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Opening Bell: 10.30.17

It's (probably) gonna be Powell; this week is going to be nuts; whatever happens, buy the dip; how to survive getting locked in a beer cooler; and much more.
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Trump Likely to Name Jerome Powell Next Fed Chairman (WSJ)
President Donald Trump is likely to announce Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell as his nominee to be the next chairman of the U.S. central bank next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. The president hasn’t made a formal decision and could still change his mind, several people familiar with the matter said.

Jay Powell

Bond Traders Confront Fears in Week That May Change Everything (BBG)
The next five trading days will bring a torrent of market-moving information: President Donald Trump is poised to finally announce his nominee to lead the Federal Reserve; U.S. central bankers have an interest-rate decision to make; the first possible charges from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election; a House committee is set to release a tax bill; and the Treasury will unveil plans to issue more debt to make up for lost funding from the Fed. Oh, and investors will also get the latest reading on the nation’s job market and the central bank’s preferred inflation gauge.

Why Are Markets Rising Everywhere? Investors Can’t Stop Buying Every Dip (WSJ)
In the stock market, investors are buying the dip more quickly than they used to. The S&P 500 recouped the bulk of its 5.3% two-day post-Brexit decline in only three trading days. It took just three days for the S&P 500 to recover from a 1.8% drop in May—its largest one-day decline of the year—following reports that President Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. That is a faster recovery than when the S&P 500 fell 11% over a six-day stretch in August 2015 and then took until November of that year to get back to its pre-selloff level.

How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys From Miami Get Rich (NYT)
The boxer’s endorsement of Centra, along with a similar endorsement from the popular rapper DJ Khaled, lent a patina of credibility to a project that has ended up with more than a few problems, including a chief executive who does not appear to have been a real person and a shaky, fast-shifting business plan. SEE ALSO: This Company Added the Word ‘Blockchain’ to Its Name and Saw Its Shares Surge 394%

Bitcoin Backlash: Back to the Drawing Board? (Aswath Damodaran)
As you listen to arguments for or against crypto currencies, my only advice is that you go back to basics about the needs that they are filling and that you ask questions about their long term staying power. I think it is also time for us to separate arguments about block chains/smart contracts from arguments about crypto currencies, since you can have one without the other, and to differentiate between crypto currencies, rather than defend them or abandon them all, as a bundle. To me, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and ICOs are different enough from each other, not only in structure but also in terms of end game, that they need to be assessed independently.

There’s precedent for Amazon competing with so many companies. It doesn’t end well. (Qz)
For business historians, Amazon is starting to look like the sprawling conglomerates of the past century. History has some bad news, says MIT’s Cusumano. “Eventually, Bezos is going to be, if he’s not already, a sample of the US or world economy,” he says. When that happens, Amazon’s equity growth rate may mirror that of the broader economy itself. Since the company went public in 1997, the S&P 500 has grown by a respectable 197%. Amazon stock has risen 700-fold over the same period. Such a drastic slowdown would dash Amazon’s global promise.

The Line Between Aggressive And Crazy (RHS Financial)
From this we start to see the problem with levered ETFs as they are currently constructed: they generally use too much leverage applied to too volatile of assets. Even with the plain vanilla S&P 500 3x leverage is too much. And after accounting for the hefty transactions costs and management fees these ETFs charge, even 2x might be suboptimal (especially if you believe returns will be lower in the future than they have in recent decades). And the S&P 500 is one of the most conservative targets for these products.

Man locked in Kwik Trip beer cooler stays and drinks (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
The man told police he went to Kwik Trip to buy beer and got locked inside the beer cooler when it was locked at about 11:50 p.m. Tuesday, according to the report. The man said he decided he might as well just stay inside the cooler and drink the beer, the report said. The cooler has a glass door and, if the man had knocked, employees would have heard him and let him out.

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Jay Powell
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Opening Bell: 11.2.17

Janet who?; SEC tells celebs not to hawk cryptocurrencies; Guggenheim might have done a little self-dealing; CDOs are back again, again, baby; Osama bin Laden was a 9/11 truther?; and much more.

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Opening Bell: 5.12.17

Millennial investors are ditching Snap; J. Peterman from Seinfeld is hawking a questionable IPO; the lengths we go for beer; and more.

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Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 8.3.18

Jobs!; Trade war!; Tesla!; Vagina beer!; and more!

By Partybus Buenos AIres [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 10.2.17

Hedge funds are still kickin'; Kevin Warsh thinks the Fed is a "slave to the S&P"; Amazon should buy Twitter?; eight year-old swallows party hooter, becomes human duck; and more.

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 3.28.16

Dan Loeb warns Seven‐Eleven Japan; American Psycho is back; Cupcake the cat survives 260-mile, 8-day journey through the mail; and more.

