Search results for Jon Markman
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Posted
Sep 16 2008, 05:46 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Extraordinary events are piling up on Wall Street so fast, it's hard to know where to focus. Forgetting the prospective bailout of AIG for a moment, since every media outlet is on that one, the most shocking development of the day for me is news that a $60 billion money market fund "broke the buck" on Monday due to losses in Lehman Brothers paper that it held. So much for the safety of "cash".
The Reserve Primary Money Fund (RPFXX) has become the first money-market fund in more than a decade to lose money because its board was forced to write down $785 million worth of LEH debt to zero. The fund reportedly
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Posted
Sep 15 2008, 02:54 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The fate of the world financial system hangs from a thread today after the New York office of the Federal Reserve stood up to the big Wall Street financial houses on Sunday and essentially told them, "thanks but no thanks" on their request for a bridge loan to nowhere.
It's about time. For years, the country’s major broker-dealers and banks have competed with each other to become the No. 1 underwriter of loans, bonds, mergers, mortgages, swaps and equities. The industry’s compensation system is focused on rewarding managers who took big risks, and could bring home top rankings in dealmaker lists.
All the while, banks figured that if they really got into trouble, the federal government would back them up with taxpayer funds. And the government reluctantly complied twice this year, backing up the reckless behavior of high-flying bankers at Bear Stearns in March, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week with loan guarantees costing untold billions
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Posted
Mar 27 2008, 12:46 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
If it seems like you are paying more for your cereal, beer and pizza lately, shake your fist in the direction of Pakistan, Uganda and Argentina, because a weird confluence of international events are combining to slash the world supply of wheat and boost prices. The downside of globalization is that a crop failure 10,000 miles away can lead to pricier brewskis here.
It's actually a lot more serious than that. The New Scientist magazine reports that a wheat disease that started in central Africa actually threatens to destroy most of the world wheat crop, leaving millions to starve. A fungus called Ug99 has already spread from Africa to Iran and is bearing down on Pakistan, according to the report. This is bad news because Pakistan and Punjab wheat is extremely important to the entire food chain of the densely populous plains of South Asia.
According to reports, scientists hope to slow the spread of Ug99 by spraying new forms of fungicide but the only real firebreak will come when agronomists are able to create Ug99-resistant strains of wheat over the next few years. The disease, which is said to be a super-strong strain of black stem rust, first came to light in Uganda in 1999 and has since ruined crops in Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen. Now winds are expected to take the spores to Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Iran. Chinese scientists are said to be on a crash program to develop Ug99-resistant wheat strains before the disease ravages its already weakened croplands.
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Posted
Apr 10 2008, 03:53 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Watch out, Texas! Get back California, Louisiana and Alaska! North Dakota and Montana are on track to knock all of you off your high horses as the oil capital of the United States.
According to a government report published today that has stunned the energy biz, a thin layer of rock known as the Bakken Shale, located a couple of miles under the Badlands, holds up 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, making it the single largest oil reservoir that federal scientists have ever assessed.
At today’s price of $110 per barrel, that puts the value at $475 billion, give or take a few bill, or more than enough to make people think ND stands for North Dallas. Or maybe that’s New Dhabi.
The U.S. Geological Survey only assessed the Bakken Shale in U.S. boundaries, so the full extent of the find, which stretches north into the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will ultimately be larger. Already the estimate for “technically recoverable” oil – or that which is exploitable using current technology -- is 25 times higher than the last time the USGS surveyed the area, in 1995.
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Posted
Jul 29 2008, 05:44 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Cities compete like crazy to get the Olympics, but are they really such a prize? New research by sports economics professor Brad Humphreys suggests that cost overruns are usually out of control, and countries end up with much lower economic growth a year later -- belying all the hype that comes in advance.
Humphreys says the Olympic Games in Beijing, scheduled to start in two weeks, were originally expected to cost $1.6 billion, but a recent tally shows that China has spent $40 billion. The University of Alberta lecturer says the Athens games in 2004 were budgeted for $1.6 billion and ended up costing $16 billion. The London games were budgeted at $8 billion and already $19 billion has been spent. And one of the worst examples is Montreal, where citizens just finished paying off the games, 30-plus years later. Taxpayers always end up footing a big bill for their leaders' Olympic vanity.
