Monday, June 20, 2011

Stock Tips & News

Top News

US Stock Futures Lower; Fears Of Greek Default Remain Worrisome

Wall Street Journal - an hour ago

By Barbara Kollmeyer US stock futures were pointing to a lower open for Wall Street, with markets expected to track losses in Europe after a weekend meeting of euro-area finance ministers failed to wipe out fears of a Greek default.

Oil Drops to Four-Month Low, Trades Below 200-Day Average on Europe Crisis

Bloomberg - 2 hours ago

By Ben Sharples and Grant Smith - Mon Jun 20 09:34:37 GMT 2011 Oil fell to the lowest in four months in New York, bringing its decline from this year's peak to 20 percent, on speculation a weakening global economy and Greece's debt

Japan Yosano: Europe debt woes cloud export outlook

Reuters - 2 hours ago

TOKYO, June 20 (Reuters) - - Japanese Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano warned that Europe's sovereign debt problems are a source of uncertainty for Japan's export outlook, although Japanese firms are likely to restore production

Tech Firms’ Workers Sell Shares, Fearing a Bubble Will BurstBy MIGUEL HELFT (NYT)Employees and investors at dozens of hot start-ups have sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shares.

Greek Debt Could Rattle U.S. Money Market Funds

By AGNES T. CRANE and REYNOLDS HOLDING (NYT)

Money market funds are sitting on $360 billion worth of European bank short-term debt, leaving open a way for Greek turmoil to play havoc in the United States.

Deal on Lifeline to Avert Greek Bankruptcy Is Postponed

By STEPHEN CASTLE and NIKI KITSANTONIS

European finance ministers failed to agree on 12 billion euros in financial aid for the Athens government.

At New Network, Olbermann Sets Sights on MSNBC

By BRIAN STELTER

MSNBC will have some competition on the left as Keith Olbermann and a raft of contributors join Current TV.

Small Group Rode LinkedIn to Big Payday

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

LinkedIn's debut illustrates how insiders can get rich in the social networking bonanza.

Beijing's Strange Composure in the Face of Crises
With unrest in the south, inflation refusing to subside and the nation's wealthy fleeing overseas, why aren't China's leaders more distressed?
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/?p=13948?mod=djemChinaRTR_t

Five Myths About Business in China
Professor John Quelch of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), one of the leading business schools in China, reveals five common myths about doing business in China.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/?p=13946?mod=djemChinaRTR_t

Can China Hold its Own in Competitive Eating?
In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China proved it's moving up in the sporting world. But there's one competition in which China's traditional rivals, the U.S. and Japan, still clearly dominate.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/?p=13941?mod=djemChinaRTR_t

Chinese Leaders Laud 'Red' Campaign
A rising Communist Party star's campaign in praise of Chairman Mao has earned plaudits from party chieftains.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576395621087173648.html?mod=djemChinaRTR_t

Hungry China Shops in Argentina
Chinese companies are investing in Argentina as Beijing expands its global commodity hunt from the raw materials used in industry to the foodstuffs needed to feed its 1.3 billion citizens.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303823104576391621352528138.html?mod=djemChinaRTR_t

Inflation Threat to Asia's Rise

Inflated prices of food and fuel present the biggest threat to Asia's economic development, yet governments will be hard-pressed to limit rises through currency intervention, said Bratin Sanyal, ING's head of Asian equity investments. Last week, India raised its rates again to curb inflation.

Sega Confirms Cyberattack

In the latest cyberattack to hit the videogame industry, Sega said an intruder stole the personal information of nearly 1.3 million users of its online service from a company database.

UK's Henderson Equity picks up 26% stake in IPE Global

U.K.-based private equity fund, Henderson Equity Partners, has invested $10 million in Delhi-based development sector consultancy, Infrastructure Professionals Enterprise Global Pvt. Ltd. (IPE Global). It has picked up a 26% stake with the investment from its second Asia Pacific fund.

Week Ahead: Lokpal Bill Countdown, U.S. India Business Meet

Highlights of news and events relating to India this week.

Big gold weighing down stocks ETF - Physical gold outperforms

Physical gold has outperformed big gold stocks in recent months as majors face among other things, increasingly savvy investors and cost pressures Friday , 17 Jun 2011

Underperformance by gold stocks creates great buying opportunity

The recent poor performance of gold stocks vis-à-vis the gold price is counter to historical trends and now may be the time for a major recovery in gold equities. Monday , 20 Jun 2011

Exploding six "Gold Bubble" myth

Anyone calling gold a bubble is talking through their hat or worse... A number of myths associated with ‘bubble theory' for gold are exposed here. Saturday , 18 Jun 2011

Silver's fall an opportunity for equity bargain hunters

Silver has fallen 30% recently but the metal is still above its year-ago price and demand remains strong, on the other hand silver equities are down for the year , some of which could represent a buying opportunity Monday , 20 Jun 2011

Could central banks & the IMF start selling gold again?

