Posts Tagged
‘Madoff’
by ilene - March 10th, 2010 3:14 pm
This is crazy, unless we’re refunding everyone who lost money, jobs, houses, retirement funds, etc, by clawing money back from those who recklessly or negligently contributed to the financial meltdown. Unfortunately, it’s not much crazier than some other government programs over the last year. Any Senator supporting this repulsive plan (Senators Richard Shelby and Bob Corker) should be voted out asap. My yellow highlights. - Ilene
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
These are, by and large, relatively well-to-do people who were considered ‘qualified investors,’ or ought to have been. They were able to place large sums of money in obviously risky investments seeking abnormally high rates of return, which they did receive for many years.
The notion that the government should retroactively cover their losses, even indirectly, by taxing the public is obviously repugnant.
What about the many who have lost, on a percentage basis, equally if not more devastating amounts of their retirement savings in the tech, housing and credit bubbles? Their only fault is that they lack the political connections and high powered lawyers to make the case for them to the Congress, and the influence to get their way from pliable Congressmen.
I feel mightily sorry for anyone who has lost money in these fraudulent markets. I spend quite a bit of my personal time trying to warn people about the snares and pitfalls that are allowed to continue in the US financial markets even today. And there are many of them. Consumer Protection is not a priority in Washington.
A better case might be made to sue the Wall Street exchanges, the private self-regulators, and the auditors and ratings agencies for gross negligence in allowing these frauds to continue for so many years. Prosecutions for fraud and corruption across a much wider circle of enablers is generally what is done. It was done in the 1930’s and it was done after the Savings and Loan Scandal.
But that will not happen. The financial sector is contributing far too much to the politicians in Washington, and too many powerful politicians are beholden to them, despite what smooth words that might pass their lips in public.
To take the losses of wealthier investors from hedge funds and other high risk investments having no productive benefit or socially redeeming value, and socialize them to the many is almost unbelievable.
And the backing of Senators Richard Shelby…
Tags: government indemnity, Madoff, qualified investors, senator Corker, senator Shelby, socialize losses, Stanford, taxpayers
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by Phil - November 11th, 2009 6:18 am
$2.5 Trillion - That’s the size of of the global oil scam.
It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in "Madoff Units" ($50Bn rip-offs). That’s right - $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil.
Where is the outrage? Where are the investigations?
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BP, TOT, Shell, DB and Societe General founded the Intercontinental Exchange in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate "dark pool" trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.
A Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003 discovered that ICE was being used to facilitate "round-trip" trades. Round-trip” trades occur when one firm sells energy to another and then the second firm simultaneously sells the same amount of energy back to the first company at exactly the same price. No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.
"Traders of the the ICE core membership (GS, MS, BP, DB, RDS.A, GLE & TOT) wouldn’t really have to put much money at risk by their standards in order to move or support the global market price via the BFOE market. Indeed the evolution of the Brent market has been a response to declining production and the fact that traders could not resist manipulating the market by buying up contracts and “squeezing” those who had sold oil they did not have. The fewer cargoes produced, the easier the underlying market is to manipulate." - Chris Cook, Former Director of the International Petroleum Exchange, which was bought by ICE.
How widespread are “round-trip’‘ trades? The Congressional Research Service looked at trading patterns in the energy sector and this is what they reported: This pattern of trading…
Tags: BP, DB, Enron, GLE, ICE, Madoff, MS, Oil, Oil Scam, OPEC, RDSA, TOT
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by ilene - November 4th, 2009 1:49 am
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
A successful career on Wall Street is as much about the failures as it is about the wins. Anyone who tells you differently is either hiding their past mistakes or is about to experience their own epic collapse, made even worse by the fact that it will be wholly unexpected to them.
