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Remember last week when we asked if the Toyota (TM) hearings were planting seeds of isolationism and protectionism? Those thoughts are beginning to sow. Not to be lost in the regulatory race the Department of Justice has asked hedge funds that attended a dinner hosted by boutique broker Monness Crespi & Hardt to save the records as they relate to bets against the Euro according to Bloomberg. It was evidently one of 23 themes discussed on February 8th and there are witch-hunt whispers of collusion. I've been on the Street for close to twenty years and will tell you ...

Activision (ATVI) has problems in its HR department -- yesterday the world's largest third-party publisher of video-game software announced a shakeup in the company's key Infinity Ward studio.In its 10/K filing with the SEC Activision said: The company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present the company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the company.A subsequent press release identified those two senior employees as Jason West and ...

It was an “exciting” day for investors in Dendreon (DNDN) yesterday. In what many people are now calling a clever marketing ploy a previously unknown research vendor released a two‑sentence research “report” that claimed doctors it had spoken with were being asked to participate in a FDA panel for Dendreon’s prostate cancer drug Provenge. The second sentence of the report was a recommendation to sell the stock.Wall Street has been abnormally fixated on whether Provenge would go in front of a panel in this review cycle. I’ve never quite been able to figure out the agita about this. After ...

Asian stocks ended mixed. The Hang Sang slipped 0.14% overnight and the Nikkei rose 0.31%. Meanwhile European stocks were in negative territory earlier this morning. And here in the US we’re currently trading higher.Here’s what I’m seeing this morning:Netflix (NFLX): Justin Sharon points out that Kaufman Bros. cut its rating on the video-rental company to Hold and Susquehanna and Bank of America lopped their ratings too. 1. As I said in a recent article I think Netflix is the clear play in the video-rental business right now because Blockbuster (BBI) simply has too many issues. That said I do ...

Editor's Note: “Memoirs of a Minyan” is a first-person account that follows Minyanville founder Todd Harrison as he weaves his way through Wall Street and beyond. This is a chapter from that series in which Todd recounts trading decisions he made in early 2000 when the markets were caught in an escalating tech-boom frenzy and Todd ran the trading operation at Jim Cramer's hedge fund. To read the entire series click here.Waddya Say Y2K?The stock market soared to incredible heights and there was plenty of gold on the horizon -- I simply had to find my pot. As the ...

At the dawn of the New Economy B2B companies used synergistic partnerships to monetize eyeballs. B2C companies with their clicks and mortar strategies also got in the game even though many of them had significant burn rates.Makes no sense right? Dial it back to 2000 when dot-com millionaires actually spoke that way. Some buzzwords survived the crash unfortunately. Advertising people are still trying and largely failing to monetize eyeballs.For the uninitiated or for the dot-com survivors who can’t believe they actually used the jargon here’s a translator for that muck:New EconomyThe 1990s ushered in the so-called New Economy. Economic ...

For those of us lucky enough to get the chance to ride the IPO wave half the fun was in the fantasy. Timing was everything. Some got lucky and hit it big before the bubble burst. Others of us saw our paper fortunes ebb and flow and are still working day jobs.I’ve been in on two different IPOs -- one for iVillage (GE) and the other for Barnes&Noble.com. Since you’re reading this story you can guess which camp I fall into.As an editorial director at Barnes&Noble.com during its 1999 IPO I can still remember the directors' meeting where then-COO ...

It's astonishing that it only took a dot-com collapse and a decade of sobering hindsight for a digital world to hit a stride. Years of misguided ventures Silicon Valley hubris and 404 errors irrevocably led to the failure of not only the companies themselves but the ability to grasp what the Internet even means.However after a total reevaluation of direction and feasibility we're back on path. The web and the products it's influenced may still show their kinks but given all the missteps false starts and utter disasters the progress and vision in the last 10 years is nothing ...

At the height of the tech bubble in 1999 advertising analysts estimate that dot-com companies spent $1.09 on marketing for every $1 of revenue.Viewers were treated to the good -- like a series of hysterical commercials now-shuttered agency Cliff Freeman & Partners turned out for e-tailer Outpost.com (which was ultimately bought by Fry’s):And to the bad -- like this spot for online wedding-invitation site OurBeginning.com which cost the company $4 million in Super Bowl airtime overlooking the fact that an almost immeasurably miniscule percentage of their demographic watches football:And to the well very ugly.Take a look at the following ...

There are only a few big names from the dot-com heyday still in the same jobs now as they were then. Mary Meeker is still covering Internet stocks for Morgan Stanley (MS). Jeff Bezos is still leading Amazon (AMZN). Larry Page and Sergey Brin are still pretty much running the show at Google (GOOG).Many of the high-flyers have settled into more humble vocations at more reasonable compensation levels. They’ve joined venture capital firms started other companies that may never have a NASDAQ ticker and consulted advised and influenced anyone who will listen to them. A lucky few are still ...

