Here we have my indicator of economic health. The too big to fail (TBTF) dividend. For over a year now the big banks have been making huge profits, yet their dividends have not been restored. It’s obvious why, as they have not actually made any money, nor have they created any wealth, they have just written a large number in the profit row.
The only reason you’d buy a banking stock was for its 5-10% yield. So if the banks are fixed why aren’t they paying their shareholders?
Look for Shares of ARM Holdings to Pullback after Yesterday’s 3.26% Rise (ARMH)
Written on Thu, 06/10/2010 – 1:36am
By Chip Brian
ARM Holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH) traded in a range yesterday that spanned from a low of $11.59 to a high of $11.97. Yesterday, the shares gained 3.26%, which took the trading range above the 3-day high of $11.91 on volume of 3 million shares.
Shares of ARM Holdings are currently trading above their 50-day moving average (MA) of $11.01 and above their 200-day MA of $8.95. Look for these MAs to provide support for a short-term pullback in the shares.
SmarTrend is bullish on shares of ARM Holdings and our subscribers were alerted to Buy on June 03, 2010 at $11.63. The stock has risen 0.7% since the alert was issued.
SmarTrend has the shares in an Uptrend and expects the share price to pullback toward the $11.71 support level. Afterwards, we expect it to move upward with its peers in the SmarTrend Semiconductor- Specialized industry.
As of now ARM is up 30% today. That’s some great advise there Chip.
Apparently this is enough to get your google account disabled. I posted the following on the google groups FTSE 100 discussion. The post has been removed, and my account banned. I see no good reason for the ban, except maybe there is truth to what I said.
Agreed. The market tanked with no volume immediately ruling out the ‘fat finger’. Such a shame that mainstream press are so ignorant.
Market makers make up pretty much all trading volume, if they take out all their bids from the order book it only takes a small amount of money (relatively) to tank the market.
A 1000 point dive still only puts a small dent in the 4000+ points the dow has climbed. The MM’s have rallied us to new highs without any fundamental reason to do so.
I personally wouldn’t buy anything at the moment as the market is well out of its depth. With a 2000 point drop, I would start considering.
Full thread: http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.12590587/browse_thread/thread/259cb6ef3a9cd545
I don’t think a day goes by where there isn’t an article from BBC news without an error, whether it be, poor grammar leaving sentences ambiguous and confusing, or just cherry picking information to suit the headline. There are a few journalists who do more than just ‘plonk’ some information and a page and press submit, some even go as far to critically analyse their sources. But not today.
Reading this BBC article, it seems that it is not just the children of today that cannot add up and multiply.
The start of the article is fine, and yes the chancellor should drop the 3p rate, but will he hell. He’s only robbing the working people of the country. Another tax on employment so to speak.
Then we get onto an interesting quote from an MP and not just any MP. He’s on the ‘Commons business commitee’ (oooooooh).
Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MP on the Commons business committee, told the Daily Telegraph: “Crude oil has gone up this year, but nothing like the rise in petrol prices. Motorists are being legally mugged at the forecourt by petrol companies.”
I have a question for Lindsay. Would he think that petrol prices in Zimbabwe would remain the same every year? I hope he would, although this is reliant on him understanding something even more complex than exchange rate, inflation. Also crude has had a range of $30-$147 while petrol never went below 80p/l and above 120p/l, so in fact using his simplistic thinking, petrol has not risen as much as crude.
Anyway, let’s see how much motorists are really being ‘mugged’ this year.
First of Mr. Hoyle MP, we take the price of oil at the peak in 2008 and divide it by the GBPUSD exchange rate of that time. The exchange rate was approximately 2.00. We’ll then divide the average petrol price at that time by the exchange rate, for a rough approximation in £Pounds. We should then also include the TAX that her government have added to petrol in that period of time but we’ll get onto that after.
Although crude hit $147 per barrel, the closing price for contracts that month (July 2008) was $128, so I’m using that figure. The petrol price was around £1.20 then, it’s £1.10ish now. The end figure shows how many litres you would get if you spent the cost of a barrel at the pump. Higher is obviously better but if oil companies are keeping their profits per litre equal this number should remain the same no matter what the cost of oil is.
