction. But there's a downside: no relief for the ballooning deficit - estimated $830B for extending the tax cuts, $56B for more unemployment benefits. [View news story]
Now, he looks bad to the left for providing welfare for the rich, he looks bad to the right for providing welfare for the poor, and he looks bad to the center for not trying to keep the deficit in check.
My sense is he is worried the economy is on the brink of collapse and wants to prop it some with money that would otherwise have been called "stimulus" but this way he appears to be a "consensus builder."
Unfortunately that's a very Carter thing to do.
Greece might be finally turning things around, says Morgan Stanley analyst Daniele Antonucci. While the country isn't actually recovering, the huge uncertainty that was caused by fears of a Grexit and other factors, and which was destroying economic activity, has been removed. The recession is alleviating, Greece is becoming more competitive and it's almost achieved a primary surplus. [View news story]
What's changed is money in/money out, i.e. yes the primary surplus is almost a reality but its being funded not by economic activity but by savings, which are being depleted. What this means to me is the bottom isn't in yet....
The dozen 'temporary' taxes instituted to siphon money from the people to pay off the government's public sector originating debt don't reflect an improving economic environment that will increase revenues and balance the country's budget. Economic activity is depressed and people have run for the hills (moved to their farms to live off the land while taking advantage of tax incentives promoting agriculture activity).
The main reason the government is not pushing public sector reform is because of how large a part of the domestic economic activity it makes up. There's nothing to fill that vacuum if the government squashes it. Most Greek investment activity is now occurring outside the country in places like Bulgaria, because the Greeks themselves cant handle the regulatory and tax burdens of operating commerce in the country. And that hasn't changed either.
Observers watching the numbers will miss a large part of the reality. (GREK) has had a nice run over the last 6 months or so, but I'm not buying. That run was based on the Grexit coming off the table. In my opinion the real bull run hasn't started yet. I could be wrong of course, watching things from a small business perspective, and the GREK reflects much larger entities, who have direct lines to the government and political leadership, so do your own homework.