Archive for the ‘Financial Media Circus’ Category
Hey, Randall Lane, You Sick Twisted Son Of A Bitch, Remember Me?
Photo Of Randall Lane By Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesNote: Aside from the last paragraph this post is written following the journalistic style of Randall Lane—treating assumptions and circumstantial evidence as fact. It’s cruel, amateurish and immature—oh yes, I know—but that basically sums this guy up so in order to help him grow up, he must be given a taste of his own medicine.
To those who don’t care and just want stock picks—this is also a great lesson on how to pounce when your enemy is wounded, no different than the vultures who took out Bear or LTCM.
Last time Randall Lane, editor-in-chief of Traitor Monthly was in Page Six, he was attacking a small-time trader (me) because his magazine staff fumbled, disinviting me from their little party at the last minute after we’d been discussing my covering the event for MSN Money for days.
Clearly in the wrong, this balding bastard was forced to go on the offensive, charging my hedge fund’s losses were the result of my publicity hounding rather than bothering to research the matter like a responsible journalist might do (turning his nose up at the complimentary book I’d sent him weeks before that explained the situation in detail) and running his arrogant mouth off to the press, confident of favorable treatment due to his connected Forbes wife.
Now, just a few months later, the tables have turned as Lane himself was fired as publisher of the Player’s magazine by Lenny “Nails” Dykstra who called Randy boy out on what he’s becoming known for, trash talking when he doesn’t get his way: “If you want to fight, take me on. Don’t go behind my back and bad mouth me,” said Dykstra. “He thinks I’m going to buckle,” said Dykstra, referring to Doubledown President Randall Lane. “I don’t buckle - I go to war.”
Breaking News: Microsoft (MSFT) Withdraws Offer To Acquire Yahoo (YHOO)…My Take
I tried very hard not to cover this breaking news of Microsoft withdrawing their offer to acquire Yahoo! as I believe it to be utterly useless for trading purposes, especially since we all know there’s gonna be 5,000 articles in the next 24 hours written about it, but the official press release contains some pretty funny stuff towards the end–at least for corporate speak–so it’d be rude of me not to share:
I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.
But clearly a deal is not to be.
Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer
Yah, that’s just the end of the PR, but the rest of it basically just says you YHOO pricks shoulda taken our money and not been so greedy cuz now we’re gonna clobber you, just like we’ve been doing for a while, not because we’re that good or smart but cuz you guys suck worse. Seriously, that’s what it says. Ballmer admits it. Read it yourself.
UPDATE: This is getitng funnier by the hour…Yahoo! responds in THIS PR saying bah blah blah…here’s the funny part of CEO Yang trying to get back at Ballmer’s putdown:
Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. added, “I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position. With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.”
It’s like two old former soap stars bickering cuz now they’re both too ugly for daytime TV. Yang, you better STFU cuz you about to get sued by all your shareholders you arrogant @$!hole
Sykes’ Saturday Seven: Watch Some Crazy Indians & Warren Buffett Screw Up
Berkshire Hathaway is gonna get taken apart next week as they missed on revenue estimates by $3 billion and took a $1.6 billion loss on derivatives—I like and respect Warren Buffett, but I do look forward to the pain this will cause his sissy value investor cult
This video is tailor made for the narrow-minded value investors out there—while this looks pretty crazy to us, it’s a multi-century tradition older than our entire egotistical culture:
Perruna’s got a cool stock screen
TIM 6 Month Review: Earn 47% While The Markets Drop 10%
Yup, that’s right, tiny, loud mouthed, mistake-celebrating TIM just busted a cap in the ass of the joke that is the financial industry by implementing my own brand of PennyStocking, or short selling 
penny stocks, a niche that’s supposedly random/akin to gambling and according to Forbes’ oh so popular Investopedia, in their definition of short selling, impossible to short sell! Screw them, the graph below says it all:
Maybe in the future more attention will be paid to this accurate definition of short selling —written by somebody who’s made millions from this strategy instead of some wannabe who’s just the latest journalist joker…you guys remember Sri, the theater major over at CNBC (fired yet?) and TheStreet.com guy who wrote about a product the company had already sold (fired yet?)! How could we forget—after all, their jokes have been very profitable for me and my readers.