A recounting of the history of Central Bank gold sales in recent years and the banks' positions with respect to the yellow metal now. Friday , 17 Jun 2011

Was Soros gold exit a big mistake?

If George Soros' sale of much of his gold holdings was a mistake, it wouldn't be the first time he appears to have misread a major market trend. Monday , 20 Jun 2011

Europe delays decision on Greece, presses Athens to act LUXEMBOURG/ATHENS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers kept up intense pressure on Greece on Monday, saying it had to approve tougher austerity measures before a final decision is made on a further 12 billion euros ($17 billion) in loans. | Full Article

Stock index futures fall as Greek loan delayed June 20, 2011 04:25 AM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.7 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.7 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.7 percent at 0758 GMT (3:58 a.m. ET). | Full Article

Second Greek bailout set for July
	Bradley Davis GLOBAL markets are likely to trade in choppy waters until early July when Europe is to outline a second bailout for troubled Greece.

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Benjamin Graham Was A Crappy Hedge Fund Manager

Jack Bogle, the outspoken godfather of index funds and passive investing strategies, didn't approve of a recent Wall Street Journal article defending hedge funds.

In particular, he took issue with the author's reference to Benjamin Graham, the legendary Columbia finance professor who literally wrote the book on Security Analysis and mentored Warren Buffett.

Bogle wrote a letter to the editor. Here's an excerpt: Citing Benjamin Graham as the first "hedged fund" operator is an especially unfortunate example. "The trick," Mr. Rice writes, was Graham's "clever way to make money . . . whether it [the market] continued to rise, or started to fall." ...

Proposal for New Hedge Fund Fee Structure: 1% + 33% of Alpha

By The Big Picture

One of my pet peeves is the way that insiders -- whether corporate CEOs, hedge fund managers, or elected politicos -- capture compensation (or credit) for normal cyclical gains they had little or nothing to do with.

This is the approach favored by the Crony Capitalists — those people pretending to be free market participants, and who merely pretend to be creating value. They are taking credit for structural successes that would have occurred with or without them. What they are actually doing is capturing value, not creating it — and then transferring it from its true owners (shareholders/investors) to themselves.

This is wrong; it is legalized theft.

If you want to see a good example of how CEOs transfer shareholder wealth to themselves, a good place to start is Roger Lowenstein’s 2004 book, Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing. The section on CEO compensation is astounding; these guys were essentially getting wildly overcompensated for being CEOs during a bull market. The prime example was the CEO of Heinz, who gave himself (with the tacit approval of his Board of~~Crony~~ Directors) a $90 million bonus. And this was back in the early 1990s, when $90 million was real money.

Why Do You Want To Be A Hedge Fund Investor?

www.ritholtz.com

Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced that it would launch a new mutual fund that — apparently — will bring the joy of hedge fund investing to the masses. For as little as $1,000, the Multi-Manager Alternatives Fund (GMAMX) allows mom-and-pop investors to put their life savings into some of Wall Street’s riskiest and most expensive products. This “fund of funds” will, according to its prospectus, let investors gain exposure to the trading strategies of hedge funds...

Public pensions fare well with hedge funds

Big public pension funds reaped strong returns from their hedge fund portfolios in 2012, with most of them handily surpassing their own benchmarks and well-used industry indexes. The hedge fund portfolios, for the most part, achieved close to what chief investment officers wanted, despite a 1,500-basis-point difference between the best and worst performers, according toPensions & Investments' analysis of the returns of 19 hedge fund portfolios from 17 U.S. public retirement plans with aggregate hedge fund assets of $60.7 billion.

Daniel Loeb surfing to the top of the hedge fund charts again

Something must be in the water over at 399 Park Avenue, where Daniel Loeb's hedge fund Third Point is headquartered. His Third Point Ultra fund has already gained 12.42 percent this year through the 13th of March, according to data from HSBC’s Private Bank.

The portfolio added 3.3 percent alone between March 1 and March 13. By comparison, hedge funds have returned about 4 percent year-to-date, according to HSBC.

The roughly $1.7 billion Ultra portfolio is a levered version of the firm’s flagship Offshore fund, which manages about $5.7 billion and has gained 8.5 percent over the same period. ...

CHART: Hedge Fund Gold Allocation Falls

After taking a cursory look at the recent 13-Fs filed by hedge funds, it became apparent that hedge funds were scaling back their exposures to gold. George Soros was among the big names that unloaded his position. According to Goldman Sachs' new Hedge Fund Trend Monitor report, hedge funds in aggregate scaled back big time.

