I am trying to get as many traders as I can to donate their profits for Tuesday, Sep. 6 to a charity of their choosing that is assisting disaster victims. Would you help me in this cause? It would be great if you would personally pledge your profits for Sep. 6, and even better if you would urge your readers to do the same.

Here is a list of good charities:

Other than writing a few checks myself, I have no affiliation with any of them.

Any help you can give would go a long way. I am convinced that together we can make a difference.

Post from: Trader Mike

Traders Helping Katrina Victims

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what’s going on in Georgia today, including the Governor’s sanctions against price gougers.

Post from: Trader Mike

Atlanta Gas Shortages(?), Long Lines, Prices Ramping!

• Brett Steenbarger’s “When Trading Journals Don’t Work” — Some great pointers on journaling the right way.
• More good trading articles at Trade2Win
• Trenders has a nice collection of trading wisdom — tips from Amos Hostetter; forget bull or bear, its about being on the right side of the market; and words by William Eckhardt about a trader’s starting capital.
• Even more tips from Amos Hostetter
• Investment U has a two part interview with Jim Rogers — Jim Rogers on China’s Currency Revaluation: The New Yuan Rate Versus the U.S. Dollar…and What It Means for Long-term Investors and Jim Rogers: Hot on Commodities…Thoughts on Gold, Hubbert’s Peak, and More (hat tip to Random Roger)
• Booyah Boy Audit — The track record of Jim Cramer’s ‘Mad Money’ stock selections. (I’d just like to point out that one can be ‘right’ less than 50% of the time and still make money!)
• Where You Can Find High Velocity Moves In This Market (hat tip to Online Trading)
• Follow TraderCRM as he chronicles his first weeks as a professional day trader.
• MP3 of a presentation by Bill Dunn (a big-time trend follower)
• Seems like everybody has flagged BMHC as a short.
• Some good criticism of the Feedster Top 500 Blogs list. I’d add that several of the blogs on the list are only so high because of a ton of links from other blogs in their networks and/or due to blog alliances. I’d like to see traffic numbers incorporated into ranking blogs.
• What will be the Next Big Thing on the internet - and how will the new markets and businesses being created online affect traditional industries?
• With lines like these (see below) maybe oil has a lot higher to climb!
  

Post from: Trader Mike

Linking Up a Storm

Post from: Trader Mike

New York Times: Initial Panic Selling Followed by a Numbing Business as Usual

06:05 Three blasts cause fatalities in London - Reuters

According to Reuters, three explosions rocked London’s transport system at rush-hour on Thursday morning causing “some fatalities,” according to a source at the Metronet consortium that runs part of the capital’s underground network. “There were three explosions and there have been some fatalities,” said the source, adding the blasts had appeared to hit the Metropolitan Line.

06:14 European Markets Pressured by London Bomb Blasts: UK -2.4%, France -3.2%, Germany -2.9%, Italy -3%, Sweden -2.2%

06:16 Watch for potential weakness in US Airline stocks in reaction to London bomb blasts: NWAC, DAL and AMR… also travel names such as PCLN, IACI, TZOO

06:20 European Stocks, U.K. Pound Slump on Explosions; Bonds Advance - Bloomberg.com

Bloomberg.com reports that European stocks slumped after London’s public transport system was hit by explosions, sending the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index toward its biggest drop in more than two years. The U.K. pound and bond yields globally also slid. Police said blasts occurred in “multiple locations.” A bus exploded near Russell Square, causing “numerous casualties,” a police statement said. Stations in and around the city’s financial district, including Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Edgware Road and King’s Cross, were evacuated after blasts were reported on underground train links. Scotland Yard said the first blast was reported at 8:50 a.m. local time. “Investors are selling all asset classes because they are fearful this could be the beginning of a new terror campaign,” said a fund manager at Brussels-based Petercam, which oversees about $9.1 bln.

06:21 CNBC reports London Stock Exchange to remain open; reports preliminary casualties of 20

06:32 Swiss franc surges, sterling sinks after London blast — Reuters

Reuters reports that the Swiss franc hit a one-month high against sterling and also rose more than 1 percent versus the dollar on Thursday on news that the London underground system was closed after a series of incidents including explosions. “The market is moving on this. The Swiss franc is rising because it is seen as an ultimate safe haven. Sterling has also moved a bit,” said Shahab Jalinoos, senior currency strategist at ABN Amro.