July 2008: $128 / 2.00 = £64.00 / 1.20/l = 53.33
February 2010: $80 / 1.50 = £53.33 / 1.10/l = 48.48
As we can see, we are being mugged to the tune of about 10%, I wouldn’t really call that being mugged, but these calculations are also a quick approximation. Remember the oil company will have fixed costs that they have to cover. With such a weak pound, any international cost will have soared. Then let us not forget that 50p of every litre is taken by the government and VAT is added too. So if we look at the entire picture we arrive at the following.
Our actual petrol prices:
@ 1.20/l is 1.20/1.175 – 0.50 = 52.13p (67.9p tax)
@ 1.10/l is 1.10/1.175 – 0.50 = 43.62p (66.4p tax)
If we feed these numbers into our previous calculations we’ll find that we are actually getting pretty much the same deal we were in July 2008.
$128 / 2.00 = 64 / 0.5213 = 123
$80 / 1.50 = 53.33 / 0.4362 = 122
So Mr. Hoyle, there you have it, next time maybe you can put your own “business” brain to work before you speak.
And to the journalist, do the public some justice and stop the spreading of ignorance and FUD.
The media is creating a hooha about France, Germany and Japan being out of recession and their economies being “fixed”, despite one quarter of less than 1% growth. I don’t think you can really say that their worst days are over just because economic output was up vs. previous poor quarters but anyway. The media is saying that these countries are happy while the UK and USA are still in recession and Germany, France etc no longer want to help with stimulus because they are “fixed”.
Has anyone considered what these three companies export quite large amounts of and what other countries, especially the UK and USA have been trying to stimulate?
The UK has barely any car industry, and the USA has broken companies like Ford and GM.
A scrappage scheme with a purse of ~£400M would allow approximately £4-5B to be spend on new german cars with an average price of £20-25k. Obviously they would not be the only cars bought, but when you put the worldwide picture into it, I think the amount of increased spending on German goods easily be £5B due to scrappage schemes.
What’s £5B in terms of the German quarterly GDP? 1.0%?
Abstract:
The graphical processing unit (GPU) is a piece of hardware that was primarily developed to enhance the realism and performance of computer games. In recent years however the hardware has been opened up to developers and GPU makers are now actively marketing the capabilities of the GPU as a generic processor. This project aims to evaluate what the GPU really has to offer and compare it to a more conventional processing device.
Andrew Rafter – Accelerating Password Recovery with Graphical Processing Units
Estate agents aren’t buying those Mini’s!
I find this case amusing
A simple analogy to why they are not in the wrong. A library contains books. Someone finds a book on guns, explosives, chemistry or whatever. They make a bomb with this knowledge. The library gets shutdown for teaching people how to make bombs.
TPB has never shared anything illegal, it just tells computers what other computers have whatever they are looking for. If someone tells me where I can buy guns and I buy a gun is that person to blame for any illegal activity I commit with that knowledge?
I hope Sony etc lose again anyway. These big companies need a pay cut in the music industry. Too many execs getting paid too much for doing very little, remind you of another industry at all?
If we lived in a world built around common sense I’d say they were in the wrong, however if TPB lose this battle then surely we will have to follow suit with other examples?
Having posted on gGogle finance discussion board for around two years now I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. Some people really have their heads screwed on and most are complete idiots with no idea of basic logic or reasoning. Reinhart is one of the former.
He often posted in quite cryptic ways and had some wacky ideas of which not all turned out to be true, but at least there was good reasoning and research behind his work and you could see why he was coming to such conclusions.
His biggest prediction to date was that the markets would crash on September 15th 2008, which turned out to be the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection.
As a result of this prediction he now has quite a following. This is no surprise, however I am still skeptical.
The DOW did not crash on that day, it fell 500 points but considering the news it was far from a crash and 5% is not what I’d call a crash either. The crash was weeks later starting in October. The DOW shed approximately 3000 points in 7 trading sessions starting on the 2nd October 2008. That’s a crash, ~30% in 7 sessions.
Google finance has the following data for the DOW on the 15th September 2008
Date: 15-Sep-08
Open: 11,416.37
High: 11,416.45
Low: 10,917.51
Close: 10,917.51
Volume: 432,965,000
Compare this day to September the 17th and 29th
Compare it to the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th of October (Not every day was a huge drop but 3000 combined)
Compare it to 15th October, where the DOW nearly had a 1000 point high low delta, finishing down over 700 points, same goes for the 22nd.