Despite low turnover, hedge funds notably reduced holdings of underperforming long-time favorites Apple and gold while raising allocations to rallying Financials. For the first time in three years AAPL was not the top stock in our VIP list, instead ranking as the third most frequent top-10 holding... Continue to read.

10 Publicly Traded Hedge Funds That Pay a Dividend
Investing in publicly traded hedge funds is a great way for an investor to see returns through capital appreciation and dividend payments in the financial sector. When it comes to investing, many think of the process as a choice between growth and value stocks; you’re either taking on risk in search of capital appreciation, or you’re seeking out stable sources of current income through dividend payments. Luckily, Wall Street has many investment options and investors don’t have to make a clear-cut choice between capital gains and dividends. There are a lot of misunderstandings about dividend stocks out there; make sure you’re investing for the right reasons, check out 5 Common Misconceptions About Dividend Investing. ... Continue.

Hedge Funds Love These 3 Outperforming Semiconductor Stocks ...
Do you like to follow the buying trends of smart money investors? We ran a screen to find semiconductor stocks currently in favor by hedge fund managers. We began by screening the semiconductor industry for stocks that are rallying above their 20-day, 50-day, and 200-day moving averages, indicating that these stocks have strong upward momentum.
We then screened for those with bullish sentiment from institutional investors, with significant net institutional purchases over the last quarter representing at least 5% of share float. ... Continue.

10 REITs Absolutely Adored By Hedge Funds
After identifying the most popular stocks among hedge funds (see our full Top 10 here) according to their third-quarter 13F filings, we have decided to break down the top 10 REIT stocks that hedge funds love. The REIT industry, notably specialized REITs in hospitality and healthcare, should see positive growth from a rise in job growth and expansion due to freeing up of the credit markets. Our list includes 400 hedge funds and prominent investors that are required by the SEC to disclose their public equity holdings quarterly. In descending order, we have outlined the most-loved REIT stocks based on the aggregate number of funds owning each. ...Continue.

Apple Stock Hit by Panic Selling: 'Someone Yelled Fire'(Yahoo) Forget the "fiscal cliff." The real panic on Wall Street is over Apple's stock. Nearly every mutual and hedge fund has piled into Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) during its spectacular rise over the past few years. Now, these same funds are scrambling for the exits as the stock goes through an equally spectacular decline. Apple plunged to a six-month low Thursday as funds rushed to take profits on the stock before it's too late. Shares are now off 25 percent since late September-shortly after the iPhone 5 launch and a month before the iPad Mini introduction. The stock, once up 74 percent on the year, is still up 30 percent for 2012. That's why Wall Street is getting out while it can. ...

Billionaire George Soros’s Latest Stock Picks (InsiderMonkey) George Soros is best known for the fortune he made shorting the British pound in 1992, but he currently invests a considerable amount of money in equities and so is required to report many of his long positions in 13F filings. We’ve gone through the 13F for the third quarter of the year and compared Soros’s holdings at the end of September to three months earlier. Read on for our impression of his moves and compare them to what he's bought and sold before. AIG. American International Group, Inc. (NYSE::AIG) became Soros’s largest 13F equity holding during the third quarter with a position of over 15 million shares being reported in the filing. A number of value investors have been getting into the insurer over the course of the year, and at a P/B ratio of 0.5 it certainly looks cheap compared to the book value of its equity. We also like its earnings multiples- it trades at 9 times forward earnings estimates- and revenue was up strongly in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2011. Fellow billionaire Dan Loeb had initiated a position during the second quarter of 2012 and we think that it still looks like a good buy for investors. ...

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers still facing issues as tough year nears an end (BizJournals) In late 2011, Jim Rogers seemed almost golden. He was about to close his last big merger deal. He was poised to take a corporate chairmanship tailored to his penchants for energy policy and reshaping the utility-business model. He was ready to bask in the spotlight of a national convention he’d helped bring to Charlotte. But by late 2012, it’s evident things have not gone so well. “It has been a year of challenges,” the Duke Energy Corp. chief executive concedes. “Nothing in life is perfect.” Dan Fogel, associate director of the Wake Forest University Business School’s Center for Energy, ...

Argo unveils emerging markets hedge fund (InvestmentWeek) Argo Group has launched an emerging markets hedge fund investing in bonds and currencies from a universe of over 40 emerging market countries. The Argo Local Markets fund aims to hold between 20 and 30 positions and has been launched with an initial $7m of seed capital. It will offer investors weekly liquidity and has a mandate to take on moderate leverage. Argo chief executive Kyriakos Rialas said: "The case for investing in emerging markets is compelling. ...

