Financial Musings

Exxon Sets New Profit Record

The fact that Exxon just broke its own profit record in these dire financial times is a noteworthy achievement.  Given where oil was trading throughout […]

Oil Contango Disappearing?

There has been quite a bit of talk amongst my colleagues, in the news and on other blogs recently about oil companies and even investment […]

Aussie ASX 200 Fat Finger?

Or maybe someone didn’t realize the amount to which Aussies like to drink and be merry at this time of year, thereby underestimating liquidity in […]

Mortgage Rates Left Behind

Americans seeking mortgages aren’t getting the full benefit of record low yields on Treasuries and government-supported mortgage bonds, blunting U.S. efforts to curb the housing […]

Salary Caps Make Me Laugh

Anyone paying even moderate attention to the headlines during all these bailout and bankruptcy hearings will be aware of the focus that’s been placed on […]

Are You Looking For A Job Or A Calling?

Written by Michael Lewis Recently I received a letter from a young employee of a well-known financial firm, who asked that I not mention his […]

Are You Looking For A Job Or A Calling: Responses

A selection of excerpted responses to Michael Lewis’s “Job Versus Calling” article posted above.  I’ve kept the typography true to the senders, while their names are […]

Jail For Pessimists

Scary stuff, thanks Sergey Gerasimov for the post (click on the image below for the whole article).

S&P Moves

The number of days the S&P 500 has moved up or down more than 5% during the trading day: 1950 – 2006 = 34 days […]

Pirate Booty

A Saudi Arabian supertanker filled with two million barrels of crude oil was hijacked off east Africa and is now anchored close to the Somalian coast, […]

“Good To Great” Index Not So Great…

Circuit City Stores and Fannie Mae show that companies singled out as great don’t necessarily make worthwhile investments.  The companies were among 11 featured seven […]

Bail Out My Mortgage

I’ve kept quiet about this for quite some time.  Mostly because it’s probably a pretty sensitive topic for some people.  But, well, I can’t control […]

Volkswagen Takes Off!

Finally, something that’s up!  Volkswagen almost tripled its market capitalization today, closing around 218 on Friday and reaching an intra-day high today above 625!  To put that […]

Circuit Breakers Kick In

I meant to put this up last Friday but got a little tied up…  Anyway, there’s been a lot of markets halted since this whole […]

Iceland Rescued?

A follow up to the post I put up about Iceland’s woes: Icelandic Freeze Iceland and the International Monetary Fund will probably announce an agreement […]

Timeline: Global Credit Crunch

An interesting credit crunch timeline from BBC, thanks Ché Garcia (click on the image below for the full article).

Icelandic Freeze

This is a bit of an eye-opening story I read this morning.  For a country completely isolated out there in the Alantic it’s a very […]

Let’s Just Close The Markets?

With the global rout of stock markets over the past few weeks, during which time we’ve seen almost a decade of economic growth disappear, some […]

Central Bank Execution-Style Rate Cuts

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and four other central banks lowered interest rates in an unprecedented coordinated effort to ease the economic effects of […]