Stock Exchange
The JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Losses: Here’s What Happened
Yesterday's announcement by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) that it lost $2 billion on a "hedge" position is not only surprising, it's frightening.
I'll try and make this short and easy to understand, but the truth is that it's complicated. If we have a decent idea about what happened (and I do), it's bad. And if it's a tip-of-the-iceberg thing (which I don't believe it is), it could be really, really bad.
Investors put on hedges all the time. In fact, in our investment services like the Capital Wave Forecast we put on essentially the same type of "economic" hedges that JPM CEO Jamie Dimon is saying blew up on them. The economic hedges we put on are essentially hedges against long positions we hold.
For example, if I see some potential danger ahead, then I recommend we buy some protection, like buying the VIX in anticipation of rising volatility, or buying puts on broad market indexes.
The broad protective measures we take are economic hedges because they are not specific hedges designed to hedge potential loss in any one position. For example, if we owned JPM stock and we wanted to hedge our position, we might buy puts on JPM, or sell calls, or employ another specific hedge against our long position.
LinkedIn’s (NYSE: LNKD) First-Quarter Earnings Preview
There is a lot riding on LinkedIn's (NYSE: LNKD) first-quarter earnings report due out today (Thursday).
LinkedIn is expected to report earnings of 9 cents per share on revenue of $179 million. In the same period a year ago, the company broke even with revenue of $94 million.
The question is if the ever-growing and hugely successful professional networking service can sustain the brisk growth that has not only had job seekers and industry experts flocking to the site, but also sent its shares soaring. LinkedIn's stock has climbed nearly 70% this year.
LinkedIn did report commendable fourth-quarter numbers and enjoyed significant revenue growth across all segments. But a prior stellar quarter does not portend the same in a subsequent one.
If first-quarter results are a letdown, shares could plummet.
A Look at LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD)
The Mountain View, CA-based company has enjoyed explosive expansion in its membership. LinkedIn ended 2011 with some 145 million members, up from 90 million at 2010's end.
LinkedIn is becoming a Facebook-type site for career-minded professionals. Helped no doubt by the high and stagnant unemployment rate, the Website drew more than 100 million monthly visitors in January for the first time, research firm comScore Inc. reported.
MarketWatch notes that as more and more employers, headhunters and job seekers congregate to the site, using it as a digital rolodex, LinkedIn benefits from the fees it charges companies, recruiting services and people who opt to pay for additional access to the members.
Investing In ETFs: How Exchange-Traded Funds Can Save You Money
High commissions and management fees, along with taxes, can really cut into your returns.
That's where exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, come in. In today's investment world, ETFs are cheaper and more tax-friendly than mutual funds.
The average expense ratio for U.S.-listed ETFs is 0.4%, compared with 1.42% for diversified U.S. stock funds.They also give you exposure to an entire industry or market with the click of a mouse.
It's one of the reasons why exchange-traded funds are quickly becoming the investment of choice for investors seeking broad market exposure.
In fact, the number of ETFs has surged over 10-fold in the last decade.
The total number of ETFs in the market grew to 1,114 by October 2011, with assets over $1 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute.
And the ETF market will expand to roughly $3.1 trillion by 2016, according to projections from the Financial Research Corp. in Boston.
So if you're looking to diversify your portfolio and save money doing it, ETFs may be the way to go.
Here's a primer on how ETFs can work for you.
ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) Earnings Miss – But Investors Should Stay Put
ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) earnings came up short this morning. The oil giant missed analysts' expectations by about 9 cents.
Steve Schaefer at Forbes runs down the numbers:
"The energy giant recorded earnings of $9.5 billion, or $2.00 per share. Those figures were down 11% and 7%, respectively, from the first quarter of 2011, and earnings per share were below the $2.09 analyst consensus. Revenue of $124.1 billion was up 8.8% from a year ago, but just shy of the $124.8 billion expected.
Earnings in Exxon's upstream, or exploration and production, fell 10.1% from a year ago, to $7.8 billion, while downstream earning, which include refining, were up 44% from the prior year to $1.6 billion, thanks largely to gains from asset sales and improvements in volume and mix."
This earnings miss is the least of Exxon's short-term worries as we head into the summer months and the election heats up. There are a lot of problems for the company to overcome all at once – but it shouldn't send ExxonMobil investors headed for the exits.
Five Cheap Stocks Under $15: BAC, NAK, SD, RIMM, ELN
A certain group of equities have been out of favor lately. Beaten down, they have landed into the cheap stocks barrel.
Yet some of the richest rewards come from these battered and overlooked stocks. So don't let a low share price deter you.