06:35 After initial spike to $62 area, Crude Oil has plunged more than $4.00 following London explosions

06:36 BBC quotes sources who say 6 blasts in Central London is the work of Al Qaeda

06:39 CNBC reports AP quoting Senior Israeli official saying Scotland told Israel minutes before explosion it received warning of possible terrorist attacks

06:40 AP says British police said minutes before attack that it had received warning of possible terror attacks in London

06:51 European Indices extend losses: UK -3.4%, Germany -3%, France -3.5%, Norway -4%, Italy -4%, Sweden -3.5%

07:06 Tony Blair speaks on London explosions; says it is reasonably clear explosions were an act of terrorism

07:16 Treasury market seeing flight-to-quality bid, 10-year +20/32nds yielding 3.989%

07:22 Trader Talk: Crude oil

Crude oil futures are pointing to a much lower opening on the heels of London bombings as traders speculate that immediate demand for jet fuel and diesel fuel will ease as transportation suffers on renewed terrorism fears. Feedback suggests that hotels, airlines, rails, online travel sites, and leisure/entertainment places like Disney as well as casinos may suffer near-term on heightened consumer hesitations to travel.

07:29 U.S. Homeland Security says no intelligence indicating attack similar to London blasts planned in U.S. - Reuters

07:30 Commodity Update

Crude futures under significant pressure, nearby contract at $59.60 (-1.68). The Aug contract hit a high overnight of $62.10, followed by a steep drop to $57.20. Traders bet attacks in London will lower demand for oil. Financial Times reports that OPEC will be unable to meet western oil demand by 2020 (Bloomberg.com). According to Bloomberg, crude supplies are expected to decline by 1.63 mln barrels in the week ended Jul 1. Gasoline supplies are forecasted to come in unchanged at 216.2 mln, distillate expected to rise by 1.5 mln barrels. Also, energy market will need to contend with tropical storm Dennis… Gold futures seeing safe-haven buying, nearby contract at $429.40 (+4.90).

07:33 Floor Talk: Gold

Gold prices have spiked 1.3% this morning, the most in 3 weeks of trading, as the yellow metal sees flight to quality buying from investors after the London terror acts. (Note that gold prices soared nearly 5.5% immediately following the terror attacks of 9/11). (My note — keep an eye on GLD)

07:34 Previously unknown group claims London attacks in name of Al-Qaeda, according to Italian news agency - Reuters

07:58 FBR homeland security analyst lists stocks that may trade higher on London attacks

On Bloomberg TV, Friedman Billings Ramsey homeland security analyst listed stocks that may trade higher on London attacks: AH, CDCY, LLL, MANT, SRA.

08:05 CNBC reports that Bank of England says it has not intervened in the markets

08:11 The ‘Usual Suspect’ Security plays trade up sharply on London attacks: TBUS +59%, IPIX +42%, MACE +32%, ISON +22%, AATK +20%, MAGS +16%

08:12 Al Qaeda Statement Warns Denmark, Italy to Pull Out of Iraq — Bloomberg

Post from: Trader Mike

Notes on this Morning’s London Blasts

NYSE Considers Plan to Open Earlier, Thain Says

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — The New York Stock Exchange is considering a plan to open trading by as much as two hours earlier to attract more business from international investors, NYSE Chief Executive Officer John Thain said.

The exchange wants to make a decision within the year, Thain told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Trading now begins at 9:30 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. in New York.

“We are considering the expansion of the hours,” said Thain, 49. “It would probably be just an hour or two at the beginning or the end, more likely at the beginning.”

Seat prices have fallen by more than half since their August 1999 peak of $2.65 million, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rewrites rules governing trading. Thain is developing a hybrid plan to mesh electronic and manual trading to fend off competition from all-automated competitors, such as the Archipelago Exchange.

Archipelago plans to open for trading by 4 a.m. New York time as soon as March to lure business from Europe, the Financial Times reported Jan. 18. [read the entire story...]

Post from: Trader Mike

NYSE Considering Opening Trading Two Hours Earlier (Ugh!)

Dow Jones won the bidding with a deal, expected to be completed today, for $519 million, about six times MarketWatch’s 2004 revenue. The four-way frenzy among the companies to own MarketWatch outright may be the strongest sign that news and information sites, long thought to be dot-gone relics of 1999, are making a big comeback in 2005.

Many of the same companies that were badly burned by Internet investments before are aggressively bidding for these sites not just because of the growing online ad business but because, like Dow Jones, they are worried that their current Web sites will not be able to keep up with demand.

