Archive for 2008

  • Researchers Discover Massive Asshole In Blogosphere
    , April 28th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    The Onion Radio News is on the scene.

  • How Rare Is a 56-Game Hitting Streak?
    , April 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    Here’s a fascinating article from the NYT looking at the probability of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. It turns out, a 56-game streak isn’t that improbable. But from Joe D it is.
    (Via: Joe Weisenthal)

  • Sequoia Fund to Reopen to New Money
    , April 26th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    After 26 year, the legendary Sequoia Fund will reopen.

    Since its inception in 1970, Sequoia has returned more than three times that of the S&P 500. An investor who put $1,000 into the fund at inception would today have a little more than $200,000, compared to about $63,000 in an S&P 500 fund, according to Morningstar Inc.
    Sequoia’s reopening comes amid a similar move by several other funds, most noticeably the Longleaf Partners Fund, which reopened this year.
    Sequoia is managed by New York-based Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb Inc., which was co-founded by Mr. Ruane, a friend of Mr. Buffet. In 1970, when Mr. Buffett was liquidating his investment partnership, he advised clients to sign with Sequoia. Mr. Ruane died two years ago, and Mr. Goldfarb became chairmman in 2005.
    The fund’s managers hope reopening will infuse fresh blood into its client universe.
    They said their shareholders have aged since the fund was closed in 1982, “to the point that attrition has become an issue.” Its assets are down 2.4% at the end of last year, even though the fund had a positive 8.4% return. The S&P 500 was up 5.5% in 2007.

  • Mississippi John Hurt
    , April 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

  • SPSS Inc. (SPSS)
    , April 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    My latest at RealMoney.com (paid link) on SPSS Inc. (SPSS).

  • Arby’s Buying Wendy’s
    , April 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    From USA Today:

    The owner of Arby’s said Thursday that it is buying Wendy’s International in an all-stock deal worth $2.34 billion after the burger chain’s board rejected at least two earlier offers by the company.
    Triarc Companies (TRY), which is owned by billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, will pay about $26.78 a share for the company, which has about 87 million shares outstanding. The price is a premium of 6% from the company’s closing price of $25.32 Wednesday.
    Under terms of the deal, shareholders at Wendy’s, the nation’s No. 3 hamburger chain, will receive 4.25 shares of Triarc Class A stock for each share of Wendy’s (WEN) stock they own.
    Pam Thomas Farber, 53, daughter of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, said the family is devastated by the news.
    “It’s a very sad day for Wendy’s, and our family. We just didn’t think this would be the outcome,” she said.

  • CNBC Anchor Factoid of the Day
    , April 25th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    I never realized that Trish Regan was Miss New Hampshire. She won the talent night at Miss America. Wow, well done Trish!

  • Is This a Real Car?
    , April 24th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    Or a large Matchbox? I’m not really sure.
    widdle%20car1.jpg

  • Triple-A Failure
    , April 24th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    I’m currently working my way through Roger Lowenstein’s 5,000-word Triple-A Failure in a preview of the Sunday New York Times. I highly recommend it. Here’s the opening:

    In 1996, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, remarked on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” that there were two superpowers in the world — the United States and Moody’s bond-rating service — and it was sometimes unclear which was more powerful. Moody’s was then a private company that rated corporate bonds, but it was, already, spreading its wings into the exotic business of rating securities backed by pools of residential mortgages.
    Obscure and dry-seeming as it was, this business offered a certain magic. The magic consisted of turning risky mortgages into investments that would be suitable for investors who would know nothing about the underlying loans. To get why this is impressive, you have to think about all that determines whether a mortgage is safe. Who owns the property? What is his or her income? Bundle hundreds of mortgages into a single security and the questions multiply; no investor could begin to answer them. But suppose the security had a rating. If it were rated triple-A by a firm like Moody’s, then the investor could forget about the underlying mortgages. He wouldn’t need to know what properties were in the pool, only that the pool was triple-A — it was just as safe, in theory, as other triple-A securities.
    Over the last decade, Moody’s and its two principal competitors, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, played this game to perfection — putting what amounted to gold seals on mortgage securities that investors swept up with increasing élan. For the rating agencies, this business was extremely lucrative. Their profits surged, Moody’s in particular: it went public, saw its stock increase sixfold and its earnings grow by 900 percent.
    By providing the mortgage industry with an entree to Wall Street, the agencies also transformed what had been among the sleepiest corners of finance. No longer did mortgage banks have to wait 10 or 20 or 30 years to get their money back from homeowners. Now they sold their loans into securitized pools and — their capital thus replenished — wrote new loans at a much quicker pace.
    Mortgage volume surged; in 2006, it topped $2.5 trillion. Also, many more mortgages were issued to risky subprime borrowers. Almost all of those subprime loans ended up in securitized pools; indeed, the reason banks were willing to issue so many risky loans is that they could fob them off on Wall Street.

  • Economic Perception Datapoint of the Day
    , April 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am

    From yesterday’s PA exit poll:

    Is National Economy in a Recession?
    Yes: 88%
    No: 11%
    National Economic Conditions:
    Slowing Down: 11%
    Moderate Recession: 47%
    Serious Recession: 42%

    Remarkably, every group listed above voted for Hillary by a 54-46 margin. In other words, your perception of how well the economy is doing had zero relevance on how you voted.
    But I am amazed that 42% of Keystone Staters think we’re in a serious recession. We certainly could be heading towards one, but it’s way too early to make that call. The unemployment rate is barely above 5%. To add some perspective, the unemployment rate for March is lower than every single month (save one) from 1975 to 1996.
    Irrational pessimism anyone?