While it is not recommended that you fill up an entire, or even a major, portion of your portfolio with stocks under $15, the addition of a few carefully selected "cheap stocks" could be worthwhile.
Admittedly the odds of picking the next Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are long, but the right low-priced stocks can be worthy as a trade with the prospect of a huge upside – if timing is right.
The following are five stocks under $15 that have taken a beating and offer the kind of potential that make them worthy of a closer look.
They include: Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Northern Dynasty Mineral Ltd. (NYSE: NAK), SandRidge Energy (NYSE: SD), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Elan Corp. (NYSE: ELN).
Here's the breakdown…
Monday's Stock Market News: UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS), US Steel Corp (NYSE: X), Glencore
Monday's stock market news from United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS), U.S. Steel Corp. (NYSE: X), and Glencore International Plchelped drive gains in U.S. markets. The Dow moved up a slim 0.05% to close at 13,239.13; the S&P 500 climbed 0.4% to close at 1,409.75; and the Nasdaq rose 0.75% to 3,078.32.
United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) biggest deal in company history: UPS announced Monday a $6.77 billion deal to buy Netherlands-based delivery service TNT Express NV to bolster global sales growth.
TNT is Europe's second-biggest express mail company. Its acquisition will double the UPS presence in Europe and give it about the same market share as the region's industry leader DHL. The deal also will boost UPS's international sales to 36% of its total from 26% currently – a significant leap towards the company's goal of 50%.
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The Real Reason Mark Zuckerberg is Paying $2 Billion in Taxes on the Facebook IPO
As the much-ballyhooed Facebook IPO looms closer, there's a mountain being made out of a molehill.
Turns out 27-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have a $2 billion tax bill that, according to a variety of sources, he intends to pay in full.
He seems like a regular guy…or is he?
To say I'm skeptical of his intentions would be an insult to actual skeptics. I think the "Zuck" is a great guy, but a regular guy? No way.
He didn't build from scratch a business that has 845 million customers by being stupid.
Zuckerberg goes to great lengths to project an aw-shucks kind of image. But in reality, this move is about as down-to-earth as Kim Kardashian's wedding. And it's every bit as sophisticated a play as I would have expected out of Larry Ellison or the late Steve Jobs.
Zuckerberg (and presumably his advisors) knows that the stakes couldn't be higher than they are at the moment, which is why he wants to pay this tax bill and reinforce the illusion that Facebook is part of Middle America – instead of being built upon its back.
He knows that successfully doing so will help him monetize your information when Facebook goes public.
I say this because it's important to remember the only reason Facebook is worth anything is because users – people like you – have voluntarily, with no compensation whatsoever, assembled the greatest single collection of marketing data in recorded history. That's right. Your data is going to make him rich.
So where are all the privacy advocates now?
I'd love to see what Facebook's proposed valuation would be if 845 million people suddenly decided they really don't want to share their most intimate moments with friends or decide they don't really want to "like" anything.
And why hasn't the Occupy Wall Street crowd or the Tax the Rich bunch latched onto this?
Because evidently none of them can spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y. And many are probably too busy using Facebook to "meme" about their activities to pay attention anyway.
But that's really beside the point.
A Zuckerberg Tax? …Give me a Break
There should be a huge amount of backlash, but there isn't. Well, unless you count any number of proposals like the "Zuckerberg Tax" advanced last Tuesday in a New York Times OpEd piece by tax lawyer David Miller.
Miller advocates allowing the government to claw back money from the ultra-wealthy. He believes that individuals earning more than $2.2 million in income or having more than $5.7 million in securities should have their stocks marked to market and taxed even if they haven't sold their investments.
That's asinine.
The New Money Market Fund Rules You Could Face
Tags: financial regulation, New money market fund rules, SEC
Cash-Secured Puts: Keep the Cash Flowing – Even After You've Sold the Stock
In January, I told you how you can double or even triple your yield by selling "covered" calls on your dividend stocks.
While this is a safe and highly effective strategy, selling covered calls does have a drawback – of a sort.
If the stock you're holding rises in price before the calls you sold expire, you could be forced to sell the shares at the option's designated strike price.
This isn't likely to be a huge problem since you'll be selling your stock at a profit. The problem is that if you no longer own the stock, you won't be getting the dividend.
Fortunately, this problem has an easy solution. It's a strategy called selling "cash-secured puts."
Using cash-secured puts, you can maintain your cash flow while you're waiting to repurchase the actual stock at a price equal to or below where you just sold it.
How to Use a Cash-Secured Put to Generate Income
Here's how it works.
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