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$$$ J.P. Morgan Suspends Share Buyback [WSJ]
$$$ Bank of America’s CEO ‘Comfortable’ With Investments [CNBC]
$$$ Gupta ‘Threw Away His Duties,’ Prosecutor Says In Opening [Bloomberg]
$$$ France, Germany Fail to Resolve Differences Over Euro Bonds [WSJ]
$$$ U.S. lets China bypass Wall Street for Treasury orders [Reuters]
$$$ MF Global’s Corzine Got More Than $8 Million in Year Before Collapse [WSJ]
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The Montana State Society’s Testicle Festival in Virginia Square was a rousing success this year. Festival-goers consumed 110 pounds of bull and bison testicles, 84 liters of Crown Royal and 1,500 cans of beer this year, according to event organizer and Society president Jed Link. All three were records for the event, now in its eighth year. Organizers estimate that nearly 600 people attended the Testicle Festival, which was held at the American Legion post at 3445 Washington Boulevard. Even though the event didn’t start until 6:00 on Saturday evening, Link said a line started to form at 4:30 p.m. [ARL]
He’s got this. Read more »
The Facebook IPO left some investors seething. For Jared White, it left him feeling very lucky. “I seriously got struck by lightning and survived,” the 31-year-old Austin, Texas, trader said of his experiences amid the confusion that engulfed one of the highest-profile initial public offerings ever. At around 10:45 a.m. Friday, Mr. White says, he placed an order to buy 30,000 Facebook shares, setting as his limit price $43 a share, at the opening of trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, scheduled for 11 a.m. But the opening was delayed, and at 11:08 a.m., Mr. White accidentally canceled his orders through his firm’s electronic trading system. He pushed the wrong button on his computer, Mr. White explained, when he meant to cancel orders for a different stock. Mr. White realized what he had done at 11:13. He quickly re-entered his order, saw an indication that it was accepted by Nasdaq and settled in front of his screen to watch the action when trading finally started at 11:30 a.m…At around 1:50 p.m., the traders finally got confirmations from Nasdaq on their original orders—except for Mr. White, whose account in the Great Point system showed zero shares. He felt like he had dodged a bullet, but he was confused. “What? How?” Mr. White asked his technical-operations manager, who had been on the phone with Nasdaq all morning. He soon learned why he didn’t have any shares: Across the market, orders that had been placed between 11:11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. had fallen into some kind of a black hole. That meant Mr. White’s re-entered order was never recognized. About the same time, revelations were hitting other traders across the market, surprising some who held shares they thought they had sold. Trading volume surged as orders flooded Nasdaq, causing a steep drop in Facebook’s price. The shares never really recovered and fell most of the rest of the day, closing at $38.23 at 4 p.m. “I was utterly relieved,” Mr. White said of his phantom trade. [WSJ]
How do the world’s leading hedge fund managers go about assembling their teams? While some choose the standard head hunter and “pitch me a stock” route with candidates who’ve had at least a few years of business experience and proven track records, others prefer a more outside the box approach. Bridgewater Associates, for instance, has said that instead of going after veterans of Wall Street, it likes to hire people straight out of college, when their minds are still malleable. Founder Ray Dalio has stated: “Interest in the subject matter is a minor consideration…We are first interested in people’s values, second interested in their abilities, and least interested in their precise skills. We want independent thinkers who are willing to put aside their egos to find out what is true.”
Similarly, Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, who has never been one to follow the crowd, eschews the typical hiring process in identifying talent. Instead, Ackman relies on gut instincts when it comes to making personnel calls, many of which occur outside the confines of the investing world. For example, one former analyst named Oliver White was hired after serving as Ackman’s guide on a fishing expedition in Tierra del Fuego. (Per Christine Richard’s Confidence Game: “For six days, Ackman and White, a philosophy graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, talked and fished. White explained technical details to Ackman about fly selection, casting the line, and luring the fish. Meanwhile, Ackman spotted the next member of Pershing Square’s investment team. “At the end of his stay, he asked me– no, he told me– I should come to New York and work for him.”) While Ackman was obviously impressed with White’s talent, it seems the offer was made on the basis of spending six days peering into the guy’s soul and seeing something special he knew in his plums would carry over into activist investing, rather than as a barter deal for White to teach Bill his craft, which is another way people have been hired at the fund. Read more »
The past couple of weeks, some might argue, have been the worst of Jamie Dimon’s professional career. Although being fired by Sandy Weill in 1998 was obviously a distressing time in Dimon’s life, a JPMorgan trader’s multi-billion dollar (and counting) loss appears to be even more painful for the CEO, who now has a reputation (and a title: “America’s Least Hated Banker”) to defend. While it’s unlikely that the blunder will cost him his job, every article written questioning Dimon’s judgment, suggesting that he is in fact fallible, and wondering aloud if he is simply a pretty face (that is about to get the regulation it has vociferously argued against rammed down its throat) clearly hurts. So far, Dimon has chosen to frame the situation, at least publicly, as a group fuck-up, one for which the responsibility is shared among himself, The Whale, The Whale’s bosses, and The Whale’s bosses’ bosses. Over the weekend, though, a heretofore unmentioned character, whose actions set in motion the events that served to tarnish JD’s halo, was added to story. And now, Dimon has a place to channel his anger: on a bloodsucking vermin whose days are numbered. Read more »
JPMorgan CIO Risk Chief Said To Have Trading-Loss History (Bloomberg)
Irvin Goldman, who oversaw risks in the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) unit that suffered more than $2 billion in trading losses, was fired by another Wall Street firm in 2007 for money-losing bets that prompted a regulatory sanction at the firm, Cantor Fitzgerald LP, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said. JPMorgan appointed Goldman in February as the top risk official in its chief investment office while the unit was managing trades that later spiraled into what Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called “egregious,” self-inflicted mistakes. The bank knew when it picked Goldman that his earlier work at Cantor led regulators to penalize that company, according to a person briefed on the situation.
