Thursday, February 4, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Super Bowl Indicator Says Stocks to Rise
This could be the touchdown pass that the stock market needs: A legendary stock-market forecasting device based on the Super Bowl is predicting that stocks will rise in 2010.
The Super Bowl Predictor of the market has fumbled a few times in recent years, but still has a 79% accuracy rate–way better than NFL quarterbacks. It has predicted the direction of the market accurately after 34 or the 43 Super Bowls, including last year.
The quirky indicator is based on whether an “original” National Football League team wins the big game. If an original team wins, the market will rise for the year; it falls if it’s a team that joined the NFL because of the merger with the American Football League in 1970.
Last year it worked beautifully. The Pittsburgh Steelers, an original team, won the game, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 20% for the year. The Predictor coughed up the ball miserably the previous year, when the “original” New York Giants won but the market sank.
This year, both the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints are original teams (the Colts still get that designation due to their Baltimore Colts roots) so maybe the stock market has a chance to pull out a win in the final three quarters.
“The Predictor is going to point to another ‘up’ year,” says Robert Stovall, 83-year-old strategist for Wood Asset Management in Sarasota, Fla., who has long tracked the Predictor. But football aside, he predicts based on fundamental events that 2010 “will be generally kind to investors” during a second year of market recovery.
Admittedly, all this has little science behind it, except that there are more teams linked to the “original” side, and the stock market tends to go up, recent history aside. “Even though it’s an anti-intellectual entertainment kind of indicator,” based on its accuracy you “cannot ignore it.”
But the Predictor does continue to get respect, including in academic studies. The latest academic paper to discuss it comes from George W. Kester, a finance professor at Washington and Lee University, who has written a forthcoming article in the Journal of Investing called “What Happened to the Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor?”
In the paper, the professor meticulously breaks down the tape on the Predictor’s accuracy and concludes: Although the accuracy of the indicator has diminished since its 90%-accuracy days, “it has continued to outperform a buy-and-hold strategy.”
The professor also examined whether the traditional way of separating “original” and postmerger teams could be out of date, and whether it might be better to track an updated Predictor based upon post-1970 conference affiliations (in other words, National Conference teams are bullish, and American Conference is bearish) . But he concludes, after doing the math, that the prediction accuracy and investment performance of the traditional Predictor is “superior” to an updated one.
The Super Bowl Predictor of the market has fumbled a few times in recent years, but still has a 79% accuracy rate–way better than NFL quarterbacks. It has predicted the direction of the market accurately after 34 or the 43 Super Bowls, including last year.
The quirky indicator is based on whether an “original” National Football League team wins the big game. If an original team wins, the market will rise for the year; it falls if it’s a team that joined the NFL because of the merger with the American Football League in 1970.
Last year it worked beautifully. The Pittsburgh Steelers, an original team, won the game, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 20% for the year. The Predictor coughed up the ball miserably the previous year, when the “original” New York Giants won but the market sank.
This year, both the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints are original teams (the Colts still get that designation due to their Baltimore Colts roots) so maybe the stock market has a chance to pull out a win in the final three quarters.
“The Predictor is going to point to another ‘up’ year,” says Robert Stovall, 83-year-old strategist for Wood Asset Management in Sarasota, Fla., who has long tracked the Predictor. But football aside, he predicts based on fundamental events that 2010 “will be generally kind to investors” during a second year of market recovery.
Admittedly, all this has little science behind it, except that there are more teams linked to the “original” side, and the stock market tends to go up, recent history aside. “Even though it’s an anti-intellectual entertainment kind of indicator,” based on its accuracy you “cannot ignore it.”
But the Predictor does continue to get respect, including in academic studies. The latest academic paper to discuss it comes from George W. Kester, a finance professor at Washington and Lee University, who has written a forthcoming article in the Journal of Investing called “What Happened to the Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor?”
In the paper, the professor meticulously breaks down the tape on the Predictor’s accuracy and concludes: Although the accuracy of the indicator has diminished since its 90%-accuracy days, “it has continued to outperform a buy-and-hold strategy.”
The professor also examined whether the traditional way of separating “original” and postmerger teams could be out of date, and whether it might be better to track an updated Predictor based upon post-1970 conference affiliations (in other words, National Conference teams are bullish, and American Conference is bearish) . But he concludes, after doing the math, that the prediction accuracy and investment performance of the traditional Predictor is “superior” to an updated one.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Economic dictionary
BULL MARKET
A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET
A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry and the husband gets no sex.
VALUE INVESTING
The art of buying low and selling lower.
BANKER
A fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, and wants it back the minute it rains.
ECONOMIST
An expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
CAPITALISM
Man exploiting man, as opposed to socialism, which is the reverse.
LIFE INSURANCE
A plan that keeps you poor all your life so that you can die rich.
BROKER
What my broker has made me.
DAY TRADER
A more socially accepted gambling addict.
STANDARD & POOR
Your life in a nutshell.
MARKET CORRECTION
The day after you buy stocks.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR
Past year investor who's now locked up in a institute.
RICH MAN
Nothing but a poor man with money.
A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET
A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry and the husband gets no sex.
VALUE INVESTING
The art of buying low and selling lower.
BANKER
A fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, and wants it back the minute it rains.
ECONOMIST
An expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
CAPITALISM
Man exploiting man, as opposed to socialism, which is the reverse.
LIFE INSURANCE
A plan that keeps you poor all your life so that you can die rich.
BROKER
What my broker has made me.
DAY TRADER
A more socially accepted gambling addict.
STANDARD & POOR
Your life in a nutshell.
MARKET CORRECTION
The day after you buy stocks.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR
Past year investor who's now locked up in a institute.
