• Amphenol’s Earnings Not Good But Could Have Been Much Worse
    Posted by on January 15th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    Nice turnaround today which isn’t surprising since the bears have been in control the last few days. The Dow briefly dipped below 8,000 at one point.
    yhoo011509.png
    The Buy List is getting a nice boost from Amphenol‘s (APH) earnings report. The shares are currently up 12%.
    This was an interesting earnings report for APH. The company’s bottom line has been growing pretty nicely over the past few years. In October, when the company reported Q3 earnings, it said to expect Q4 EPS of 58 cents to 60 cents. That wasn’t good news. Personally, I had pegged EPS at 62 cents a share.
    Well, things soon got a lot worse. APH said a few weeks ago to ignore what they said earlier, and EPS will come in between 50 cents and 52 cents. Now we come to today where we learn that Amphenol earned 56 cents a share. I’m not a big fan of analyst forecasts but here the company didn’t even know what to expect.
    The company also said that Q1 will be weak, and they expect EPS of 39 cents and 41 cents. The bottom line is that things are tough for Amphenol just like everyone else. The company is a solid outfit and even in rough patches, it can still deliver pleasant surprises.
    Quarter…………………EPS
    Mar-05…………………$0.26
    Jun-05………………….$0.29
    Sep-05…………………$0.28
    Dec-05…………………$0.31
    Mar-06…………………$0.32
    Jun-06………………….$0.35
    Sep-06…………………$0.37
    Dec-06…………………$0.43
    Mar-07…………………$0.43
    Jun-07………………….$0.46
    Sep-07…………………$0.50
    Dec-07…………………$0.55
    Mar-08…………………$0.54
    Jun-08………………….$0.61
    Sep-08…………………$0.63
    Dec-08…………………$0.56

  • According to Intrade the Chance of a Depression Is 54%
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    chart122979475287312281.png

  • Dan Lyons Vs. Jim Goldman
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    On CNBC tonight, Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, and Jim Goldman let the sparks fly. Goldman had said that a Gizmodo report on Jobs’ health was incorrect. Lyons called him out for that. Unfortunately, Dennis Kneale gets in the way.

  • Breaking: Steve Jobs Takes Leave of Absense Unitl June
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    The shares closed today at $85.33. I’m afraid what will happen tomorrow morning. The New York Times reports:

    Saying his health-related issues were “more complex” than he originally thought, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, announced Wednesday that he would take a medical leave of absence from the company until the end of June.
    In a letter to Apple employees released after markets closed, Mr. Jobs said that curiosity over his personal health “continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well.”
    Mr. Jobs said he had asked Tim Cook, Apple’s longtime chief operating officer, to take on responsibility for Apple’s day-to-day operations. “As C.E.O., I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out,” Mr. Jobs added. “Our board of directors fully supports this plan.”
    An Apple spokesman could not immediately be contacted for comment. Apple’s stock dropped sharply in after-hours trading.
    Mr. Jobs, 53, released a letter just last week saying that doctors had recently diagnosed a “hormone imbalance” that was depleting proteins in his body as the cause of his weight loss. The remedy, he said, “is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment.”

  • Meet the Man Responsible for the Credti Crisis
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    David Bowie.

    It may sound like a ridiculous question, but it’s not as mad as it seems. Even when it comes to finances Bowie leads the way – and back in 1997 he did something called ‘securitisation’.
    He thought: ‘I have a lot of money coming in over the next ten years from my back catalogue, but I’d rather have the cash now and not have to wait.’
    He produced some bits of paper – Bowie Bonds – and said: ‘Whoever buys these gets my royalties.’
    It meant he no longer had the money coming in but instead had a lot up front. His investors were guaranteed a decent income. It was a good deal all round.
    And the banks were catching on to the idea. They thought: ‘We have billions out there in mortgages which are going to pay us back very slowly. Why don’t we sell those and get the money now?’
    So the banks started doing what Bowie had done – in a big way.

    Personally, I blame Ziggie Stardust.

  • Bernie-Cam
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    CNBC has a live webcam at the Federal Courthouse for Madoff’s bail hearing. So now you can sit around and wait while watching other people sit around and wait.
    See, this is why I love new media.

  • Investor Therapy
    Posted by on January 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm


    (H/T: DealBreaker).

  • Finger Length May Predict Financial Success
    Posted by on January 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am

    I don’t even know what to say about this one:

    The length of a man’s ring finger may predict his success as a financial trader. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England report that men with longer ring fingers, compared to their index fingers, tended to be more successful in the frantic high-frequency trading in the London financial district.
    Indeed, the impact of biology on success was about equal to years of experience at the job, the team led by physiologist John M. Coates reports in Monday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    The same ring-to-index finger ratio has previously been associated with success in competitive sports such as soccer and basketball, the researchers noted.

  • Are You Born to Be a Trader?
    Posted by on January 13th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    It might depend on your level of testosterone:

    A new study has found that men who were programmed in the womb to be the most responsive to testosterone tend to be the most successful financial traders, providing powerful support for the influence of the hormone over their decision-making.
    “Testosterone is the hormone of irrational exuberance,” said Aldo Rustichini, a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota who helped conduct the study, being published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The bubble preceding the current crash may have been due to euphoria related to high levels of testosterone, or high sensitivity to it.”
    Although it may come as no surprise that testosterone could be a big player in the mano-a-mano world of Wall Street, the research offers the best evidence yet of the hormone’s role in determining which would-be Masters of the Universe will thrive. It also supports the growing recognition that biology plays a role in complex human behaviors, and that financial choices in particular are often less rational than economists appreciated.
    “We have this idea that economic agents are like Spocks — they are just rational,” said John M. Coates of the University of Cambridge in England, who led the study. “This paper suggests the traders are surviving not so much because they are rational but because they have certain biological traits.”

    Yet another argument against the efficiency of markets.
    BTW, I think Spock would make an excellent trader. That death grip thingy would really come in handy in the trading pits.

  • Bernanke in London
    Posted by on January 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Here’s a snippet of the bearded one speaking at the London School of Economics:

    One important tool is policy communication. Even if the overnight rate is close to zero, the Committee should be able to influence longer-term interest rates by informing the public’s expectations about the future course of monetary policy. To illustrate, in its statement after its December meeting, the Committee expressed the view that economic conditions are likely to warrant an unusually low federal funds rate for some time.2 To the extent that such statements cause the public to lengthen the horizon over which they expect short-term rates to be held at very low levels, they will exert downward pressure on longer-term rates, stimulating aggregate demand. It is important, however, that statements of this sort be expressed in conditional fashion–that is, that they link policy expectations to the evolving economic outlook. If the public were to perceive a statement about future policy to be unconditional, then long-term rates might fail to respond in the desired fashion should the economic outlook change materially.
    Other than policies tied to current and expected future values of the overnight interest rate, the Federal Reserve has–and indeed, has been actively using–a range of policy tools to provide direct support to credit markets and thus to the broader economy. As I will elaborate, I find it useful to divide these tools into three groups. Although these sets of tools differ in important respects, they have one aspect in common: They all make use of the asset side of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. That is, each involves the Fed’s authorities to extend credit or purchase securities.