Ticketmaster's Massive Convenience Charges Have Proven To Be No Help ... -03/19/09 at 7:22 PM CDTby Peter York

A 1.1 billion dollar loss for a company currently valued at 234 million sounds unusual to me too.  Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. (TKTM)   seems to be in more trouble than its company executives would like to admit.  With its massive operating expenses covering approximately 6,700 independent sales outlets and 19 call centers worldwide, ...

Dennis Ross and What He Means for Iran and the Price of Oil -03/17/09 at 5:20 AM CDTby Reggie Abaca

Investors in oil (OIL, USO, USL) ought to pay special attention to last month's appointment for the office of "special advisor" on Middle East affairs to the United States Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Is this person a thoughtful middle of the road academic scholar?  No. This person is Dennis Ross, a former foreign affairs analyst for the ...

Should Jon Stewart Be The Financial Journalist Who Exposes TheStreet.... -03/13/09 at 5:29 AM CDTby Reggie Abaca

On his program, Jon Stewart played a Jim Cramer video from "Wall Street Confidential" done for the internet in 2006, where Cramer admitted to spreading rumors and manipulating markets as part of the "game" [see the video in links section here]. It was a breath of fresh air for thousands of investors across the country who were begging for Mr. Cramer to be...

Watch Out For Contango: Looking For The Best Long Term Oil Fund: USO,... -03/06/09 at 10:48 PM CSTby Perry Rod

It's really very simple. Go to any stock comparison chart today and compare the popular United States Oil Fund (USO), Barclay's iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Fund (OIL), or PowerShares Crude Oil Double Long and compare these to The United States 12 Month Oil Fund (USL) or PowerShares DB Oil Fund.  You will find that USL and DBO outperform the res...

The DTCC: Unregulated Buying, Clearing, Settling and Short Selling -03/05/09 at 11:07 PM CSTby Reggie Abaca

According to Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock (OSTK), The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which assumes a role that requires government oversight, is completely unregulated. In a message posted on the Deep Capture business blog, Byrne says he hired two securities lawyers to find out who actually regulates The Depository Trust an...

Bank Of America Corp's Preferred Trusts Continue to Trade at Irration... -03/04/09 at 10:21 PM CSTby Perry Rod

In my first installment of this issue on February 20th, I highlighted an unusually enormous spread between the yields of nearly identical Merrill Lynch and Bank of America preferred trusts.  In particular, MER-C on that Friday closed with a yield of 26.79% while BAC-U closed with a yield of 15.58%.  It turns out that on that parti...

The Growing Gap Between Reality And The Media, As Told By Eddie Lampe... -02/26/09 at 8:48 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

This week, Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund manager and Chairman of Sears (SHLD), became the latest to speak out against the problem of naked short selling. Here’s what he had to say… “…the level of “naked” short selling of our shares was significant. The activity can be measured by the number of shares sold short as dis...

LTC Properties and Cogdell Spencer Post Disappointing Late Day Earnings -02/26/09 at 12:12 AM CSTby Reggie Abaca

[Updated] LTC Properties, Inc. (LTC) waited one hour after the market closed to quietly release an earnings disappointment which they plan to discuss in the morning.  Cogdell Spencer did them one better and waited three hours after the bell to release a more "cautious outlook."  Health care real estate investment trusts and stocks have seen qu...

With Citigroup and Bank of America Leading The Way, The S&P 500 Is Ha... -02/23/09 at 6:45 PM CSTby Mahyar Hashemi

Things are getting ugly in an unprecedented way.  Last month, The New York Times reported that the S&P 500 was having its worst decade yet as of the end of January 2009, with a 5.1% ten year drop after accounting for inflation and reinvested dividends.  That beat the previous record of 1974 when the S&P 500 dropped 4.7% in a ten year per...

Would General Electric's CNBC Allow Charles Gasparino To Say It On Th... -02/21/09 at 8:44 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

Charles Gasparino, the CNBC reporter, published an op-ed in The New York Post yesterday. Here’s a part of what he had to say: Earlier this year, high-flying hedge fund Paulson & Co. retained [former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan] for its “advisory board.” The firm is a noted “short seller” of banks and financial st...

An In Depth Look Into Bank Of America Corp Preferred Trusts And Their... -02/21/09 at 5:07 PM CSTby Perry Rod

In my last installment, I showed that Bank Of America (NYSE: BAC) preferred trusts are trading at yields that are completely arbitrary when compared to their own nearly identical trusts.  I further pointed out that the Merrill Lynch Trusts, which are basically the same trusts with the exact same terms, trade at an even greater discrepancy. Let's get...