by Oilprice.com • • Comments Off on DOJ Extracts $5 Billion from Anadarko “for 85 years of poisoning the earth”
It “tried to keep its rewards and shed its responsibilities by playing a corporate shell game, putting its oil-and-gas business in a new entity and leaving behind a bankrupt shell” with environmental liabilities of defunct, polluting businesses.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on ‘Hope-for-Growth Momentum Investing’
“Why worry if the price can only go up” – Societe Generale’s Head of Quantitative Equity Research. Now even after companies cut earnings-per-share estimates, their stocks go up. Because everyone believes that everyone believes that….
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on I Just Got PayPal’s New Absolutely-No-Privacy-Ever Policy
Sunday, when no one was supposed to pay attention, PayPal sent its account holders an innocuous-sounding email with the artfully bland title, “Notice of Policy Updates.” PayPal didn’t want people to read it – lest they think the NSA is by comparison a group of choirboys.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Stocks on Speed: Leverage Spikes, As Does Risk Of Crash (Look at that Insane Chart!)
Margin debt is a crummy predictor of a crash. But it has a bone-chilling habit of peaking right around the time stocks do crash. In the last fifteen years, it spiked three times: during the final throes of the bubbles that imploded in 2000 and 2007; and now.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Risk of Stock-Market Vertigo
What can possibly go wrong with stocks these days? Five years of the Fed’s QE and zero-interest-rate policy, and look what happened: risks no longer exist. They’ve been priced out of the equation. But now the illusion is ending.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Will The Last Bear Please Turn Out The Lights
When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink grumbled about “way too much optimism” in the markets, he wasn’t kidding. An entire mindset is benchmarking today’s record metrics against the splendor of 2000 and 2007: not to warn, but to prove that this time it won’t end in tears.
by Oilprice.com • • Comments Off on Shell Oil: US Fracking “Revolution” A Money Loser
Shell is already steeped in its Alaska offshore debacle. Now its new boss admitted that fracking in the US, after a huge investment, is a money-losing business.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Coffee – The Craziest Chart Of The Year Already
I’m a coffee lover, and this is getting personal: our latte, espresso, or just plain good coffee is going to bite fiercely into our already mauled pocket book. In one crazy chart.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on What Caused The Glorious Jump In Household Wealth (In One Insanely Good Chart) And Who Will Blow It Up Again?
The stock market has soared for five years, risks have ballooned, home prices have jumped. Gains built on the quicksand of endless liquidity and a lackluster economy. “Irrational exuberance” is back in the Fed’s vocabulary. As the Fed’s Fisher said, it may end “in tears.”
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Obama’s Growth Forecast Bullish, Wall Street Exuberant, Corporate Insiders Freak-Out Bearish
Despite breath-taking hype on Wall Street and President Obama’s budget that assumed economic growth of a glorious 3.1%, corporate executives and directors are quietly dumping their shares in bouts of extreme bearishness, just like they did before the last crash.