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Posted
Sep 29 2008, 01:09 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Members of Congress shocked the world today by voting down legislation aimed at resolving the U.S. credit crisis, evidently determining that it was far from the comprehensive rescue plan that its promoters claimed and instead was just a handout to fatcats. Investors responded by throwing a fit, punching the Dow Jones Industrials Average down 778 points.
The House move was one part nihilism, one part bluff-calling and one part an expression of total constituent outrage, and only history will be able to judge if representatives' snub of their political leadership will rank among the greatest blunders of all time or a brave move of principle. Both views will have their day in court, for dispassionate analysis
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Posted
Jun 26 2008, 01:18 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It’s easy to imagine that the 25 best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 Index this year are all oil and gas producers, and the 25 worst-performing stocks are all banks and brokers. Yet as we near the halfway mark in 2008, it turns out that there are quite a few surprises in the mix of best and worst.
For instance, the No. 1 stock in the benchmark index this year isn’t an oil producer, but a coal miner, Massey Energy. It’s up 155% so far, rising to $89 from $35 as coal prices have soared in the wake of booming demand in China and India. The No. 2 stock is actually a discount retailer, Big Lots. It’s up 100%, from $15 to $30, as investors speculate it will get a big share of tax-rebate money from low-income Americans.
Most of the rest of the next best 15 gainers
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Posted
Nov 20 2008, 09:48 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Shares of Warren Buffett's insurance holding company are on the ropes this month, plunging 30% in part because the famed investor dabbled in an area of the market he has long publicly derided: derivatives. And due to a tangled web of financial relationships, they may be taking Goldman Sachs shares down with them.
Investors are concerned about a $37-billion bet that Buffett made last year that U.S. and world equity values would be higher in 15 to 20 years than they were then, when the Dow Jones Industrials were trading around 13,000. Through his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett sold option contracts, known as "naked puts" to an undisclosed group of investors for around $4.85 billion, reportedly using Goldman as broker.
The buyers saw the puts as a type of insurance that would pay off royally if stocks fell over the next decade. They were seen by Buffett as an easy way to pocket a quick $4 billion-plus, which
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 05:53 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Bummed that you missed the skyrocketing advance of credit card vendor Visa when it debuted as a stock last month? The 50% move higher in the shares in the first few days paid for a whole lot of shopping sprees among shareholders, you can be sure -- and they could pay with cash, not plastic.
Well fret no more, because this crazy market is giving you another shot right now with the shares of the company behind a different credit card issuer: American Express. And the author of a brilliant new book about buying super-discounted stocks says this is one idea you should definitely not leave home without.
Vitaliy Katsenelson, a Denver portfolio manager whose cagey Active Value Investing was published last year, says Amex is one of the “cleanest” financial stocks you can buy right now, not to mention one of the cheapest. Its value is down, he says, because it is mistakenly lumped in both with banks and with companies that will suffer in a recession. He says that, to the contrary, Amex is in the virtually the same business as Visa and Mastercard, whose own shares are up a stunning 406% since they debuted in mid-2006: They just take fees from merchants and earn interest on cardholders’ balances.
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Posted
May 06 2008, 12:05 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
If soaring gasoline prices are blowing a hole in your commuting budget, perhaps you ought to consider going to work for an oil company. That seems to be the employment road to riches these days, as the industry reportedly faces the loss of half of its aging work force over the next decade.
According to a report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the energy industry will lose as many as 15% of its engineers in just two years to retirement, and has therefore launched an all-out assault on finding, training and retaining new young staffers. It sounds like the boom in demand for software developers in Silicon Valley in the '90s. Bonuses and perks are escalating as companies vie for talent. Report author Pritesh Patel said new workers will stream into the industry from around the world, but there will still be a “knowledge gap” that will hamper efforts to find and exploit new oil and gas reserves.
It sounds like this is a better direction for college graduates to head than the traditional havens of medicine and law. The Society of Petroleum Engineers has published a survey that shows the average base salary for petroleum engineers was $122,458 in 2007, up 5% from 2006. Bonuses, housing allowances, retirement plan contributions and the like reportedly push the average compensation to $167,712. All this at a time when doctors and IT pros are facing cutbacks.
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