Compare it to the 5th, 6th, 12th, 19th and 20th of November
These were all big down days too. It was not a secret that Lehman was going to collapse, since march many of us were speculuating it as the next to go from the day Bear Stearns collapsed. WaMu was on the list too although I think that was a forced move by the gov for reasons outside of public knowledge. They were certainly not in the state Lehman were.
So was Reinhart right? In my opinion only partially. There was not a crash and banks were expected to fail, the odd’s were with his prediction. Funnily enough though even with Lehman failing the market was extremely resilient. That said it is still interesting to follow him. If he’s right this time the chances of co-incidence are decreased, however I am expecting a big down movement in the coming weeks anyway. I’m not going to take some 300 point drop as a crash. 300 points is just not a crash if you ask me. There have been many -3% / -4% days in the history of the markets, none of them crashes. -10% you have my attention. -6% I’ll start considering that it is not a co-incidence
Here’s a link to his blog, and one of his posts anyway. http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/?page_id=2025
You may want to read up on Legatus too, which is what his predictions are based on. Yes it’s religion. Don’t disregard it because of that though. Relgion is the greatest control system ever invented 
Well as usual it seem’s some people cannot take a joke. I especially hate institutions/charities/whatever you want to call them such as these.
But the Royal National Institute for Blind People called the comment offensive.
“Any suggestion that equates disability with incompetence is totally unacceptable” said chief executive Lesley-Anne Alexander
Where do they get these ideas from? Where does it say people with one eye are incompetent? If it said two-eyed idiot would all two-eyed people be incompetent? Did these people never go to school? Anyone who is different always has their attributes pointed out. It’s a way of life.
I never see why these people are quoted, they never have anything intelligent to add.
Can we disagree with Clarkson? Okay the guy is absurd at times, but Gordon Brown does indeed have one working eye and is completely useless at handling this crisis.
I want to speak for the National Institute for Idiots
“Any suggestion that equates idiocity with disability is totally unacceptable” said chief executive Anne Idiot, “Or even worse, that they are Scottish.”
Phil is a millionaire. Phil has one leg. All people with one leg are millionaires?
At the end of the day is a joke. definition: JOKE
At least Clarkson identifies people for who they are rather than putting “lipstick on the pig” like politicians aka glorified liars.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7873624.stm
This is my past 5 months of returns. This excludes a £3000 withdrawal made on the 8th October thus everything from that date onwards should be £3000 more.
You can see when Lehman filed chapter 11 and a few weeks later when the markets rallied hard again. Oh I wish that could happen again. My stomach can only handle that kind of leverage once a year though!
Just looking for steady returns these days. £1000-2000 a month. The biggest challenge is ensuring my cash flow falls as little as possible when the markets are sinking. The DOW is down about 1000 points yet I am up. That puts me in a good position when we rally.
5 Months return on investment
Currently holding:
1000 (LON:SOLA / NYSE:SOL (ADR) )
1 NDAQ100
400 NYSE:BAC
100 NASDAQ:CSCO
150 NASDAQ:INTC
500 NYSE:GE
Ditched BARC and RBS when they were in profit. Same for C and BAC. Bought BAC again though in this latest fall.
Heavier than i’d like on GE, but hoping it will pay off. It’s a risky one!
Southern Water is to freeze the pay of its 1,600-strong workforce, including directors, because of the recession.
The company, which has 2.3 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, said the aim was to avoid job losses.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7859038.stm
No raises, then lay offs then wage cuts. Looks like depression is on the way.
My brother brought these to my attention
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Astrology-Grow-Rich-Money/dp/0963884719/
The tags has epic_fail (and many more). That takes you to more books like these.
http://www.amazon.com/Dow-36-000-Strategy-Profiting/dp/0609806998/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i
http://www.amazon.com/Dow-2008-Different-This-Time/dp/1893958701/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i
…and I’m crapping myself
$3k in american banks
£1k in UK banks
Worst case scenario I lose ~£3k. I’ll probably have bigger problems to worry about if that happens though. I hope the risk taking pays off.