This is good to remember the next time you hear any of the following terms assigned to a Wall Street professional…
Guru – As in “Options Guru” or “Trading Guru”. These days, robes and a beard are optional as investors are more than willing to lavish the appellation Guru on virtually anyone who can get themselves on television. This term typically precedes the name of someone who would like to sell you a set of instructional videos.
example: Lenny Dykstra (TheStreet.com’s ex-options expert)
Rock Star – Anytime someone involved in finance is called a Rock Star, you can turn on the bull$#*t meter and pretty much just leave it running. “Rock Star” is what they called Erin Callan, Lehman’s CFO just before the end, whose main role at the company was the application of lipstick to herself when the cameras were rolling and to their pig of a balance sheet when the Korean sovereign wealth funds were in town.
example: Erin Callan (former Chief Obfuscation Officer, Lehman Brothers)
Wiz – Similar to Guru, although with the added implication of supernatural talent or skills. Those on The Street who are referred to as “a Wiz” will likely end up in handcuffs before long.
example: Bernie Madoff (the most consistent generator of returns in the history of investing…until someone needed money back)
Wunderkind – Typically reserved for someone who runs a hedge fund and puts up incredible numbers within the first year or two out of nowhere. Much like your average American Idol winner, the “Wunderkind” rides this initial wave of success until his many new investors find out how rarely any one strategy works consistently in back-to-back years.
example: Thomas Hudson Jr. (Pirate Capital)
Prodigy – Similar to wunderkind, those in finance who are called “prodigy” are not only fresh faces, but they also have come up with a fresh way of going about something, be it trading, dealmaking or investing. Unfortunately, it will not be long before the prodigy’s methods are co-opted by the masses, thus rendering the novelty of the approach itself useless. Avoidance of this…
Tags: Finance, Guru, Hedge Funds, Hotshot, Journalists, Lehman Brothers, Lenny Dykstra, Madoff, Pirate Capital, Thomas Hudson Jr., trading, Wall Street, Wall Street Terminology | Tagged Erin Callan, Wunderkind
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by ilene - August 19th, 2009 9:50 pm
Click here for a FREE, 90-day trial subscription to our PSW Report!
Just for fun after a long day of posting about serious matters. Sorry, no pictures. - Ilene
Courtesy of Eric Falkenstein’s Falkenblog
As the New York Times only prints news fit to print, I feel obligated to keep inquiring financial minds informed on all dimensions of the financial crisis.
It’s been documented that subordinates laugh more at their bosses jokes than vice versa. Such is the nature of interaction in a hierarchical society with a strong pretense for egalitarianism. Rich people have more friends, bigger birthday parties, etc. But once you lose everything, you suddenly aren’t as funny, as friendworthy, as desirable.
Bernie Madoff’s ex-mistress, clearly not above seeking financial gains where others don’t, wrote a quickie book Madoff’s Other Secret, in which she informs us about Bernie’s various inadequacies, including one I never really thought about (from Bloomberg):
Bernie had a very small penis. Not only was it on the short side, it was small in circumference. That he was now pointing it out to me was telling. It clearly caused him great angst. I wanted to be careful how I responded. Men and their penises have a strange and unique relationship…[However] I liked this man and didn’t want to emasculate him. His tiny penis hadn’t prevented me from climaxing…On the bright side, oral sex would be a breeze.
In his position this isn’t very damaging to his status. I can’t think it helps her socially, but I imagine without that passage, there would absolutely nothing noteworthy in there.
Tags: Madoff, Madoff's Other Secret, penis size, Sheryl Weinstein
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by ilene - May 7th, 2009 1:18 am
Courtesy of Christopher at For What It’s Worth
He passed out investors’ money to all his family and spent most of it on himself. No sign yet of the Madoff boys’ houses on Tomac or Cherry Valley being put up for sale, but my guess is that they’ll be just behind Walt’s Round Hill cottage. Maybe a “Madoff real estate tour” should be organized for this fall?
Mr. Madoff listed family members, boat captains, housekeepers and others as employees of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, even though they never actually worked for the firm, newly released documents show. Mr. Madoff also used his firm’s money to pay for real estate, yachts, private planes and country club memberships, according to court filings by the trustee charged with liquidating the Madoff firm and recovering money for victims of Mr. Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
The documents back up a previous assertion by lawyers for the trustee, Irving H. Picard, that Mr. Madoff used his business as a personal “piggy bank.”
[snip]
In January, Mr. Madoff, his wife, Ruth, and other family members spent more than $100,000 on his firm’s American Express Corporate Card. Among the charges were $1,564 at Bistro Chez Jean-Pierre in Palm Beach, Fla.; $2,000 at Georgio Armani in Paris; and $2,813 at the Apple computer store in New York.