“The existing old-line media companies, which have a big stake in where people advertise, have to recognize this medium,” said Larry S. Kramer, a founder and chief executive of MarketWatch. “Our audience means more to them now because it’s not just revenue they are going to pick up. It’s revenue they are going to lose.”

I wonder how much the bull run of the last two years had to do the amount of interest in these sites. If the bear comes back that MarketWatch purchase may start to look really expensive.

On a related note — I’ll gladly sell my site for just 5 times ad revenue which amounts to the whopping sum of… oh never mind.

Update: Susan just wrote a post covering some other angles on internet ad revenue. She also points to this article about a recent Goldman Sachs study — “Newspaper advertising being infringed upon by internet ad campaigns” Interesting times…

Post from: Trader Mike

(Financial) Internet News Sites Are Back in Vogue

Post from: Trader Mike

Random Roger Takes Over Fox News

As usual there are a lot of good articles submitted by bloggers on a variety of topics. I didn’t even attempt to categorize the articles, as many of them cross multiple topics. I did do a quick sorting of them, so the list below generally flows in this order: entrepreneurship, business, technology, blogging, marketing, internet, financial markets, economy and taxes. Enjoy…

• Dave Pollard of How to Save the World discusses Rule #1 for business start-ups — ‘find a need and fill it‘. This is a chapter from Dave’s upcoming book ‘Natural Enterprise’.
• Dr. Jeff Cornwall comments on the state of entrepreneurship in America by taking a look at the SBA’s 2004 Small Business Report. I’m with Jeff on obliterating apart the current tax code.
• Most people who’ve worked in organizations of any size recognize the underground organization - it is the informal and often unspoken (or at least spoken behind closed doors or softly around the coffee machine) network that defines the way challenges to the conventional “wisdom” are squelched or undermined. In this article Phillip Wilson offers three practical tips managers can use to implement double-loop learning in their organizations in order to surface the underground organization.
• Steve Rucinski discusses the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) and gives four key metrics to use to measure the effectiveness of CRM programs.
• Paul Noonan shares his observations of the consequences of running a business like a public utility. When customer satisfaction is not the focus, bad things happen. He uses the Chicago Transit Authority as an example and shows how they are apparently trying to encourage customers to get off the trains.
• Jay Allen, the Zero Boss, recounts a bad customer service experience with a Napster representative.
• Todd Sattersten explains why the lack of opportunities to do innovative work caused him to leave his job at GE.
• In part one of a four part series Brendon Connelly reveals the fine (and secret) art of managing your boss. The other articles in the series detail the three things that one needs to know in order to manage her boss effectively: 1) Understanding Yourself; 2) Understanding The Boss; 3) Understanding The Relationship.

  (As an aside, I’m glad to see that Brendon has been using David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” productivity system for four years. I just got turned on to it a few weeks ago and it’s already had a major impact on me.)