The story so far…
Charges – Total : $972M
Q4 – 2006 : $550M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~115444,00.html
Q1 – 2007 : $113M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~116842,00.html
Q2 – 2007 : $78M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~118383,00.html
Q3 – 2007 : $120M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~121475,00.html
Q4 – 2007 : $61M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~123283,00.html
Q1 – 2008 : $50M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~125171,00.html
Write-downs – Total : $3168M
Q4 – 2007 : $1608M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~123283,00.html
Q2 – 2008 : $876M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~127059,00.html
Q4 – 2008 : $684M
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16245
I’m sure there has been more write-downs. I remember a $611M loss which was due to a writedown. Oh well charge write-down does it make a lot of difference. ATI has cost them over $4 billion.
Here’s a very useful link for customising iGoogle for mobiles.
Basically I have two google accounts. My iGoogle for desktop had the same widgets but it would not show in the mobile one. It is not in the mobile “Add Stuff” list either, so you cannot add it. On this link though you can see mobile compatible widgets and enable them on your mobile page.
Can’t do a full write up now
In short
Last earnings report was -> Sept 31st. 90DMA of EURUSD was 1.50 currently it is 1.33
Quick look at the 10Q : http://www.shareholder.com/Common/Edgar/63908/1193125-08-227354/08-00.pdf
US market is approx 1/3 of revenue
European market is about 20% more than US market
Using last earnings europe was 43% of revenue @ 2688M dollars
If we convert that into euros at the time we get 1792 euros
If we convert that back into current dollars we get 2383M dollars
That’s 300M gone just to currency fluctuation.
From ~Feb 8 to ~Sept 8 EURUSD was above 1.45 the whole time. After Octobers sellof it dipped down to 1.25 at one point. It soared back briefly into 1.45 and is now at the 1.36 level. I do not know when McDonalds convert their currency, but they are certainly not going to get the summer rates.
Also the dollar is stronger against the JPY too so that might have a little effect. I’m not sure about the rest of asian currencies.
I’ll do a little more research later, I’m not sure what the estimates for MCD are so I cannot comment on how far they’ll “miss” by.
Mcdonalds do not have much cash on hand either.
Well as I predicted not even Walmart can hold up in this mess. Shame I was not around when it got near the levels I’d have considered shorting. It didn’t quite hit 58 either. Oh well you can’t win them all.
It just goes to show how bad common investor logic is. WalMart and McDonalds are the subjects of “what is bad for the economy is good for budget stores”. I believe this may be true in the case of stores such as Poundland but they are working with a much smaller customer base and are not global corporations. Their business models are also far less complex.
A similar fallacy is employed when comparing AMD and Intel. People seem to think that a bad economy is good for AMD because they sell “cheaper” processors. People who think this of course ignore all the cheap processors Intel have in their range. They think Intels revenue cut is because AMD is taking share, ignoring the fact that the world economy is down the crapper.
I think McDonalds will be next to pop. Stronger dollar will surely hurt their international revenue. I’ve not looked at their earnings sheets however I imagine a large amount of their income is from overseas. P/E is too high, not looked at the rest of the fundamentals. XOM is over priced too. Oil has tanked and demand is low. All these high P/E blue chips have pathetic dividends too.
I can’t remember the exact day it came into effect but that’s not really important once you’ve seen the graphs. I’ve used september the 20th anyway
Lloyds share price down nearly 60%
http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231286744957&chddm=65919&q=LON:LLOY&ntsp=0
Barclays down nearly 60% too
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231286882602&chddm=38325&q=LON:BARC&ntsp=0
HSBC down nearly 30%
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287011850&chddm=38325&q=LON:HSBA&ntsp=0
RBS down over 75%!
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287057025&chddm=38325&q=LON:RBS&ntsp=0
HBOS down nearly 70%
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287099893&chddm=38325&q=LON:HBOS&ntsp=0
Well done to the authorities. What do the ignorant naive short whiners have to say now? These people have the mind set that banning shorts means stocks can only go up! Doesn’t look that way to me!
My average is around 109 pence per share now and this baby is going to open at ~170 pence tomorrow. Will probably sell 250 shares and keep 750. I want more of this company
I still maintain my short WalMart idea however it’s not risen high enough to get in yet.
Markets seem to be staying up at the moment. I still maintain they will start to drop between xmas and January. I’m wondering if people are covering shorts for tax reasons? I’m not completely sure on how things work in the USA. I see a lot of people saying “I sold for tax reasons”, I guess it works the other way around too although shorts aren’t an asset.