Opening Bell: 12.9.16
Wall Street’s Old, Unwanted Bond Salesmen Find a Home in Chicago (BBG)
From the ninth floor of a modest office building wedged between a 7-Eleven and shoe-repair shop, TJM is making a name for itself as a refuge for Wall Street’s graying castaways. The idea is that by using their wits, experience and connections, they can still produce by getting hedge funds and pensions to trade with them in niches where computers have yet to take over.
Trump Defends Wealthy Cabinet Picks: I Want People Who 'Made A Fortune' (BI)
President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks could make it one of the wealthiest in US history — and that may have been by his own design. “I want people that made a fortune because now they’re negotiating with you. It’s not different than a great baseball payer or a great golfer," Trump said.
Someone Quickly Made Almost $3 Million Off Of A Short Seller's Tweet (CNBC)
On Thursday morning, one trader appeared to buy a large number of bearish options on Express Scripts. Less than three hours later, the Citron Research Twitter account blasted: "$ESRX is Philidor of the pharma industry." As a result, Express Scripts shares tanked, and the option bought for $1.55 was trading for as much as $6.50 — for a swift profit of about $2.7 million.
Ackman Attempts To Entice Hedge Fund Execs To Stay Around (NYP)
Ackman’s Pershing Square fund is now offering pension-like benefits to entice certain high-ranking employees to stay put longer. “We are often reminded that incentives drive all human behavior,” Ackman wrote to introduce the new program after addressing the firm’s recent poor performance.
Insiders Send Wrong Signal on Bank Stocks (WSJ)
Bank and industrial stocks have been among the biggest winners in the postelection stock rally, but some are swimming against the tide. Corporate insiders in these industries have been selling into the rally at an unusually strong pace, according to research firm InsiderScore.
The “Goldman Sachs” Industrial Average (Bespoke)
While GE is one of the ten largest US companies in market value, its weighting in the Dow is barely 1%. Put another way, the stock could go to zero and it would have less of an impact on the Dow than a 15% drop in Goldman.
The Next Crisis? (Cochrane)
Where will the next crisis come from? Every crisis starts with a pile of debt that can't be paid back, and shady accounting to hide that debt. So, where around the world is there a lot of debt that might not be paid back and really shady accounting? Well, duh, China, right?
Glow-In-The-Dark Beer Made With A Jellyfish Gene
According to the kit’s guide, “a plasmid DNA” was added to “the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae so that it turns a fluorescent green color.”