NorthSideSox72

CNN article It could be a pretty big thing. Maybe. Could ice the election, because at this point, a few more points would do it.

Well, I have to admit, I'm surprised she was found in violation. I was thinking the report would end up being nothing substantial, especially with the committee who reviewed it being in her party's favor, and with the state's reputation somewhat exposed with Palin's nomination. This COULD be a game ender for McCain/Palin.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 05:24 PM) Obama's Muslim Outreach reaches out to controversial muslim figures, including people who support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah and Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. It was also supposed to be kept secret. "The meeting was not advertised and some attendees got text phone messages notifying them that day of the meeting’s location, the participant said." And this is from MSNBC!!!!! I have to give props when they get somethign right once in a while. i wonder if the Messiah has pissed them off somehow? http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archiv...09/1525564.aspx Let me get this straight. Obama is bad because one of his lieutenants hosted a community meeting/pep rally and some of the people who attended the PUBLIC meeting were unsavory? I need a yawning while playing a tiny violin emoticon.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 05:23 PM) uhhh, the Democrats have been saying that claims that Obama is a Muslim is a smear. The Democrats have repeated over and over that Obama is not Muslim, as if all Muslims are terrorists. change the religion here and you tell me how it sounds: "These smears on Obama are false, Obama is not a Muslim" "These smears on Obama are false, Obama is not a Jew" The Democrats seem to think Muslim and good person are mutually exclusive. I haven't seen anyone else in either party make a statement like those above. But if they did, then yes, that's also a little disturbing. I could give less of a s*** who said it, its a little disturbing. Seriously, if I point out something that McCain did wrong, why is it I get lambasted about something Obama may have done? Did I even mention Obama? I didn't even say it was some huge deal.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 04:45 PM) Crowd Boos McCain for defending Obama: He probably should have added "he's a christian" since that is probably what she was implying, but I'll take it. I think its interesting that McCain seems to think that Arab and good family man/citizen are mutually exclusive.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 04:50 PM) This is getting ridiculous. Florida is almost out of McCain's grasp. Still almost a month and one debate to go. I wouldn't go calling it just yet. Although, if the polls look like this the day before, I think you can call it.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 03:09 PM) Oddly, not much coverage of this: I think it would be smart for people who want to vote, to just go to the appropriate government office, and register. I wouldn't trust some door-to-door vote registrar any more than I'd trust a door-to-door salesman.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 12:45 PM) So if this is the case, when we start to rally, we will rally hard, because there will be multiple covers instead of just one per short. Interesting. Hey look - silver lining! Meanwhile... Down down about 5% today, to 8165, so far S&P down down almost 6% to 856

I've been thinking about this. There are hedge funds and trading firms out there who have been shorting big naked, and selling naked calls. They are getting burned, or will get burned (and some, too, will make out big on it). If they do fail on their bets, they will have to cover with cash, which will drive many of them out of business. That is bad for the job market, but may be good for the financial markets in the long run, flushing out some of the guys who take too much risk. Darwinian investing. Here is where it gets tricky, though. Look at trading firms, hedge funds, and IB's who are relatively risk-averse and do what they are supposed to. When they short a stock, they ask for a collateral locate, from their own stores or their clearing firm if they don't self-clear. This is the smarter, lower risk move. BUT, it seems obvious now to me, that the major stock holders - the big IB's and CF's - may be allowing multiple locates on the same shares. For example, Big IB has 100k shares it holds. Some is held in house accounts, some held by investors. Trading firms ask for locates. They allow not only 100k locates, but they allow 400k locates, thinking that not all the locates will get called. Usually, that's true. But now, in this market, what if a lot more of them do? Now, big IB has to send straight cash to cover anything over their actual shares. And they don't HAVE that kind of cash right now. And, because of the credit markets, they can't borrow it either. Now what happens??? Even worse, what happens if the holders of that 100k in customer accounts start to liquidate quicker than usual. The problem is now compounded. That is just scaring the s*** out of me right now.