Argentina's President Is Making Great Political Theater Out Of Paul Singer Seizing The Country's Naval Ship(BusinessInsider) Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is turning her feud with hedge fund manager Paul Singer into a political rallying cry in Argentina. The President has refused to pay Singer's firm Elliott Management the $1.3 billion it owes the fund after it defaulted in 2010. de Kirchner says it's because Singer was given multiple chances (in 2005 and 2010) to restructure, like other hedge funds did, and take a haircut to recoup at least a portion of their losses. Singer, needless to say, did not. Instead, he decided to capture one of Argentina's naval vessels as collateral, and got Ghana to give him an order to detain the ARA Libertad last month. ...

Tom Steyer New Investments
FARALLON CAPITAL Hedge fund billionaire into politics (DailyDemocrat) Hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer staked millions of his own money to take on big oil and then to close a corporate-tax loophole costing California $1 billion a year -- and won both times. Ever heard of him? Don't worry, you will. With his latest behind-the-scenes win at the polls as the man who stared down big business by standing up for Proposition 39, this Stanford MBA and top Obama fundraiser has become an out-of-nowhere big-time political player in California. So what does Tom Steyer want now? "I am an enormous lover of California and to the extent that I see something wrong, I will be involved in trying to fix it," Steyer, 55, said Monday. "What form that takes, I don't have a fixed idea." ...

This Hedge Fund Returned Nearly 25% Last Quarter
Artis Capital Management was a top performing hedge fund during the third quarter. Coming in with the fourth best Q3 performance, the fund’s picks had a weighted average return of 25.5% during the first half of the year, and returned 24.6% for the third quarter, boosting the fund’s year to date performance to 56.4%. Artis Capital was founded in 2001 and is a San Francisco-based hedge fund with a focus on public technology companies. ... Read more.

More ETFs Play Hedge Fund Copycat
What if you could emulate the actions of the most successful hedge fund managers for a fraction of what they cost? Two ETFs that debuted this summer are trying to do that by using public filings to replicate their portfolios. And a third, which launched early this month, promises to add another hedge fund dimension to ETF copycats by adopting what its sponsor calls the only true market-neutral strategy in the lot. Researchers have been trying to emulate hedge fund strategies since the 1990s ... Read more

BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé.

BMW and Pininfarina are two of the most tradition-swathed names in the motoring world. Each is a byword for cutting-edge technology, style, dynamics and aesthetics. With the BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé, the two

time-honoured companies are unveiling the outcome of their first collaboration at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2013. The BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé is a one-off and represents the exclusive interpretation of a luxurious BMW Coupé as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina.

...

All Time Record Gold Transactions Reported By LBMA

The precious metals have been weak again in May with gold falling 4.4% despite this weeks’ recovery. Silver is down 7% and platinum by 2.6%. Palladium has recovered from recent weakness and those who accumulated on weakness are set for the best month since November after it surged 6.6% in May.

Weakness in gold and silver is leading to robust demand internationally as store of value buyers accumulate gold and silver on this dip. This is particularly the case in Asia where premiums remain robust and supply demand imbalances remain. ...

6 Tips to Work From Home Successfully

The future of work is the work itself, not where and when the work takes place. Workplace flexibility programs are already catching on and will soon become standardized as more millennials enter the workplace. All workers, not just millennials,want freedom and flexibility and some are even quitting their jobs to becoming freelancers in order to gain that freedom. oDesk.com has 3.3 million registered freelancers, and Intuit predicts that by 2020, 40% of Americans will be freelancers. When it comes to working from home, 13.4 million people (9.4% of all American workers) work from home at least one day per week compared to just 9.2 million in 1997 according to one Census Bureau.

Today's top Green Energy Good News

Russia is funding research into powering its airplanes with solar energy. The airline industry is being hurt by high fuel prices, and solar-powered planes would not only be cheaper but also would remove a major source of carbon pollution that contributes to global warming.

Texas is set to double its wind energy generation from 60 gigawatts to 120 gigawatts in 2013.

Britain has made substantial investments in wind energy and its technology. British PM David Cameron is touting his country’s green expertise on his trip to India to promote trade with that country. ... Continue.

High-Dividend ETFs with Reasonable Valuations

Investors have picked over the ETF universe in search of any kind of yield in an extremely low-rate market for bonds. As a result, ETFs tracking many traditional high-yield sectors have been bid up to expensive levels, but there are still places investors can go for income without paying nosebleed valuations. “Unfortunately, valuations [for dividends, high-yield junk bonds, MLPs, and REITs] are approaching sky high levels in many instances as more investors fall in love with these products ... Continue.