Financial Collapse and Offshore Accounts
Offshore accounts have been hacked and their users have been exposed. Jeffrey Steinberg talks with Sean Stone about the steady erosion of banking laws that has allowed people to move money around off-shore accounts, in this clip from Buzzsaw.
What does the fiscal cliff mean for the VC industry?
What is the impact of the fiscal cliff on the access to capital in private markets? Much speculation has presented a more gloomier outlook to what may happen in public markets come January. However, Bo Peabody of Greycroft Ventures says that there is still much liquidity in the private markets for high growth companies. Trends to look out for in 2013 include video, mobile and enterprise capture.
Facebook Frenzy: Who Is Cashing Out?
We had heard that Goldman Sachs had sold most of its stock on the first day that Facebook traded. Most individuals point to Morgan Stanley for overvaluing the IPO, including Henry Blodget, CEO and Co-Founder of Business Insider, who mentioned that Facebook should be trading as low as the range of $17-24.
With the market unrest and all the TV channels tracking Facebook, it is interesting to learn who sold pre and post the IPO. This infographic provides valuable insight into the VCs and private investors, who have sold out and those that believe in its social mission.
Ultrafast Trades Trigger Black Swan Events Every Day, Say Econophysicists - Technology Review
Today, however, Neil Johnson at the University of Florida in Miami and a few pals reveal an important insight into what’s going on. These guys have found evidence that the behaviour of financial markets changes dramatically on timescales shorter than a certain threshold level. This threshold, they say, is more or less exactly equal to the human reaction times.
The implication is clear. When humans trade and when they monitor the behaviour of machine trading, they can step in to override any unwanted behaviour. In that regime, markets behave in a specific way.
But when human oversight becomes impossible, because the trades take place faster than humans can react, a different behaviour occurs. That’s when flash crashes and rises set in.
(via emergentfutures)
How 9 Tech Giants Traded After Going Public | Infographic
Take a surprisingly entertaining stroll through the pages of economic history with Sylvia Nasar, whose new book “Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius” tells the story of modern economics. Watch this animated short that breaks down the key points that got us to where we are today.
How Social Media Is Changing The Stock Market
Social media opens up both conversation and creativity for stock traders. But most importantly, it creates community around niche interest topics.
The way stocks are discussed among investors is different than it was even five years ago. In 2008, Howard Lindzon launched StockTwits, the online community of investors, with the idea that people wanted to share ideas about trading. Lindzon was a huge fan of Twitter, and so StockTwits was built off of that.
“A guy in Kansas can be the expert on grains, rather than the guy who trades grain stocks in New York,” says StockTwits CEO and Founder Howard Lindzon. “The Kansas guy can look out his window and tweet what he sees.” StockTwits, says Lindzon, has turned everyone into a potential market maker and expert.
“Why do investors, both amateur and professional, stubbornly believe that they can do better than the market, contrary to an economic theory that most of them accept, and contrary to what they could learn from a dispassionate evaluation of their personal experience? The most potent psychological cause of the illusion is certainly that the people who pick stocks are exercising high-level skills. They consult economic data and forecasts, they examine income statements and balance sheets, they evaluate the quality of top management, and they assess the competition. All this is serious work that requires extensive training. Unfortunately, skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of its stock. Traders apparently lack the skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.”
The 3rd installment of investment strategies is Peter Lynch investing. Peter Lynch was famous for running the exceptionally successful Magellan Fund. He loved to go to the malls to see what new stores were popping up. Lynch also had a wife and daughter, he frequently asked them what thy were in to. He would then go in to these stores to see if he enjoyed the experience they offered. Lynch would also buy some of the items to test them out.
If Lynch decided that the product was great, only then would he run an analysis on the company to see if it was fundamentally sound. He dubbed this investing style “investing in what you know.”
Lynch also had his fall back investment of Savings and Loans or S&L’s. He was extremely knowledgeable when it came to them using said knowledge to gain an insight into which S&L’s to invest in.
With “investing in what you know”, Peter Lynch was able to become one of the most successful fund managers of all time. He believed that with a little research and common sense anyone could replicate his success in the stock market.
(via moneyisnotimportant)