By the way, this situation alone - the fact that hedge funds and trading firms are shorting stock because IB's are allowing multi-locates, or they are allowed to short uncovered and unhedged - makes me revise my feelings on the market. We have a big beast out there lurking still.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 11:42 AM) How does that happen? Can someone explain to me how you can short sell that much stock that doesn't exist and gain real money from it? If it's too complicated that's fine, but it blows my mind. I assumed they meant options, not short the stock. Theoretically, if you are following the rules and covering all your shorts or at least doing locates on them, this should be impossible. SS2K5 might know this better than I do though - can you short stock on a large scale without locates on the stock? This stinks of firms multi-locating stocks to trading firms, which seems awfully dangerous. Not sure its illegal though. That right there is a hole that could be legislated - stock/collateral locates have to be singular, no exceptions. All collateral must be single-pegged.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 11:39 AM) More on hedge funds. FerrariChat has three private rooms for paid members. One general forum, Business & investments, and politics and religion. This is from the business forum (I'm not a member, but I got this from someone who is). There is a very interesting discussion going on. Christ. They were naked short on more than the total shares issued for Lehman? WTF?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 10:47 AM) Are you asking me because you think I don't know, because you think I was trying to bait with that statement, or just out of curiosity to see what I'm going to say? They are "about" less government, as much free market as possible, lower taxes, lower government spending among other things, which may or may not be what the Republican party is about. Speaking of less government involvement I still haven't really figured out why social conservatives have so much influence among conservatives because it's basically the government telling people what to do and how to act. That's because there are really two Republican parties at this point. The social conservatives took over a lot of control starting int he 90's, but now they are waning. If the GOP was really about the bolded part, as it was at one time, I'd be more in their court. This is why I have voted for more Republicans for President than Democrats, but not recently. Unfortunately, they pretty much walked away from that. They are now spend-and-spend (as opposed to the tax-and-spend liberals), and get into everyone's lives and business. Its disturbing, and its the main reason why I've become more aligned with the left in the past decade or so.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 09:56 AM) You're getting pretty close to the fringe of my knowledge here but they have a lot of different types of funds (these were given to me, BTW). I went to go dig up a report from earlier this year, and I'll give you the top 5 stocks and industry sectors: Stocks: Berkshire Hathaway 11% Liberty Media - Entertainment - 5.2% Redwood Trust 4.9% American International Group 4.7% (lol, yeah) Liberty Media - Interactive 4.7% Industry Sectors: Financials 31.5% Consumer Discretionary 30.8% Health Care 10.9% Industrials 6.5% Information Technology 3.8% This probably reads a lot easier to you than it does to me. I do know the "financials" part is getting raped right now though (that report is from 6 months ago). That looks like a typical breakdown for a large value fund - which is actually not the highest risk stuff. Usually. Interesting that its more than 10% in Berkshire. I wonder if its a model fund, chasing the same stuff that the Oracle does. If so, and if they model well, the choices in each sector may be better off than some other funds. But I couldn't say for sure. You are semi-well diversified there, other than that aberrant BH holding. Diversification to sector looks broad enough to be lower risk. How many other stocks are held though? If its just a dozen or so others in that same 4-5% like range, that's actually not well diversified to company, and that's a little risky to me. but if its piled with another 50 or 100 in small percentages, that mitigates your risk a bit more. If indeed there are only, say, 10 to 20 stocks in there... then that would be the worrying factor to me. Beyond just putting too much money in a few issues, it also means they are probably either following a narrow model, and/or are trading a lot more rapidly than other funds. That's not what I, personally, want to see. but everyone to their own preferences.

No audio at work... what is the deal with the picture? Did Newsweek run a cover pic of Palin that was unflattering or something?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 09:26 AM) The one with the most money in it is Weitz Funds. I forget the name of the other one, it's worth about 3k right now though. I'm not familiar with Weitz. What sectors or types are in the fund? domestic or foreign or both? small/growth firms, large value firms, or both? Just stocks, or does it include fixed income or other instruments? Or is it a sector fund (i.e. technology, energy, etc.)? Indicies?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 08:19 AM) When are my high-risk mutual funds going to stop getting pounded? Another year or so? Which kind are you talking about here? Aggressive growth like Russell or small biz stuff? Commodity funds?

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 08:05 AM) There is nothing "they" can do while the mkt is closed that will avoid a crash when it re-opens. After 9-11 the mkt was down huge the first day trading resumed. The 2002 lows on the SPX at 765.68 WILL NOT HOLD. Be it today, Monday or more likely after a vicious rally of a hundred or two points in the SPX. Then, our next support will be in the 500's. 500's? No way. I'd bet money against that. Actually, in a way, I just did bet money against that.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 08:52 AM) I'm leaving work early to go to Wall Street to pass out bottles of Prozac to keep them from flipping the f*** out. It might save our economy. Anyone wanna come with? There will be a lot of hedge funds and small trading firms going out of business in the coming months as a result of this mess. People will lose jobs. If walking around in Manhattan or downtown Chicago, watch for falling traders. In a way though, getting some of the highly risk tolerant players out of the markets may not be a bad thing.

Traders saying that Berlusconi (sp?), the Italian leader, is calling for a "global market shutdown". Yeah, and we should always listen to the Italians about economics.

Big drops at the open - major indices went down another 5 to 6% at one point. But now rallying, and majors are down 2 to 3% from open at present.

QUOTE (Controlled Chaos @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 08:26 AM) Fixed Except not once did I ever see the Obama campaign disparage or even talk at any length about Palin's daughter.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Oct 10, 2008 -> 06:43 AM) Actually eighty is faster than most ambulances would go, so you are still covered. A seventeen year old doing 90 trying to get to a hospital is probably at a pretty increased risk for a major accident. ^^^^^^

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 9, 2008 -> 11:30 PM) I wish I could do my job as poorly as Octavio Dotel and have somebody deem my performance a success. Is baseball so out of pitching that Dotel is considered good? My god that guy when he is bad, and he was bad a lot, is horrific. I'd agree with Steve Stone's assessment that Thornton was good to great; Dotel was sickeningly bad at times. Dotel has two settings - on and off. There is no in between. And you know immediately, from the first batter, which Dotel you have that day. But overall, yes, Dotel did do a good job this year. He put up a 1.21 WHIP, a 3.76 ERA, a fairly amazing 12.4 K/9, and hitters had only a .208 average against him. He also posted 21 holds, and only 28% of his inherited runners scored. For your 7th inning guy, that's more than acceptable. The key with Dotel is just making sure you watch him carefully with that first batter, and take him out quickly when needed.

I was actually surprised at how quickly the Palin's pregnant daughter thing faded out. I think the American public spoke on that one - once they knew about it, most of them didn't want to hear anymore. The press obliged.