Posted January 17, 2011 at 8:02 pm
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail:
Goldman Sachs recently caused a frenzy among its clients when the Wall Street powerhouse made some Facebook shares available to a small group of wealthy customers, and such has been the clamour that on Monday it reportedly decided to prohibit sales to U.S. customers. It’s little wonder clients want to buy:
The value of the social networking pioneer has been soaring, by some estimates up more than four fold in the past year to $50-billion (U.S.).
But it is possible to sidestep Goldman and get in on the action on Facebook, and other well-known private glamour names such as Twitter and Craigslist, without being on Goldman’s list of preferred offshore clients. Be forewarned, though.
Purchasing the stock isn’t easy, and unfortunately for ordinary investors, is available only to accredited and institutional investors.
The stock trades through off-the-beaten path Internet sites that specialize in private company securities. Among the most popular are SecondMarket and SharesPost, both of which say they’ve been trading Facebook shares through online services available on their websites.
The stock that changes hands on these sites is typically from…
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Posted November 30, 2010 at 4:34 am
from The Wall Street Journal:
Call it a bull market in fear.
The popularity of the VIX index, which has become a widely watched barometer of investor fear since the financial crisis, is generating a host of spinoffs, copycats and derivatives. It is adding up to big business for VIX’s owner, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, as well as partners and competitors that have developed products pegged to, or inspired by, the VIX.
VIX clones have sprung up in Australia, Canada and India. There are now VIX-like measures in the crude-oil and gold markets. Soon, there will be a VIX each for corn and soybeans. The popularity of the index has fueled growth in futures and options just to bet on the VIX itself.
Formally known as the CBOE Market Volatility Index, the VIX tracks the prices investors pay for options to protect themselves against swings in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. An increase in those prices suggests an increase in investor anxiety. It is also used as a short-term predictor of investor behavior.
“There’s not a bubble in volatility—investors can expect more of that—but there’s certainly one in products to trade it,” said Michael McCarty, managing partner of Austin, Texas-based Differential Research. Mr. McCarty and others in the industry predict that not all the new offerings will survive. Interest in fear gauges seems likely to wane once markets settle, they say.
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Posted November 4, 2010 at 8:45 pm
by Jeff Reeves:
Editor, InvestorPlace.com
There are snappy headlines all over cyberspace right now about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve setting sail with QE2 — or a second round of “quantitative easing” policies, for those more aware of the famous ocean liner than economic jargon.
In layman’s terms, quantitative easing is a monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the economy by increasing the supply of money in the system and increasing the excess reserves of banks.
Or in more pejorative terms, the Fed is printing more money to satisfy Washington’s runaway spending and hopefully prop up an ailing economy.
I’ll leave the merits and menaces of QE2 — and the nautical puns — up to those on the rest of the Internet. The bottom line is that regardless of whether another round of quantitative easing is a success or failure, the result will be the eventual rise of inflation and devaluation of the dollar.
To help investors prepare their portfolios, here’s a 10-step inflation survival guide…
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Posted October 20, 2010 at 8:29 pm
from Sean Goldsmith
Th S&A Digest
Frank Byrd, of Fielder Research & Management, gave a well-thought, clearly explained talk on why we’re currently seeing inflation. Frank said before the “great inflation” of the 1970s, the economy looked deflationary – just as it does today. Unemployment was rising, and CPI was slowing. Factories had lots of unused capacity, so they couldn’t raise prices. Then, capacity utilization tightened quickly and the Fed raised rates. It was too late. CPI tripled within two years.
So, how do you play inflation? Definitely don’t buy bonds. And Byrd argues stocks are generally a losing proposition. Stocks dropped 40% between 1973 and 1974. The time to buy stocks was in 1975 after inflation expectations have changed. Byrd loves gold. He said, “If you’re bearish in gold, you’re bullish on fiat currencies.”
I don’t know anyone in his right mind who would take that trade [the bullish stance on currencies].
I found a video of Frank Byrd giving basically the same presentation to Columbia Business School earlier this year. It’s 30 minutes, but I recommend you watch the entire thing. Understanding the inflation that will rock our economy could save your portfolio.