• Dave Foster puts a new spin on the old business parable about buggy-whip manufacturers and how they should have thought of themselves as being in “transportation” rather than “buggy-whips”
• Barry Ritholtz continues his excellent coverage of the music industry by asking if U2’s P2P release was a briliiant marketing ploy.
• On her RFID blog Anita Campbell takes a look at several emerging technologies (Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID), smart cards, kiosks, biometrics, and electronic shelf labels) which are converging to change the face of the retail industry.
• Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Business World reports that support for creating a ‘Blog Chamber of Commerce’ is growing. After reading his article I’m all for it. He says that “dispelling the myth that all blogs are online diaries and personal journals is a great place to start.” I would add ‘political soap boxes’ to that as well.
• The blogosphere loves memetics theory and ‘The Tipping Point’. This article by Evelyn Rodriguez is the first in an exploratory series looking at why when we’re talking ideological warfare - certain memes don’t crossover but remain contained within their group. Within their group, the memes amplify and self-reinforce - but cross-over doesn’t happen. This has far-reaching implications for persuasion and evangelizing: from the selling of presidential candidates to understanding the deep loyalty inspired by brands such as Apple or Harley-Davidson. (But may not necessarily apply to more benign products and services such as tissue paper.)
• Yvonne DiVita gives us advice on how and why to utilize some old-fashioned marketing, like newspaper ads, along with your Internet marketing, to make sales this holiday season.
• Russell Buckley explores the future direction advertising might have to take in order to continue to work.
• Sparked by James Surowiecki’s recent article about the decline of brands largely due to reputation systems, Arnold Kling of EconLog wonders if the same can done to the “brand” of government licenses (e.g. health care providers).
• James Cherkoff, from across the pond in London, writes that “the organisational model behind open source (massive web base collaborations by individuals outside of private organisations) is starting to starting to drive innovation in other areas.” He gives several recent examples of how open source techniques are being used in the world of marketing.
• David Jackson lays out four emerging Internet trends which will propel the growth of small Web sites. Although the article discusses the implications for Internet investing it’s also highly relevant to bloggers and anyone in the business of e-commerce or Web publishing.
• In ‘Really Emerging Markets‘ Roger Nusbaum compares iShares South Africa (EZA) to the South Africa Fund (SOA) as a way to invest in Africa. Roger cites two investment themes — Africa as an emerging market and a gold rally lifting the Rand (South Africa’s Currency) and helping stocks work higher with a low correlation to the US. I love the charts of both of those equities, but man are they’re thinly traded.
• Oracle is threatening to give up its bid for PeopleSoft if 50% of PeopleSoft’s outstanding shares are not tendered by November 19. Frank Scavo at the Enterprise System Spectator speculates on what might happen to PeopleSoft if Oracle wins, or if it walks away.
• Rawdon Adams writes that “Ignorance is a vastly underrated quality when it comes to investing; and their counter-parts - arrogance and over-confidence - can prove devastating.” Truer words have never been written.
• Martin Lindeskog reports in from Hungary with a look at how globalization of the financial markets is evolving.
• Don Lloyd writes that contrary to conventional wisdom, high rates of return in the private sector will not save social security.
• Stephen Karlson discusses the assertation by Chicago Fed economist William A. Strauss that President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing signalled the end of major macroeconomic surprises at the beginning of the current economic recovery.
• Technofunk of the ‘Think Like Us‘ group blog takes a very interesting look at a possible effect of online banking and payment tools and what possible effect their increased usage may have on the economy, including personal savings and personal consumption.
• David Tufte does an excellent job of explaining one of the two reasons that Kydland and Prescott won the economics Nobel prize this year. He uses an analogy of traffic jams to explain how events propagate through the economy.
• M. Simon of Power and Control explores why profit is necessary and how it tends to drive down costs.
• Paul Asad of Truck and Barter provides us with his ideal armchair economics reading list. I know I could benefit from reading a few of those books.
• Brian Gongol says that contemporary economic development work by the public sector puts a lot of taxpayer resources to very inefficient use. He proposes that instead of providing special incentives to a small number of firms, states and communities should focus on creating a better organic environment for all businesses.
• Now that it’s year-end tax planning time, Mike Pechar reminds us that mortgage interest on second homes is tax deductible and a boat can easily qualify as a second home.
• Warren Meyer provides us with a roundup of the challenges of collecting and filing sales taxes, including some of the more egregious state practices he’s come across.
• Anita Campbell, at her Small Business Trends weblog, writes that “real estate investors trying to take advantage of 1031 exchanges are banding together into investor groups and overpaying for commercial real estate, just because of the tax advantage. This is a troubling trend that is inflating real estate values across the country.”

Next week’s edition will be hosted at SocialTwister Be sure to send entries to cotcmail-at-gmail-dot-com before next Sunday afternoon (the earlier the better — this is a lot of work!). Brian Gongol has set up a form to help facilitate CotC submissions. I think it would be very helpful to the hosts if people used that form.

Post from: Trader Mike

Carnival of the Capitalists Rolls Through Atlanta

What’s Next?

Readers ask us that question all the time. And we ask the people we write about the same thing. This first incarnation of the Fast Forward list is an attempt to capture what comes out of those conversations, to look around the corner and offer some insight into the ideas, people, and trends that will affect the way we work and live in 2005.

Perhaps the most thrilling part of putting together a list of 101 emerging ideas is seeing the innovation and optimism bubbling up in so many arenas, from packaged goods to biotech to security. In a stagnant business climate, it’s easy to get dejected about whether there are, in fact, any big ideas left to pursue. An Internet may not come along every year to transform our lives, but not every mountain has to be Everest. We can still get pretty excited about an advance in shopping-cart technology (see No. 74).

At the heart of each of the 101 items on the list lies an idea. It may be convenience or transparency or a new way to think about strategy. We think you’ll see ideas that will help you change the way you work or how your company does business. In some cases, you may just be able to adopt the concept itself. In others, you may be inspired by the soul of it.

Predicting the future, even the near future, is a perilous endeavor in our lightning-round business culture. Some of these items are sure things and others are long-shot gambles. That’s by design. For as you consider what you want to accomplish next year, the key to success may be a healthy mix of both. [read the rest]

Post from: Trader Mike

Fast Forward 2005