TSLA - Buy the dip

HLF - Herbalife

Bill Ackman is right about you.  See you at 0.

LNKD - LinkedIn IPO - The rules of an IPO.

1. Don't let your best & biggest clients who you let take part lose money.
2. Create hype and scarcity by only floating a tiny portion of the company.
3. Can't borrow the shares to short yet.  (Next Tuesday shares become available to borrow).

No surprise LinkedIn jumped 109% today.

CNBC - DeVry CEO?

CNBC, why do you put the CEO Daniel Hamburger of DeVry on tv as an expert on education and jobs?

DeVry is a "degree chop shop" designed to help generally under performing students attain the maximum amount of student loans, which in turn is paid to DeVry for an education with a reputation for getting your resume into the trash pile.

iPad is Here

Apple creating an entirely new revenue stream, see you at 350.

Do Not Fear the iPad ... AAPL 300

Dear Obama, You Forgot a Few Companies.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Administration, American International Group, GMAC

Also, what is your plan after you over-tax, and over-regulate banks? They will either increase rates on loans, or increase standards required for borrowers. Both cases DECREASE lending. Do you then create a law or regulation forcing banks to lend to poor quality borrowers? (This did not work out well with Fannie & Freddie).

BREAKING NEWS: Financials To Sandbag Earnings To Avoid Barney Franks

Financials will excessively increase loss provisions to avoid blowing out earnings all to avoid the wrath of the communists Barney Franks & Nancy Pelosi.

Updated Crappy Mortgage Paper, Alt-A & Subprime

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/Subprime_loss_projections_07_22_09.pdf

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/Alt_A_RMBS_07_24_09.pdf

Want To See Some Crappy Mortgage Paper?

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/subprime_ced_091208.pdf

Baird Upgrades US Bancorp (USB) to Outperform, $29 Target

Robert W. Baird upgrades US Bancorp (NYSE: USB) from Neutral to Outperform. The firm also boosted its price target from $16 to $29.

LINK

Overstock.com - Q3 2009 Earnings Call

Today Overstock.com let a total of ONE analyst (Brent Nystrom) ask a few softball questions on their conference call. Amazing.

Wonder why? Heres the answer.

Overstock.com - Questionable Accounting, Naked Shorting.

The jig appears to be up at Overstock.com. While moving away from the original niche of selling overstock merchandise bought cheaply, to try and directly compete with Amazon and complain about naked short sellers, they appear also to have employed some very questionable accounting to show any bit of profits.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Is In a Very Sour Pickle

Do Not Buy Penny Stocks

Cops kick out Rosemary Williams

Turns out its not your home after you pull out a handful of cash during a refinance.

Rosemary Williams - Eviction / Foreclosure - What are you thinking?

Defying Foreclosure, Owner And Protesters Wait

Sixty-year-old Rosemary Williams lived in the home at 3138 Clinton Avenue South in Minneapolis for the past 23 years. It's the only neighborhood she's ever known, having lived on the same block for the past 55 years.

Her troubles began last December when Williams lost her job and then received the terrifying news from her mortgage company. The interest rate on her GMAC adjustable rate mortgage shot up to 10 percent. You can imagine what that did to her monthly payment.

"It jumped from $1200 to $2200 in one year," said Williams.

Rosemary Williams eviction stalls on Friday—What will Monday bring?

Finstad also wrote: “Rosemary (my neighbor) grew up poor and she and her mother RENTED on our block for 30 years. Then she bought and payed a mortgage for 20 years. I don’t know the circumstances around her situation, but she took out a second mortgage (that was adjustable rate) and when it “adjusted” her payment then doubled."

ROSEMARY HOW MUCH MONEY DID RECEIVE WHEN YOU TOOK OUT THE SECOND MORTGAGE???

You lost your house not because GMAC is big and evil, *you* got greedy and took out a boatload of cash with a second mortgage you could not afford.

High-Frequency Trading Information

I've resisted writing a piece about high frequency trading lately. Although I have a very good understanding of the subject, I see it as a kinda lost cause to try to educate people about - uninformed people want to believe that computers are front running them, stealing their money and manipulating the markets. People who understand equity trading know that this is just the culmination of technology advancement and competition for spreads, which has resulted in equity bid/ask spreads being narrowed to their lowest levels ever. There has never been a better time for the individual stock trader to execute orders: our bid ask spreads are narrower than ever. A high frequency trader may have a computer program trying to scalp a penny or a fraction of a penny from you - but this is better than it's ever been - better than the days of specialists scalping 1/8ths and more.

An excellent article on high frequency trading: High Frequency Trading: We Fear What We Do Not Understand

Freddie Mac reports $768 million quarterly profit - The Bear is dead

Freddie Mac just reported a profit. The bear is dead in the forest, poachers got him.

High-Frequency Trading Misinformation

Denninger gets it wrong on high-frequency trading here. http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1262-High-Frequency-Trading-My-View.html and his mindless minions follow.

3. To the extent that these HFT systems are in fact using flash (or other) traffic to get in front of orders and advantage themselves they are dramatically increasing the violence of market moves. A stock trading at $20 that has a bid come in with a limit of $20.10 would normally fill (assuming sufficient depth) at $20; this does not materially move the market. But if a HFT system "sees" that order, steps in front of it and buys up all the shares at $20 and then re-sells them to the customer at $20.04 (one penny better than the next best offer at $20.05) it has caused the current "last" price to move where it otherwise would not. Multiply this by millions of shares an hour and the impact on price moves could be tremendous. While I understand that many people like the move of the last two weeks in the market, the fact remains that what goes up can also come down with equal violence.

That is not how flash orders work. First if there was sufficient depth @ 20.00, the order would get filled immediately and not be flashed. Second the order can not be flashed any worse then the NBBO, so they only offer price improvement to a client.

Flash Order