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 06.18.12

Banks Worry As Breakup Talk Revived After JPMorgan Loss (Bloomberg) “There seems to be growing interest in some type of breakup proposal,” said Sheila Bair, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The concept is expected to arise today as JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on the trading debacle. Last week he told the Senate that the losses, which carved about $23 billion from the bank’s market value, were due to a poor investing strategy coupled with management failures. Senator Sherrod Brown seized on that admission. “It appears executives and regulators simply can’t understand what is happening in all these offices at once,” the Ohio Democrat said during the June 13 hearing. “It demonstrates to me that too-big-to-fail banks are, frankly, too-big-to-manage and too-big-to-regulate.” Greece Set For Bailout Reward As EU Sees Tweaked Aid Terms (Bloomberg) Greek voters are likely to get a reward for backing pro-euro parties, with European creditors set to ease bailout terms on the debt-swamped country mired in the fifth year of recession. A first step will be when Greece’s still to-be-formed government requests modifications to the 240 billion-euro ($303 billion) rescue programs, leading to a revision of Greece’s economic-performance targets sometime before September, a European official told reporters in Brussels today. Greek Coalition Needs 'Breathing Room' From Creditors: MP (CNBC) Kyriakos Mitsotakis, an MP for New Democracy, which won most votes in Sunday’s election and was Tuesday locked in negotiations with historic rivals Pasok and the Democratic Left to form a coalition, told CNBC: “Giving a very sick patient nothing but the same medicine when this has not had the required result would be madness.” Austerity Doesn't Pay As Debt Markets Ignore Rating Cuts (Bloomberg) "I don’t think we should be slaves to the ratings agencies,” Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, told lawmakers on Feb. 29. “What we’ve seen is, the action they took recently did actually have no impact on the yield that people in the market were willing to lend to the U.K. government at.” Buying Opportunity All Over Europe, Even Greece, Says Donald Trump (CNBC) FYI: "You're getting it for nothing, you're getting the land for nothing, you're getting everything for nothing," he said. "You have to sit with it for a while, but there are a lot of great opportunities in Europe. There's no question about it. I'm actually looking at something — it's so ridiculous, it's laughable — and yet I'm thinking about doing something over there with a group that is very smart, and frankly there is an opportunity." Einhorn's Overlooked Bear Call on US Steel Pans Out (Reuters) The Greenlight Capital manager unveiled his negative critique of U.S. Steel at the Ira Sohn charitable conference on May 16, where more attention was focused on Einhorn's bearish views on industrial goods company Martin Marietta Materials and online retailer Amazon.com . Yet it's Einhorn's U.S. Steel call that has outperformed, after the closely watched hedge fund manager zeroed in on the company's poor earnings, high pension costs and the impact of China's slowing demand for iron ore. As of Monday's close, the steelmaker's stock price was down 23.1 percent since the popular conference, where top hedge fund managers reveal their best investing ideas. Meanwhile, shares of Martin Marietta have lost about 8.5 percent over the same time period and Amazon's stock is down 0.8 percent. Mark Cuban sells Facebook stake, says 'it was gambling money' (DJ) The billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner sold his stake in the social network, less than a month after initially disclosing he had built a position in the company following its bungled initial public offering. "I took my hit, my thesis was wrong," Cuban said in a CNBC interview. "I thought we'd get a quick bounce just with some excitement about the stock. I was wrong, and when you're wrong you don't wait, you just get out. I took a beating and left."...Cuban described the move as "a trade, not an investment" and compared it to trading baseball cards. "It was gambling money, to be honest with you," he said on Monday. "Any time you try to time the market, you get what you deserve. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you're wrong. This time I was wrong." Goldman: Fed Will Ease Monetary Policy This Week (CNBC) The Federal Open Market Committee will likely say it would buy assets such as mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasurys when it meets for a two-day meeting starting Tuesday, Jan Hatzius, the investment bank’s Chief U.S. Economist said in a report on Monday. “We would be quite surprised if we saw no easing this week,” Hatzius wrote in the report. The End Of The Line For Famed Exchange (WSJ) The owner of the Bendigo Stock Exchange, which traces its roots to a time when thousands of prospectors descended on Victoria state after gold was discovered by two women washing clothes in a creek, plans to close the institution at the end of June. Mike Tyson Set For Broadway Debut (NYDN) The last time Mike Tyson was on stage at a Broadway theater, it was four years ago and he nearly wrecked what was left of his boxing career by biting Lennox Lewis on the leg during a press conference at the Hudson Theater. Now Tyson is returning to a Broadway theater to breathe life into his new career - theatrical performer. Tyson was on stage at the Longacre Theater in midtown on Monday afternoon to announce his one-man show, which will begin a limited engagement on July 31. The show, entitled "Mike Tyson-Undisputed Truth'' will be directed by Spike Lee, who also will be making his Broadway debut. "Mike has lifted himself off the canvas,” Lee said. "It's a great story and Mike tells it masterfully.”

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 11.3.15

AIG fends off Icahn; "Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet"; Paul Singer says run for your lives; "Drunk man woke up with tattooed beer goggles, kept them for 2 years"; and more.

(Wikimedia Commons)
Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 12.9.16

Mature bond sellers wash up in Chicago; Ackman offers pensions; glow-in-the-dark beer; and more.