RICH MAN
Nothing but a poor man with money.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
LSE buys Turquoise
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) announced this morning that it will take control of rival trading platform Turquoise.
The LSE will merge the platform with its own Baikal operation, to create "a new pan-European trading venture".
The merged entity will be 60 per cent owned by LSE and 40 per cent by existing Turquoise shareholders and will continue to trade under the Turquoise name.
Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the LSE, said: "Turquoise's existing pan-European footprint is a strong proposition and together with the introduction of new trading technology and a neutral structure, we believe it is now well positioned to be an agent of change and to capture a healthy slice of the market's growth potential."
The exchange will incur exceptional costs of up to £20m in the current financial year, comprising the write-off of legacy technology costs, and other restructuring and integration costs, including contract exit costs.
Turquoise was set up by a consortium of investment banks following deregulation, and was an attempt to force traditional exchanges such as the LSE to lower trading fees. It began operating around 18 months ago.
But the banks were no longer willing to fund the unprofitable platform after being hit hard by the recession. The deal this week is being seen by some in the City as a political move by the LSE to make peace with the banks.
Christopher Morris, director of consultancy Aequitas Associates, told the Financial Times: “It is rebuilding goodwill with the banking community that will be the most valuable asset.”
The LSE will fully fund the cash needs of the new venture for the first two years and says it wants to bring the business to sustainable profitability.
David Lester, the LSE's head of IT, has been tipped as the head of the new joint venture, which is expected to be run as an independent operation.
The LSE will merge the platform with its own Baikal operation, to create "a new pan-European trading venture".
The merged entity will be 60 per cent owned by LSE and 40 per cent by existing Turquoise shareholders and will continue to trade under the Turquoise name.
Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the LSE, said: "Turquoise's existing pan-European footprint is a strong proposition and together with the introduction of new trading technology and a neutral structure, we believe it is now well positioned to be an agent of change and to capture a healthy slice of the market's growth potential."
The exchange will incur exceptional costs of up to £20m in the current financial year, comprising the write-off of legacy technology costs, and other restructuring and integration costs, including contract exit costs.
Turquoise was set up by a consortium of investment banks following deregulation, and was an attempt to force traditional exchanges such as the LSE to lower trading fees. It began operating around 18 months ago.
But the banks were no longer willing to fund the unprofitable platform after being hit hard by the recession. The deal this week is being seen by some in the City as a political move by the LSE to make peace with the banks.
Christopher Morris, director of consultancy Aequitas Associates, told the Financial Times: “It is rebuilding goodwill with the banking community that will be the most valuable asset.”
The LSE will fully fund the cash needs of the new venture for the first two years and says it wants to bring the business to sustainable profitability.
David Lester, the LSE's head of IT, has been tipped as the head of the new joint venture, which is expected to be run as an independent operation.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Buffett: My Best Deals Are Ones I Didn't Make
Investment icon Warren Buffett says his firm Berkshire Hathaway may not have made out like a bandit during the financial crisis, but it did OK.
"I bought my first stock in 1942, and this roller coaster surpassed anything that I've seen," he told The Wall Street Journal.
"We didn't do all the smartest things. We didn't do anything really dumb."
Buffett says his smartest decisions during the crisis may have been the deals he turned down. Those included opportunities to invest in Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Freddie Mac and Wachovia.
All those firms failed or received government bailouts.
"I don't think Buffett gets enough credit for all the pitches he doesn't swing at," Paul Howard, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, told The Journal. "And he gets a lot of pitches."
The two main deals Buffett did make, investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric, were made on terms very favorable to Berkshire.
He does regret making all his investments before early March when the stock market bottomed. "I didn't maximize the opportunities offered by the chaos. But in the end, it worked out OK," Buffett said.
Many analysts are bullish about Berkshire’s latest deal – to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $34 billion.
"(Buffett is) buying at the trough; things aren't going to get much worse. He's getting in at a good time," Art Hatfield, an analyst at Morgan Keegan, told the Associated Press.
"I bought my first stock in 1942, and this roller coaster surpassed anything that I've seen," he told The Wall Street Journal.
"We didn't do all the smartest things. We didn't do anything really dumb."
Buffett says his smartest decisions during the crisis may have been the deals he turned down. Those included opportunities to invest in Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Freddie Mac and Wachovia.
All those firms failed or received government bailouts.
"I don't think Buffett gets enough credit for all the pitches he doesn't swing at," Paul Howard, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, told The Journal. "And he gets a lot of pitches."
The two main deals Buffett did make, investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric, were made on terms very favorable to Berkshire.
He does regret making all his investments before early March when the stock market bottomed. "I didn't maximize the opportunities offered by the chaos. But in the end, it worked out OK," Buffett said.
Many analysts are bullish about Berkshire’s latest deal – to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $34 billion.
"(Buffett is) buying at the trough; things aren't going to get much worse. He's getting in at a good time," Art Hatfield, an analyst at Morgan Keegan, told the Associated Press.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Whitney Says Goldman Sachs Lost ‘Tremendous’ Talent
Meredith Whitney, the analyst who cut her rating on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last month, said the bank has lost some of its top-performing employees as executives left to start their own investment companies.
“Goldman’s lost a tremendous amount of talent going to set up their own hedge funds,” Whitney, founder of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “It became a scary prospect of having the government determine what you make.”
The Federal Reserve said last month it will review the 28 largest banks to ensure pay doesn’t create incentives to make the kinds of risky investments that brought the financial system to the edge of collapse, prompting bailouts of firms including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said in May the bank, the most profitable Wall Street firm in history, was having no more trouble than usual in retaining employees.
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