Sorry, I digress—my blood is boiling from the amount of misinformation out there—this is a time for celebration and review. After all, while I made plenty of mistakes, a 47% return in 6 months is something to be proud of. So, take a look at all the most important posts during this journey, I promise, no matter what Investopedia says, this strategy is alive and well, legal and learnable (and to you haters, just wait until you see what I can do when I no longer have to deal with the pattern day trader rules, I plan my speaking schedule better and I’m not building a revolutionary new website…when TIM reaches $100k, it’s gonna be damn fun shutting you up as I make $50k+ in 6 months):
Successes:
Shorting Into A Factually Inaccurate Article
How I Made An 8% Return Before Lunch
How I Made 25% Just By Holding A Distinct Pattern Overnight
Why My Strategy Works Even For Stupid People
God, I Love Short Selling Penny Stocks!
Failures:
Plunging Home Sales: The Latest Example Of Why Technical Analysis Trumps Media Scumbags
Home sales are plunging, 13%+ annual drop, largest since 1970, it’s gonna be another depression, we’re all gonna die—blehhhhhh! Who cares? Yeah you heard me—let the flippers suffer/go bankrupt/in debt, that’s what they get for their utter disregard of historical research and for listening to big talkers like Donald Trump who love to un/knowingly risk disaster.
Traders and investors who rely on the one true thing in finance—the charts—know better; the biggest homebuilders stocks (LEN), (KBH), and (TOL) are all slightly higher since this “disastrous” news broke and their charts have been bottoming for weeks. The overall market is up big over the past two days and it’s not because the stock market is some random uber-mysterious thing.
It’s because as much as financial media circus loves talking panic—it helps ratings—all this bad news is already priced in. That’s the beautiful thing about the stock market, it doesn’t care about media scumbags and their ratings-hungry outlets, nor does it bother reading the attention-grabbing headlines—only expectations matter. That’s right kiddies, it’s not that complicated—you just have to be aware of all the industry BS–my telling you this probly means I’ll never get to bring female models on CNBC again :(, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for the greater good.
Sure, expectations on individual stocks can be manipulated by the media and promoter scumbags, but not on macro issues—there’s just too many smart people who’ve learned how the game works. After all, the talking heads all put together ain’t worth more than a three-dollar bill because the market don’t give a damn about guesswork.
If At First You Short A Pump And Dump And Succeed, Try, Try Again!
As I’ve posted HERE and HERE, EDEN was a great pump due to a 100% spike caused by a fluffy inaccurate article written by a major media outlet—my former employer—for a bit—TheStreet.com (they later corrected it, but the damage was already done). The first time I shorted at $2.55, impatiently/conservatively covering at $2.35 for a decent $180 profit. But given its tiny tiny tiny $6 million marketcap and annoying illiquidity, I don’t regret covering quickly…that much…cuz as I’ve shown on fellow microcap pump and dumpers PSTI, REED and SHZ, these suckers remain good shorts for many days.
So, when I re-shorted EDEN mid-day yesterday on a slight low volume bounce up from $2 to $2.20, I had every confidence in the world we’d see $2 again and then the question would be if there were stop losses there—as often happens at big fat round numbers. Despite some ever surprisingly determined buyers and a solidly bearish close at $2.04—caused by a 49,000 share sell order—I was even more confident of a big drop today.
ANALysts & Venture Capitalists Know S#@! About How SmallCap Stocks Trade
While I respect Andy Kessler for making a ton of $ back during the bubble and writing two superb books–Wall Street Meat and Running Money, this piece of s$#@ interview he gave on smallcaps really makes me mad. Not only does he believe it a foregone conclusion that investors should look for companies with emerging technologies, but he also refuses to name any names or give any kind of timeframe whatsoever for his theory.