On one hand it's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the NASDAQ peaked and the dot-com bubble began its swift deflation. But on the other hand considering what the economy has been through in the past couple of years it's hard to imagine that just 10 years ago money was falling from the sky so fast it seemed impossible to put enough buckets out to collect it. Five trillion dollars of value was wiped out of the stock market in the crash. But back then "value" was about as arbitrary a term as there ever was. What ...

It's been a full decade since investors reached the pinnacle of the high-flying dot-com era. On March 10 2000 the NASDAQ peaked at 5132.52 marking the height of a market colored by all the hallmarks of a bubble: crowds of bullish analysts valuations based on speculation rather than revenues hundreds of "virtual" company duplicates and would-be experts trading with the irrational faith that they'd see the end coming in time to cash out.Our retrospective package looks back at the crash that followed taking $5 trillion out of the market over two years. Here we revisit the wrongheaded ideas "new ...

Last Thursday with the S&P roughly thirty handles below current levels the tone of the tape was tenuous at best. After a fall from grace that started the 2010 race tension was thick and moods were sour as we edged into the requisite two-day respite.As shared Friday in The Wild Wild West of CDS the tape suddenly turned higher in a furious fashion when headlines hit that the SEC was examining “potential abuse and destabilizing effects” related to the use of credit default swaps. It was a topic familiar to Minyans for just a day earlier we mused:  “One ...

The gold price is not only making headway in US-dollar terms but also in most major (and minor) currencies as illustrated by the table and graph below. Bullion veterans will recognize this phenomenon as a manifestation of solid investment demand. The chart and the table tell the full story.Illustrating the message even more vividly is the chart below of gold expressed in a basket of emerging-market currencies by dividing the dollar bullion price by the Wisdom Tree Dreyfus Emerging Currency ETF (CEW). Also note that the chart has again climbed back to above its 50-day moving-average line.I remain bullish ...

10-Year Note -- Semiannual support is 3.675 with daily monthly and weekly resistances at 3.540 3.477 and 3.470. Still richer than my semiannual pivot at 3.675 favoring risk aversion!Source: Thomson / ReutersComex Gold -- Daily quarterly and annual supports are $1108.8 $1084.9 and $938.7 with weekly and annual pivots at $1114.7 and $1115.2 and semiannual and monthly resistances at $1139.7 $1186.5 and $1195.4. Strength on Tuesday was shy of my semiannual pivot at $1139.7.Source: Thomson / ReutersNymex Crude Oil -- Annual weekly and quarterly supports are $77.05 $74.39 and $67.22 with daily and monthly pivots at $79.81 and $80.05 ...

1. Praying for a Lost Decade  Japan experienced more than a decade of deflation...  Could something similar happen here? In a word No. But something far worse could."-- Kevin Depew Five Things You Need to Know Sep. 12 2006 As a writer it's unorthodox and typically frowned upon to quote your own articles but in The Age of Self-Evidence it's increasingly dangerous to rely on Outside Sources so we're at an impasse of sorts. Almost. Let's compromise; if you'll allow me to reach back and quote my own articles I'll show you which Outside Sources demand such licentiousness.The Financial ...

Around the world investment strategists argue there are rogue regimes threatening to upend our global economy. Chief among them: the Mullahs in Tehran.Tensions with the Iranian regime have stepped up over the past week kicking off with the latest report on Iran’s nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which expressed concern that the Iranian regime might be working on nuclear weapons despite its denials.The UN nuclear watchdog charged: “Altogether this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. These ...

Thanks to all who submitted charts for the Chart of the Week contest. After getting off to a slow start I was somewhat skeptical that my idea of opening up the chart of the week to readers would turn out as I'd hoped but when over two dozen submissions landed in my inbox I was humbled by the breadth and depth of the body of work they represented.Alas there can only be one gold medal and this time around (I’m sure I'll do this again) the winner is Amir from Las Vegas.Amir’s chart shows how using the CBOE’s total ...

The biotech buy-up is potentially underway as OSI Pharmaceuticals (OSIP) announced that Japan’s Astellas Pharma has made an unsolicited offer to buy the company for $52 per share in a proposal that values OSI at $3.5 billion. According to a statement from the company the hostile takeover comes after a verbal offer from Astellas Pharma in early February was rebuffed.While OSI Pharma turned down the offer it made it clear to its Japanese suitor that it was interested in some sort of deal. “As I had suggested at our meeting our board is not interested in undertaking a sale ...

The Euro/British Pound Currency Cross (EURGBP):  Last week there were reports that famed currency and commodity investor James Rogers was calling for the imminent collapse of the British pound. He has since denied making any such statements but did express his concern over the Britain’s economic and currency conditions over the intermediate to long-term. I want to take today’s report to take a look at how the British pound is trading against both the euro and the yen to see where the big money feels it may be headed. Additionally I'll be analyzing the chart of the EWU the ...