Risk Manager’s Past Scrutinized (WSJ)
Mr. Goldman joined J.P. Morgan’s CIO in January 2008 as a trader. The bank placed him on leave in September 2008 after it learned that NYSE Arca had opened a regulatory inquiry tied to his trading activities at Cantor Fitzgerald, people familiar with the matter said. After J.P. Morgan placed him on leave, Mr. Goldman founded a consulting firm based in New York called IJG Advisors LLC. He rejoined J.P. Morgan in September 2010 in the Chief Investment Office, this time focusing on strategy. Current J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Risk Officer John Hogan chose Mr. Goldman to serve as CRO of the office, a position that had been filled by Peter Weiland, who remains with J.P. Morgan’s CIO. Mr. Hogan wasn’t aware of the Cantor Fitzgerald incident or the earlier trading losses at J.P. Morgan Chase, said a person close to the bank.
Eurobonds To Be Discussed At EU Summit (Reuters)
Merkel has said she is not opposed to jointly underwritten euro area bonds per se, but believes it can only be discussed once the conditions are right, including much closer economic integration and coordination across the euro zone, including on fiscal matters. That remains a long way off.
Will Greece Be Able to Print Drachma in a Rush? (Reuters)
If or when policymakers finally decide Greece should leave the euro, the exit could happen so quickly that “new drachma” currency notes might not be printed in time. “It would be chaos,” says Marios Efthymiopoulos, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced International Studies and president of Thessaloniki-based think tank Global Strategy. “The banks would collapse and you would have to nationalize them. You wouldn’t be able to pay anyone except in coupons. There is only one (currency) printing press in Greece. It is in the museum in Athens and it doesn’t work any more.”
Ryanair CEO: ‘No’ Campaigners in Irish Vote Are Crazy (CNBC)
“I think Ireland will vote yes in the referendum and Ireland should vote yes. We have no alternative. People who are borrowing $15 billion a year to keep the lights turned on don’t have the wherewithal to vote no to the people that are lending them the money. There is no argument for voting no,” Michael O’Leary, CEO of budget airline Ryanair said. He described “no” campaigners as a “bunch of idiots and lunatics.”
Barclays To Sell Entire BlackRock Stake (WSJ)
Barclays said BlackRock agreed to repurchase $1 billion worth of the 19.6% stake that the bank holds in the asset-management company. The remainder of the stake will then be listed on a stock exchange. The decision to sell comes as the bank faces pressure from investors to boost its return on equity and prepares to mitigate the effects of regulation that will force the lender to hold a bigger capital buffer.
Mark Zuckerberg Gets Married (AP)
The couple met at Harvard and have been together for more than nine years, a guest who insisted on anonymity said. The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg’s backyard before fewer than 100 guests, including Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. The guests all thought they were coming to celebrate Chan’s graduation but were told after they arrived that the event was in fact a wedding. “Everybody was shocked,” the guest said. The two had been planning the marriage for months but were waiting until Chan had graduated from medical school to hold the wedding. The timing wasn’t tied to the IPO, since the date the company planned to go public was a “moving target,” the guest said. Zuckerberg designed the ring featuring “a very simple ruby.” Read more »
$$$ G8 leaders urged to focus talks on growth [FT]
$$$ JPMorgan Returned $168M To MF Global, Trustee Says [Bloomberg]
$$$ Chesapeake Cuts Board Compensation [WSJ]
$$$ Ben Horowitz: MBAs aren’t as bad as everyone thinks [PandoDaily]
$$$ Bloomberg TV’s Matt Miller vents about Nasdaq FB glitches to NYSE traders [Bloomberg TV]
$$$ Boston radio talk show host Howie Carr released evidence that appears to confirm [Elizabeth] Warren may have plagiarized at least three of the five recipes she submitted to the 1984 Pow Wow Chow cookbook edited by her cousin Candy Rowsey. Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members of the Cherokee tribe, are described in a New York Times News Service story as originating at Le Pavilion, a fabulously expensive French restaurant in Manhattan. The dishes were said to be particular favorites of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter. The two recipes, “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing,” appear in an article titled “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat,” written by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service that was published in the August 22, 1979 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News … [Breitbart via DI]
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What does this tell you?