Watch the video here:
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Posted October 9, 2010 at 2:32 pm
by Courtney Weaver and Miles Johnson
One of Facebook’s biggest backers is poised to offer City investors a rare chance to take an indirect stake in the social networking site via the London listing of a subsidiary worth up to $5bn (£3.1bn).
Mail.ru (formerly known as Digital Sky Technologies) is Russia’s largest internet group, and also owns about 10 per cent of privately held Facebook. It intends to float a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – that includes the majority of the company’s Russian assets and part of the Facebook stake. Marketing to potential investors will start as early as Monday.
Mail.ru’s largest investors are Alisher Usmanov, the Russian oligarch and Arsenal football club’s second-biggest shareholder, and two associates: Yuri Milner, the group’s chief executive and a former physicist, and Grigory Finger, a Russian businessman.
The company has hired Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to run the listing, and held an analyst meeting earlier this month to prepare marketing material, people close to the company said.
Virtually unknown outside Russia until it purchased an initial 2 per cent stake in Facebook last year, Mail.ru has quietly become a…
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Posted May 22, 2010 at 9:54 am
from Onlineinvestingai.com:
Sometimes we catch a little guff for suggesting that we want everyone to become a millionaire and that Blingtechnology is paving the way for this to happen.
Actually, what I say is I want everyone to follow their dreams and become financially free. This doesn’t mean you have to 
be a millionaire, per se, as long as you are calling your financial shots. There’s no price tag on independence.
As far as technology helping to create millionaires, it’s already happening! And it’s happening in profound ways. There’s never been a time in human history when financial advice and computing power is available to the mass of society.
In fact, here’s an example of that knowledge that’s (nearly) free. Here are ten blogs that will help you make a million, or become financially free. Whichever comes first.
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Posted May 18, 2010 at 1:05 pm
by onlinedegrees.net:
If you’re making a career out of investing, you already know that information can truly be worth its weight in gold. With the right search engines and tools, you can find just about anything you need to know.
Put these search engines to work, and you’ll get the information you need to make smart investment decisions.
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Posted April 22, 2010 at 1:06 am
via SlopeofHope.com
The VIX FAQ
One of the most misunderstood financial measurements that exists today is the CBOE Volatility Index. It has been called many things, and it seems that when analysis is done on the name, it is more a confirmation of what the viewer wants to see. Most of this analysis is done without a true understanding of what the VIX is and how to trade it. So with that in mind, let’s have a quick primer on the VIX.
What is the VIX?
The VIX is a measure of near term volatility. This measure is derived from the premium seen in SPX options. So that means it is simply a rough measure of supply and demand for equity options 30-days out.
How is the VIX Calculated?
You asked for it…
WTF?
Yeah, I know.
No, really, how is the VIX calculated?
First it sums up premiums on out of the money options on the SPX. It doesn’t take into account options that have less than a week to expire because they have their own voodoo. You also normalize it to a 30-day period doing some fancy averaging and weighting.
What does the VIX tell us?
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Posted April 13, 2010 at 7:54 am
Every other issue of The Validea Hot List newsletter examines in detail one of John Reese’s computerized Guru Strategies. This latest issue looks at the Benjamin Graham-inspired strategy, which has averaged returns of more than 16% per year since its inception more than six years ago. Below is an excerpt from today’s newsletter, along with several top-scoring stock ideas based on the Graham investment strategy.
Taken from the April 2, 2010 issue of The Validea Hot List
Guru Spotlight: Benjamin Graham
Today, many investors look to Warren Buffett for advice about the stock market and the economy. But before he became one of the world’s richest men and greatest investors, there was someone whose investment advice Buffett himself cherished: Benjamin Graham. And Buffett was far from alone. Known as “The Father of Value Investing”, Graham inspired a number of famous “sons” — Mario Gabelli, John Neff, John Templeton, and, most famously, Buffett, are all Graham disciples who went on to their own stock market greatness.
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Posted November 23, 2009 at 11:33 pm
From Clusterstock:
Compared to “investing,” pure trading doesn’t get a whole lot of respect.
The words “trader” or “speculator” are both frequently used as pejoratives, describing people who just want to make money, while being totally indifferent to the underlying asset.
But if you’re willing to…
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