Author Archives: Felix

WSJ to Lose its Circulation Bragging Rights

Posted on November 6, 2007 by Felix

Update: I got this wrong. See the correction here. Did you see the pretty charts in the NYT NYT and the WSJ WSJ this morning, showing the total paid circulation of America’s biggest newspapers? There are two clear leaders, USA … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | Comments Off

Mark-to-Model on Wall Street: The Numbers

Posted on November 6, 2007 by Felix

Nouriel Roubini hoists a nice piece of detective work from his comments: Bernard has gone down the list of Wall Street banks, looking at how much they have in the way of level 3 ("mark to model") assets, compared to … Continue reading →

Posted in banking | Comments Off

Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition

Posted on November 6, 2007 by Felix

CIBC: Citi’s math doesn’t add up How Messed Up is Citi?: "The SIVs may be why Citi held on to this crappy paper when it should have dumped it. It would have required them to mark the prices down of … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | Comments Off

Citigroup Datapoint of the Day

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Floyd Norris: We may be approaching a time when Citi’s stock would do better if it did eliminate the dividend… Such a cut would save the company $10.8 billion a year. As it happens, that is just about the amount … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, stocks | Comments Off

Skill vs Luck in Investing

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Greg Mankiw seems to think quite highly of a speech that investor Mark Sellers gave to MBA students at Harvard. But although I’m a writer and Sellers says very nice things about writers,most of what he has to say rings … Continue reading →

Posted in investing | Comments Off

Automotive Datapoint of the Day

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Shai Agassi calculates that "the cost of the average used car in Europe is now cheaper than the cost of gasoline to drive it for a year": An average clunker across Europe, and there should be 100M or so cars … Continue reading →

Posted in climate change | Comments Off

Name That Stock!

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Two years ago, a benefactor donated a slug of stock to the Boys and Girls Club of Pittsfield, Mass. Back then, it was "basically worthless," according to John Donna, the club’s president. In December 2006, that stock was sold for … Continue reading →

Posted in stocks | Comments Off

Las Vegas vs the Law of Large Numbers

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Nassim Taleb likes to use Las Vegas as an example of a mathematical odds-based business which exists in economic theory much more often than it exists in real life. If you run a bunch of casinos with hundreds of thousands … Continue reading →

Posted in statistics | Comments Off

Warren Buffett, Derivatives Speculator

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

There are nice safe hedgy options, and then there are dangerous, volatile, and prone-to-blowing-up options, the kind of things which have a habit of biting Victor Niederhoffer in the ass. It’s these kind of options which Warren Buffett famously referred … Continue reading →

Posted in derivatives | Comments Off

China Datapoint of the Day

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Value of PetroChina on Friday: $456.6 billion. Value of PetroChina on Monday: $1.004 trillion.

Posted in china, stocks | Comments Off

Citi: Prince’s Ouster Ungags Bartiromo

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Maria Bartiromo waited until Chuck Prince had left the building to start criticizing him on the record for his role in bad-mouthing her earlier this year. (You might recall no little innuendo about her relationship with the head of Citi’s … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, Media | Comments Off

Citi: Looking Weak

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Felix

Never mind the Rubin news; that was all but a given. And the Bischoff news is not that much of a big deal either: the chap is the classic safe pair of hands who will be competent enough at managing … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, defenestrations, stocks | Comments Off

Paying Readers: The Results

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Felix

The experiment is over, and I have paid five of my readers for reading this blog; my total outlay came to $5.12. The average (mean) bid was $380,952,457.64. The lowest bid was one Zimbabwean cent; the highest was $8 billion. … Continue reading →

Posted in blogonomics | Comments Off

Extra Credit, Saturday Edition

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Felix

Paulson Funds Cut Bets Against Subprime Mortgages Media Maneuvers: Meta scoops: "The traditional definition of a scoop is that you got something first. The new definition is that you were the first in the neighborhood to yak about it. The … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | Comments Off

Art and Architecture at Auction

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

I’ve been guest-blogging over at Figure Painting today: I have an entry up defending auction houses, and another about auctioning houses. Amazingly, I managed to avoid talking about mechanism design in either of them.

Posted in architecture, art | Comments Off

Chuck Prince Deathwatch: Keep an Eye on Medina-Mora

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

The WSJ is reporting that Citigroup is holding an emergency board meeting this weekend, and that Chuck Prince’s ouster might be on the agenda: It wasn’t clear precisely what the meeting would address, but the subject of further writedowns could … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, defenestrations | Comments Off

GDP in Technicolor

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Greg Mankw gets an email from the White House, which says, quite rightly, that GDP figures are "no fun unless you have a picture". I think it’s very pretty:

Posted in economics | Comments Off

Why Wall Street CEOs Get Paid So Much

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Robert Reich thinks that Wall Street CEOs get paid more than their Main Street counterparts because they’re liars: There’s no reason to believe Wall Street executives have been smarter than executives in the real, non-financial economy. They’ve been paid more … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, pay | Comments Off

ABX, RIP

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Required reading from Alea today on the subject of the notorious ABX subprime indices. We’ve been here before, many times, but no one ever seems to learn: the ABX indices do not measure bond prices. They do not give an … Continue reading →

Posted in derivatives, housing | Comments Off

Bloomberg Pushes a Carbon Tax

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Mike Bloomberg today has a very important speech advocating a carbon tax; he explicitly prefers it to a cap-and-trade approach. I’m very glad that Bloomberg and other civic leaders are pushing hard on this, even as I disagree with him … Continue reading →

Posted in climate change | Comments Off

How Mark Zuckerberg is Like Howard Dean

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Facebook saw its valuation skyrocket back in May, when it announced it was opening up its platform to third-party developers. Except… the Facebook platform isn’t really open, as Marc Andreessen explained shortly after its launch. Now, Andreessen’s Ning and Rupert … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Comments Off

TV vs Blogs, Jargon Edition

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

The lack of interactivity on television seems to be haunting Bloomberg. Paul Kedrosky is watching TV: Bloomberg TV is apparently watching Fox Business News. The same way that Fox is making a point of trying to force guests and host … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | Comments Off

Adventures in Alternative Investments, Medallion Edition

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

“This is one of the best investments — better than Merrill Lynch, which is going down the drain,” said a driver, Mahmoud Sadakah, 42. “This is a guaranteed investment, because it will never go down.” The market in NYC taxi … Continue reading →

Posted in cities | Comments Off

Investment Banks: Much Room to Fall Further

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

Floyd Norris has a chart today which puts the recent share-price drops at Merrill, Citi, Bear and the like in context. Yes, they’re down from their highs, but the broker-dealers in general have massively outperformed the rest of the stock … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, stocks | Comments Off

Merrill: The Latest Victim of a WSJ Attack

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Felix

There’s definitely a sensationalist edge to the WSJ these days. It’s banging the Jimmy Cayne drum for the second day running, with a story misleadingly headlined "CEO of Crisis-Hit Bear Denies He Used Marijuana": for one thing, the Bear Stearns … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, Media | Comments Off

Author Archives: Felix

Meta

Categories

Archives