The key facts are that 43mm shares of Facebook changed hands at $38.00, almost all of them at the bid, and another 28.5mm traded at $38.01, largely at the ask.* I am not really smart enough to interpret – humans and algorithms aware of the stabilizing bid may have thrown in their own bids at $38-even – but my best guess would be that the underwriters have eaten through half or so of the 63mm share Facebook greenshoe in stabilizing the deal at just about $38. So I seem to have lost my imaginary bet that the greenshoe would be exercised in full. Read more »
For every Facebook millionaire, there is someone who missed out. Ali Fedotowsky gave it up for love. She left her job in Facebook’s ad-sales department in 2010 to star in her own reality TV show, “The Bachelorette.” Ms. Fedotowsky left behind her unvested, restricted Facebook stock units, says her spokeswoman, who says Ms. Fedotowsky isn’t available to comment. In an interview at the time with the Associated Press, Ms. Fedotowsky said “I decided I wanted to do what’s best for me, and that’s putting love first.” She apparently didn’t strike gold in love, either: Last fall, she publicly split with Roberto Martinez, the fiance she met through “The Bachelorette.” Joe Green has his dad to blame. He was a college friend of Mr. Zuckerberg’s, and helped him create “Facemash,” the website for rating attractiveness of Harvard students that raised the ire of university officials. Later, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Green to help run his new venture, Facebook. But Mr. Green, on the advice of his father not to join any more “Zuckerberg projects,” turned him down, according to “The Facebook Effect,” a book about the company’s early days by David Kirkpatrick. The elder Mr. Green did not respond to requests for comment. The book says he calls turning down Mr. Zuckerberg his “billion-dollar mistake.” [WSJ]
When you’ve made the executive decision to turn your business channel into the Facebook IPO Show, it can get difficult figuring out how to fill every second of airtime. Obviously there will be breathless coverage from every conceivable angle, a countdown clock, and segments on “the evolution of social media,” “advice for Mark Zuckerberg,” the emotions surrounding a delay in trading, venture capital’s feelings about Facebook, “what’s the deal with Facebook’s private shares,” how “Facebook makes its employees happy,” “networking Facebook’s ecosystem,” Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile, and whether Facebook is “your friend or foe.” But with the tech analyst who agreed weeks in advance to have Mark Zuckerberg’s face tattooed to his ass live on-air while network anchors discussed the significance it might have on how Facebook would close on its first day of trading backed out at the eleventh hour, CNBC found itself with a gaping hole in programming. Luckily, an unnamed producer had the bright idea for this: Read more »
You know what they say: You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your financial planner. Or something like that. One of the great things of being in charge of your money is choosing who (if anyone) will help you manage it. The choice isn’t always an easy one. How will you know that your planner is reputable and trustworthy?
These five red flags may be good indications of whether the financial planner sitting across from you is someone you should trust with your money. LearnVest Planning also provides an innovative 7-step program for your money where you work one-on-one with a financial planner. To see if this program is right for you, start with a free financial consultation.
1. She Isn’t Certified
“There are a lot of good planners out there who aren’t Certified Financial Panners™,” says Samantha Vient, CFP®, of LearnVest Planning Services. “However, CFPs® are required to adhere to the CFP® Board’s standards of professional conduct.
We believe it’s always a good idea to work with someone who has the CFP® designation, which is issued after completing a CFP® Board-approved personal financial planning curriculum, passing a rigorous exam issued by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, meeting experience requirements and passing an ethics and background check.
This is a guest post written by SoFi’s CEO, Mike Cagney.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Recently, there’s been a lot of talk amongst leaders in Washington about how to improve the painful process of repaying student loans. At SoFi, we feel your pain and work hard to offer more flexible, more affordable options for our borrowers. One idea that’s getting a lot of attention is increasing the options for refinancing debt after graduation. The only lender currently focused on refinancing private and federal student loans is SoFi.
We recognized early on that borrowers who have made timely payments on their loans, graduated from school, and have a job should be able to refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate. This may be why, after resuming lending by invitation, the media became increasingly interested in what we are doing.
In a recent article posted on MainStreet.com SoFi General Counsel Rob Lavet had this to say about SoFi’s ReFi products: Read more »