Mr. Madoff, the mastermind of the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme, doled out more than $7 million to various companies owned by his wife, Ruth, his two sons and his niece Shana. Peter Madoff’s wife, Marion, was paid a salary of $163,500 by the Madoff firm last year, even though investigators found no evidence that she actually worked there.
Mr. Madoff also paid out $471,000 to a marina in Long Island and nearly $1 million to a number of exclusive country clubs including the Breakers, the Atlantic Country Club on Long Island, the Palm Beach Country Club and the Trump International Golf Club.
If the IRS never audited this guy, who were they auditing? Just asking.
Tags: liquidating, Long Island, Madoff, Ponzi, Ruth
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March 20th, 2010 1:08 am
John's thoughts on the relentless trend higher in stocks, with the languishing VIX.
The Boredom Before the Storm (Time to Buy Volatility)
Courtesy of John Rubino at Dollar Collapse
As eventful as the past few months have been (what with Greece, California, Illinois, Iran, the Lehman Brothers revelations, U.S./China trade friction, and record deficits just about everywhere), you’d think the financial markets would be agitated, to put it mildly. Instead, just about everything is range-bound, and the things that aren’t, like U.S. stocks, are trending slowly, reassuringly, higher. This has taken the VIX, the main measure of fear (i.e. volatility) in the options market down to levels last seen before the ...
more from Ilene
March 19th, 2010 12:05 pm
Quad Witching Expiration and a Pullback from the Long Term Trend
Courtesy of JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
The front month on the SP futures has now switched from March to June as a part of the Quad Witching Expiration. (Technically it switched last week, but for charting purposes I made the switch last night.) The June Futures have essentially the same formations as did March, it's just that the earlier months have few trades to mark them.
This is the first serious test for US equities since mid-February, as it has been on a spectacular rally streak, no doubt fueled by excess liquidity applied to a selling exhaustion in the funds. Curiously not among corporate...
more from Chart School
March 19th, 2010 9:29am
Well now we're officially cashed out!
As I always do before options expiration I reviewed our Buy List, which, this quarter, is a list of 37 stocks we've been playing since late December and, sadly, after reviewing 37 of our favorite investments very carefully this week - I could only conclude that cashing them out was the only decision I could be comfortable with this week. Of 66 trades we had on our 37 stocks, 64 are winners with an average return since 2/8 of 28% - since most of the trades were designed to make 40% for the year - it just seems silly not to take the money and run now, on March 19th.
You are not supposed to have 64 out of 66 winners in 6 weeks, you are not supposed to make 3/4 of what you anticipate for the year in 6 weeks - that is NOT how the markets are supposed to work! When the ma...
more from Goddess
March 19th, 2010 11:05 am
Identifying the Fundamentals
Stocks move under the influence various factors that we can use to identify stocks that are likely to move 3-5% in a single day. Even t...
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By Andrew Wilkinson
March 19th, 2010 4:41 pm
Today’s tickers: BBY, DNDN, GLD, BAC, AET, BA & NBR
BBY - Best Buy Co., Inc. – Shares of the world’s largest electronics retailer rallied 2% to $41.25 during the trading session after receiving an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ at Goldman Sachs Group where analysts increased BBY’s target share price to $47.00 from $44.00. Options traders employed a few different bullish tactics to position for continued upward movement in the price of the underlying stock through expiration in April. Plain-vanilla call buyers targeted the April $44 strike to purchase 5,100 calls for an average premium of $0.55 apiece. These investors stand ready to accrue profits if Best Buy’s share price increases 8% from the current value to exceed the effective breakeven point on the calls at $44.55 by expirati...
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March 15th, 2010 6:49 pm
By Ilene
Let's take a look at Insider Buying and Selling over the last week or so. These are screen shots from Finviz - the significant buys against a green background first and significant sells against the pink background second. All the buys fit into my screen shot but the sells did not. Click here to see all the sells.
Note that the largest buy in the group, for KITD was at a price of 9.73 (KITD is currently at 11.54). The buy was part of an Equity Offering rather than an open market purchase. Tuzman Kaleil Isaza's (KITD's Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer) history of buys is http://www.insidercow.com/
more from Insider
March 15th, 2010 8:55 am
This post is for live trades and daily comments.
To learn more about the swing trading portfolio (strategy, membership etc.), please click here
- Optrader
...
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About Phil:
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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