Archive for March, 2011

  • Berkshire, Lubrizol, Sokol, and Insider Trading/MNPI – or Not
    Posted by on March 31st, 2011 at 5:47 am, Comments: 0

    We’re back again with another edition of “Is this insider trading?”  I’ve addressed the topic of what constitutes illegal insider trading based on material nonpublic [...]

  • Satellite TV, Guns and Pizza
    Posted by on March 30th, 2011 at 10:00 pm, Comments: 0

    It’s not quite as poetic as the late great Warren Zevon’s Lawyers, Guns & Money:   But this Bloomberg story is good ol’ fashioned backwoods [...]

  • NY Fed Rejects AIG’s Attempt To Eat Its Own Vomit
    Posted by on March 30th, 2011 at 5:07 pm, Comments: 0

    Remember a few weeks ago, the “AIG is like a dog eating its own vomit” story, where AIG had made an offer to the Federal [...]

  • CEF Announces Secondary Offering – ETF Lesson Part V
    Posted by on March 29th, 2011 at 5:25 pm, Comments: 0

    First of all:  yes, I know that $CEF isn’t an ETF -  it’s a closed end fund – which is also confusing because people often [...]

  • Syrup III
    Posted by on March 28th, 2011 at 6:55 pm, Comments: 0

    Warning – this post contains multiple pictures of Oscar being insanely cute. We had company again on Saturday for our third maple syrup boil of [...]

  • A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That
    Posted by on March 28th, 2011 at 9:08 am, Comments: 0

    As I recover from a marathon weekend of maple syrup making (3 1/2 gallons of finished product!)… The NY Times has a lengthy and pretty [...]

  • Five of the Biggest ETF Myths
    Posted by on March 23rd, 2011 at 8:45 am, Comments: 0

    1) Myth: “When I buy an ETF, the ETF Trust has to go out and buy the underlying portfolio/commodity/etc“ Truth: When you buy an ETF, [...]

  • Project Maple 2011
    Posted by on March 21st, 2011 at 9:11 pm, Comments: 0

    We’ve now completed our second weekly boil of Project Maple 2011, upgrading our production significantly from 2010 by tapping twice as many trees.  When we [...]

  • Banks Dividends Are Coming Back – How Will The Fed Pull This Off?
    Posted by on March 18th, 2011 at 12:04 pm, Comments: 0

    The Fed announced today: “The Federal Reserve on Friday announced it has completed the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), its cross-institution study of the [...]

  • Catching Up With Kid Dynamite
    Posted by on March 16th, 2011 at 9:49 am, Comments: 0

    I’ll be on the road for the next 24 hours or so, but I wanted to point readers to posts they may have missed in [...]

  • The Fed and the Ides of March? Beware?
    Posted by on March 15th, 2011 at 3:15 am, Comments: 0

    The Fed is meeting on the Ides of March?  Whoa mama… Look out.  I don’t know how much more clear Ben Bernanke can be that [...]

  • PSLV – Sprott Registers to Sell – Sold To You Sucka
    Posted by on March 12th, 2011 at 7:07 am, Comments: 0

    In my travails of the internet today I kept coming across references to a PSLV secondary offering, which I didn’t see a headline for.  Something [...]

  • AIG: “Like A Dog Eating Its Own Vomit”
    Posted by on March 10th, 2011 at 9:15 pm, Comments: 0

    I was somewhat puzzled by tonight’s headline: “AIG Offers to Buy Back Mortgages from NY Fed“ “The American International Group offered on Thursday to pay [...]

  • On Misinterpreting PSLV’s Premium
    Posted by on March 8th, 2011 at 5:37 pm, Comments: 0

    OK, I can’t take it anymore.  Repeat after me:  PSLV’s 20% premium to NAV is NOT an indication of supply shortages in the silver market.  [...]

  • Fixed It! Business as Usual
    Posted by on March 8th, 2011 at 9:07 am, Comments: 0

    Via Bloomberg: “Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. lender, said its residential mortgage business is in “recovery mode” after contributing to a net loss [...]

  • Clock Is Ticking For the Nickel Arb
    Posted by on March 8th, 2011 at 8:35 am, Comments: 0

    Remember that nickel arb we talked about? Well, you better get ‘em while they’re not-yet-so-hot.  From the U.S. Mint: “The United States Mint today announced [...]

  • Maple Time!
    Posted by on March 7th, 2011 at 5:34 pm, Comments: 0

    There are few things more “New England” than the sound of maple sap hitting the bottom of a tin bucket in early spring.  Last year, [...]

  • The NY Times on Glenn Beck
    Posted by on March 7th, 2011 at 8:39 am, Comments: 0

    David Carr writes: “Last Wednesday, as he grabbed all the disparate strands from around the globe and tied them into a great, grand bow of [...]

  • Live College Sex Show! (SFW?)
    Posted by on March 4th, 2011 at 10:01 am, Comments: 0

    Warning: although there are no videos or pictures of live college sex shows in this post, there is some mature language that some readers may [...]

  • What American Idol Taught Me About Confirmation Bias
    Posted by on March 3rd, 2011 at 5:21 pm, Comments: 0

    Watching American Idol last night, I was struck by something Steven Tyler said during the judging portion of the show.   This isn’t a quote he [...]