People who know me well know that I am obsessed with GE Capital as being one of the key stories of the change in the American economy of the late 20th century, a story I hope to develop more 3 or 4 projects from now. GE Capital was founded in 1932 to finance dealer inventories and consumer purchases. People made things in a factory and bought things from a factory and GE Capital helped provide both a burgeoning middle class and the businesses that served it with sufficient lines of credit.
Starting in the 1960s it began to provide leasing and financial services to other large Fordist-Keynesian style businesses. And then starting in the 1980s during the financial deregulatory wave it expanded rapidly into one of the world’s premiere shadow banks: it was the single largest issuer of commercial paper in the United States before the crisis, with $620 billion in assets at the end of 2007.
Did you ever listen to the Giant Pool of Money epsiodes of This American Life? (You must have.) If you remember it, during the episode you meet rising subprime mortgage star Glen Pizzolorusso, who was an area sales manager at an outfit called WMC mortgage in upstate New York. He made over $1 million dollars a year handling the subprime market and spent like mad on cars, real estate, and impressing celebrities. Here’s his description, from the transcript:
Glen Pizzolorusso: What is that movie? Boiler Room? That’s what it’s like…We lived mortgage. That’s all we did. This deal, that deal. How we gonna get it funded? What’s the problem with this one? That’s all everyone’s talking about…
We rolled up to Marquee at midnight with a line, 500 people deep out front. Walk right up to the door: Give me my table. Sitting next to Tara Reid and a couple of her friends…We ordered 3, 4 bottles of Cristal at $1000 per bottle. You know so you order 3 or 4 bottles of those and they’re walking through the crowd and everyone’s like: Whoa, who’s the cool guys? We were the cool guys.
He then losses it all during the crash and has to move back home. (He has since joined the Tea Party.) Now WMC sounds like a fly-by-night operation in…
The Virtual Value Portfolio hit a new closing high today.
The original $100,000 stake has grown to $123,504 since our Oct. 26, 2012 inception date. We have accomplished this 23.5% return (36.5% annualized) without any leverage or use of options.
The benchmark Standard & Poors 500 has shown a total return of 18.6% over the identical time period.
Just when one thought the SEC has hit rock bottom in stupidity, corruption and porn-addiction terms, to paraphrase the beloved Dennis Gartman, it whips out a shovel and starts digging.
Today's case in point: a report by the agency that Mary Schapiro made into Wall Street's punching bag (and whose legacy her Morgan Stanley-friendly replacement is set to perpetuate) according to which "unexplained rapid price drops in single stocks have generally been triggered by human error, not nefarious trading activity or high-speed trading algorithms gone wild, an official at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday."
Note from dshort: I've updated this commentary to include the latest Consumer Price Index data published this morning.
The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U, or more generally CPI) is the most familiar gauge of inflation in the US. The data for the non-seasonally adjusted series stretches back a century to January 1913. But the news of late is about a relative newcomer to the inflation metrics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Chained CPI for Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U). The BLS has a Frequently Asked Questions page on the Chained CPI that's been around for a while. At present the page footer says "Last Modified Date: April 6, 2005".
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
After the volatile session yesterday, the S&P 500 has broken back above the channel we have been discussing for a few weeks and now the Russell 2000 and NASDAQ appear to be joining (was not the case yesterday). If not for the focus on the FOMC presser tomorrow you'd have a nice clean breakout starting here. Tomorrow is of course a major wildcard.
On a related note – the 50 day moving average has been quite the support in 2013. In fact no year other than 1995 in the past 30 comes close to what we are seeing this year. ...
AdCare Health Systems, (NYSE: ADK), a leading long-term care provider, today announced that, on June 13, 2013, the Company received a notice from the NYSE MKT LLC (the "Exchange") indicating that the Company's plan to regain compliance with certain of the Exchange's continued listing standards was accepted.
As previously announced, on May 17, 2013, the Company received a deficiency letter from the Exchange indicating that the Company is not in compliance with Sections 134 and 1101 of the Exchange's Company Guide (the "Company Guide") due to the Company's indication in its Form 12b-25, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on April 16, 2013, that the Company would not file its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2013 (the "Form 10-Q"...
The market responded well today to good economic news and to the positive and somewhat surprising response to the election of a moderate Iranian President. Some moderation in Turkey didn’t hurt either, and overnight positive markets in Asia and Europe gave bullish investors enough encouragement to buy equities broadly.
This drove all three major domestic indices up about 1% before a late small selloff left the S&P 500 Index up nearly 1% and the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average both up well over 0.5%. We think it likely this week that the market will challenge highs set in late May.
ANR - Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. – Front month put options changing hands on coal producer, Alpha Natural Resources, Inc., this morning suggests some traders are positioning for shares in the name to extend losses, with the stock down roughly 8.0% to a six-month low of $5.50. Coal stocks are being pressured for a second consecutive session on news released Friday that Walter Energy pulled out of a $1.55 billion refinancing loan due to market conditions. Traders bracing for Alpha’s shares to continue to slide in the near term snappe...
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Click here for the latest Stock World Weekly. Sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up for a free trial. There's an interesting option trade on LULU presented in the newsletter this week.
Trivia on lululemon via Paul Price, article found in NYTimes.
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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