U.S. Military Provides Healthcare to Rural Alabama
May 19th, 2012Maybe they could get corporate sponsorship for attractive triage tents.
“Brought to you by Brawndo – The Thirst Mutilator.”
How about handing out pHoods that make people obese, give them high blood pressure and rot their teeth, along with the goody bags of drugs?
You know, get your Pepsi, Poptarts and Plavix all at the one stop .mil triage tent.
For added convenience, Uncle $ugar could take the show on the road and set up these big tops in WalMart parking lots!
Ok, I’ll stop now.
Via: AP:
An Air Force dentist pulls teeth in the oil-stained garage where the town’s fire truck normally parks. A reservist in camouflage dispenses free medicine in the police department lobby.
The doctoring Wednesday was part of a military program to provide free health care in poor areas of the South and whose latest mission came to one of Alabama’s most impoverished regions, where the teams have treated more than 12,000 people in less than two weeks. The work helps fill a gap in an area with few doctors and a multitude of medical problems, many of them linked to the obesity that is rampant in the state.
Research Credit: tal
Precrime Raid Uncovers Enemy Combatant Homebrewed Beer Plot
May 19th, 2012Via: CBS:
Annusek was released Friday morning along with four others reportedly suspected of preparing molotov cocktails. At least one other detainee was released several hours later Friday.
Kris Hermes, of the National Lawyers Guild said: “There is absolutely no evidence of molotov cocktails or any other criminal activity going on at this building.”
A tenant who agreed to host the out-of-town protesters says the police did seize his home-brew making equipment, including buckets, beer bottles and caps.
“If anybody would like some, I would like to offer them a sip of my beer,” said William Vassilakis.
The National Lawyers Guild says the warrantless raid violated their clients’ civil rights.
“It is outrageous behavior on the part of the City of Chicago,” said Sarah Gelsomino.
Facebook IPO
May 19th, 2012Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Some emails have been coming in about the Facebook IPO.
I don’t ever trade IPOs. As a 100% technical trader, there’s nothing to go on with an IPO. The values associated with the IPO are arbitrary and there is often VERY strong voodoo at work. These things are usually designed as scams to make the owners and underwriters wealthy, while treating investors as marks (although, this could be said about much of what happens in the market). Often, large blocks of shares will unlock and dilute the thing down the road. On and on.
So, no, I don’t go near IPOs.
With Facebook, though, I did watch a realtime price ticker once they finally opened it. Wow. What a show.
It came out of the gate at around $42 and people just sold the living shit out of it. These were the whale clients at firms who had access to blocks of shares before it was trading, dumping into the crowd.
We knew the issue price was $38, so I watched very carefully as it got down there for the first time. As the price dropped to exactly $38, it held there, absorbing, I don’t know, millions or tens of millions of shares.
“Squid on the bid,” I actually laughed out loud.
Day traders quickly figured out that someone with infinite ammo was defending $38, so the little guys decided to party like it was 1999, taking it long for a couple of bucks, shorting it back down, where the axe would open fire again and not stop until the herd learned that there was only one way to go from $38 on the first day, and it wasn’t down.
If you have tick data for FB from Friday, it would be worth replaying that on your time/sales screen to watch what happened around that $38 level. Get yourself a big bucket o’ popcorn ready because the “unseen hand of the market” put on a good one for those who knew what they were looking at. [Update: Scroll down for video.]
—
Update: It Was Morgan Stanley
I assumed that it was Goldman Sachs (Squid on the bid) holding that $38 level. It turned out to be Morgan Stanley.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Inc. took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss.
The stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook’s underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.
In the end, the bankers succeeded. When trading on Nasdaq ended at 4 p.m., the social network’s stock was up just a hair, 0.6%, at $38.23.
…
Facebook was also hurt by investors’ high expectations of a healthy first-day pop in the price, according to people familiar with the matter. When that pop didn’t happen, it prompted a selloff, these people said.
That’s when Facebook’s underwriters had to step in to support the company’s share price, people familiar with the matter said. In particular, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley MS was assigned to be the deal’s “stabilization agent”—meaning it was the firm’s job to keep the shares above the offering price, these people said. In that role, Morgan Stanley was forced to buy Facebook shares as the price slid toward $38 in order to prevent the price from crossing into negative territory, according to these people.
Morgan Stanley, which led the platoon of 11 Wall Street banks that arranged the listing, had to dip into an emergency reserve of around 63 million Facebook shares—worth more than $2.3 billion at the offer price—to boost the price and create a floor around $38 a share, according to people close to the situation. In successful IPOs, the reserve, known as the “overallotment” or “green shoe,” is used by underwriters to meet soaring demand but in this case, it was used to prop up Facebook’s ailing share price.
The process is common in IPOs and works like this: The underwriters have the extra shares available to either sell or buy for a period after the IPO. If demand is strong, they sell them like all the other shares. But if the stock price falls, they can buy them back, effectively creating a floor for the price.
Facebook’s price began falling almost immediately after shares began trading. It is unclear exactly when Morgan Stanley stepped in, but traders said that the price movements throughout the day, with the shares occasionally touching the IPO price but never crossing below it, suggested the firm was active throughout much of the session.
—End Update—
Update: HFT Tractor Beam in Facebook
Thanks to BW for sending this in.