To Andy and all other venture capitalists, do your thing with big companies, but don’t talk about smallcaps and microcaps—these companies ALL have cool technologies, but this isn’t 1999, most of these companies are gonna fail and their grim reality is reflected in their stock prices. While you have good intentions, interviews like this are what gets people investing / believing in these POS companies, inevitably losing $ and thinking this niche is random, which, if you focus on the proper variables—chart, volume, manipulation, message board hype etc—is clearly not the case. Dangerous dangerous dangerous, welcome to why media outlets are sooooo bad with smallcaps and microcaps–it’s a different world down here in the gutter, ain’t no place for WASPs!
When Timmayyy Is Dead Right: Manipulated Stocks Go Boom!
For the 3 most recently manipulated microcraps—CNOA (pumped by a CNBC “reporter” who mistook paid-for stock promotion for credible research, probly the result of majoring in theatre studies in college (seriously)), EDEN (agriculture product pumped by a TheStreet.com “journalist” who forgot to read the quarterly report mentioning they sold off that division!) and TIGR (I don’t wanna know the evil lurking behind that pump, possibly some SEC counter-intelligence subdivision trying to draw out fellow manipulators) I have been dead on. These are opportunities from which you can profit because I’m not talking about variables that indirectly affect stock prices (ie earnings, the economy)—no, these catalysts have a direct impact on the supply/demand of shares and consequently the stock price.
Since my expose when it was at $1.80ish, CNOA has dropped 30% in a few days—longs, don’t blame me or say “I don’t get it, it had all the trends going in its favor, I guess penny stocks really are just like gambling?!?!” Hello no, this kind of price action is the precise opposite of random, it’s motherf$#@en PennyStocking—learn to play the game or suffer the consequences!
Lie Detector For Talking Heads: Grave Consequences For TV Interviews
You guys know I’ve been on my “nearly everyone in this industry is full of BS / the financial media is an unfunny joke” crusade for a while now, but with regards to a product that actually does something about it–or claims to–unsuprisingly, I’ve been outscooped by the world’s top financial blogger Barry Ritholtz.
RealScoop uses their special voice analysis technology to measure the believeability of what people say in videos–yeah that’s right, useless talking heads, corporate scumbags execs: get scared. Cute, right? A lie detector and a big scary guy patting a baseball bat standing beside them would def. work better, but baby steps…
How To Short Sell aka What Is Short Selling
With all the time I spend scouring the landscape for ideal trades, preaching against random market noise and for disciplined trading, I often forget to explain the bare bones basics. Starting now, this will change—every few days I’ll have a detailed lesson. Today, I write about my all-time favorite trading strategy: short selling , which involves betting on a drop in an investment’s prices.
So, how does this backwards-sounding strategy work? Ever hear the saying “don’t sell yourself short”? That means don’t believe you can’t succeed at something. Well, in short selling , that’s exactly what you’re doing—betting that xyz investment won’t succeed at increasing in value. Whether you’re betting against a stock, currency or commodity, you’re “selling that investment short.”
Short selling is exactly like buying and selling the way that you’re only too familiar with except the order is reversed—you sell before you buy. The old adage “buy low, sell high” still applies, here it’s just “sell high, buy low”. What’s worked for me is to short sell when a stock goes up waaaaay too high waaaay too quickly on waaaay meaningless news and buy it back when reason pushes prices lower, back to reality.
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May 16, 2008My whole KYUS saga...still a solid profit of $350 today, the only time I shoulda been playing this stock
May 16, 200810 stocks to watch today
PDO already up $1.25, sux I'll be away all morning workin' on TIMtv, got 500 shares reserved to short if need be this afternoon
Also reserved 3,000 FORC and KYUS for potential shorts
May 15, 2008Yup, by next Monday, everything's gonna be real working-like!
May 15, 2008PDO, up $4+ today, will teach you not to randomly short strong penny stocks, get in, get out then run...cuz sometimes they squeeze stubborn shorts to death!
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