Via: Premarket Info YouTube Channel:
—End Update—
Spain’s Intelligence Services Investigating Role of British and American Media in Fomenting Financial Turmoil
May 18th, 2012Via: Guardian:
It is the only economy in Western Europe still in recession: property prices are crashing, unemployment has risen to more than 4 million, and some are already muttering that it could end up with a financial crisis worse than Greece’s.
But at least Spain now has someone to blame: the country’s intelligence services are investigating the role of British and American media in fomenting financial turmoil, the respected El País daily reported .
The newspaper said the country’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) was investigating a series of “speculative attacks” against the Spanish economy amid bond market jitters about the country’s growing national debt.
“The (CNI’s) economic intelligence division … is investigating whether investors’ attacks and the aggressiveness of some Anglo-Saxon media are driven by market forces and challenges facing the Spanish economy – or whether there is something more behind this campaign,” El País said.
The report follows claims from prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s socialist government that speculators and newspaper editorial writers had launched a concerted attack.
The Financial Times has been especially critical of the government’s handling of the Spanish economy in recent weeks. It has been joined by the Economist and other publications which have questioned Zapatero’s economic management.
The newspaper said its report was based on “various sources” but said CNI sources declined to comment. Officials at the defence ministry, which runs the CNI, and Zapatero’s Moncloa Palace offices were unable to confirm or deny the report.
Related: They Made a Killing: The Use of Knowledge of Covert Operations in the Stock Market
Surveillance State Wenlock
May 18th, 2012Via: Forbes:
London decided to make its surveillance yen a dominant feature of its otherwise goofy mascots. “Wenlock” and “Mandeville” both have a huge single eye made out of a camera lens so that they can “record everything.” Image at right is from the official London Olympics website.
In case that’s too subtle for you, the Olympic organizers have offered a dress-up version of Wenlock in a policeman outfit.
…
It is not in fact a joke; Surveillance State Wenlock also shows up on the official shopping page for the London 2012 Olympics.
Research Credit: Timbooch
EUR/USD
May 18th, 2012Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Update: Spot Gold Prints Weekly Bullish Hammer
Markets have closed for the week and the scenario I laid out below appears to be underway. On the spot gold weekly interval, we see a bullish hammer with a lower shadow nearly touching a previous pivot level. If this isn’t a short term bullish signal, I don’t know what is. This one has worked for me more often than not, which is about the best that I can say about any setup derived from using a Magic 8 Ball anointed with snake oil.
Spot Gold, Weekly Interval
—End Update—
Update: Spot Gold Trying to Form Bullish Hammer (Weekly Candle)
—End Update—
We could see a ridiculous short squeeze on EUR/USD soon (maybe within a week). There is a lot of overlapping woowoo that supports the pair between 1.26 and 1.25. There are multiple horizontal supports from past pivots in that range, as well as the 78.6% fib retracement at 1.2532 (on the monthly interval from the low in 2010 to the high in 2011). If it manages to break below 1.26, you could see people on CNBC and the like foaming at the mouth about Apocalypse Now – European Edition, but their traders will probably be loading up for a longside ramp job on the people who believed what they saw on TV.
Additionally, a potential double top is just overhead on the U.S. Dollar Index at 81.784.
US$ gold bargain hunters may have to wait to try for the lower levels I mentioned here. I think that thing has been frontrunning a euro short squeeze over the last 24 hours.
Italy Deploys 20,000 to Protect Sensitive Targets After Shooting, Letter Bombs
May 18th, 2012Via: AP:
Italy increased security Thursday at 14,000 sites, and assigned bodyguards to protect 550 individuals after a nuclear energy company official was shot and letter bombs directed to the tax collection agency.
Under the enhanced measures, Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri deployed 20,000 law enforcement officers to protect individuals and sensitive sites. In addition, 4,200 military personnel already assigned throughout Italy will be redeployed according to new priorities.
Spain: Bankia in Trouble
May 17th, 2012Via: BBC:
Shares in Spanish bank Bankia have continued their dramatic decline on concerns over the firm’s finances.
The share price was down another 15% on Thursday, taking losses for May to 45%.
Spain denied a report in the El Mundo newspaper that customers had taken more than 1bn euros ($1.3bn; £800m) out of the bank, which is set to be part-nationalised, over the past week.
The government, meanwhile, has had to pay sharply higher rates of interest to borrow money on the bond markets.
Apple Sends Siri to Re-Education Camp Over Double Plus Ungood Statements
May 17th, 2012Via: BBC:
The debate over “what is the best smartphone ever?” took an unexpected twist after Apple’s voice-activated assistant Siri appeared to favour the iPhone’s rival.
Over the weekend, users of Siri were told the answer was Nokia’s Lumia 900.
But Siri now responds to the same question with a jovial: “Wait… there are other phones?”
Nokia has accused Apple of “overriding the software” after the quirk was noticed.
Apple would not confirm that a change had been made.
Britain: Met Police Uses ‘Quick’ Mobile Data Extraction System on Suspects’ Mobile Phones
May 17th, 2012Via: Computerworld UK:
The Metropolitan Police has rolled out a mobile device data extraction system to allow officers to extract data “within minutes” from suspects’ phones while they are in custody.
The capability would be particularly useful if the police force were to face a similar situation to the riots last August, which were reportedly coordinated mainly via BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). At the time, there appeared to be confusion around whether or not police could access the data from rioters’ phones, although BlackBerry owner RIM promised to co-operate fully with the police.
The new system being used by the Met is Radio Tactics’ ACESO data extraction system across 16 boroughs in the capital.
