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ahhhh yes GS is in this. That speaks volumes.
THE bogeyman of all bogeymen, Euripides.
The CHL AAPL connection has been forecast for so long it has lost any power to move the stock.
If anyone here was short, I hope you covered in the past hour By next week Tuesday the stock will be in a much different price range than today!
The Lord Himself doesn't know what the price range will be next week, and I doubt you do either,
WSJ
Standard Chartered Suffers Emerging Problems
U.K. Lender's Bias to the Developing World Finds It Out of Favor
When you fall out of fashion, it's hard to get back. Standard Chartered proved a good bet for investors after the financial crisis: Its heavy exposure to emerging markets enabled it to outperform its more Western-focused peers.
That has all changed this year. A trading update that predicted flat earnings for Standard Chartered in 2013 after a decade of growth prompted its shares to drop 6.5% Wednesday. That prolongs a miserable 2013 for the stock, which has fallen 15%. Investors have instead flocked to institutions that do business closer to home, such as U.K.-focused Lloyds Banking Group, whose shares are up 60% this year.
Standard Chartered may struggle to lure investors back.
That's partly because the bank hasn't proven immune from the issues facing its peers. In particular, its performance in fixed-income trading has suffered in directionless markets. That will help keep earnings from its wholesale bank, around 80% of its first-half profit, flat year-over-year.
But Standard Chartered is also finding that emerging markets are, well, emerging in different ways. This year its main problems have come in South Korea, where earnings in its retail bank are likely to fall 15%. The bank says it is restructuring its operations there, closing branches and reducing its unsecured lending. But 2014 looks like being another tricky year in a market where Standard Chartered has around 10% of its assets.
The question is whether Standard Chartered can avoid similar hiccups in the other markets in which it operates. Its downbeat update on Wednesday surprised analysts, who had received little warning of its worsening outlook. The bank does, though, remain confident its key markets, from India to Indonesia, offer strong long-term growth potential.
But competition is rising. New local entrants are challenging Standard Chartered in traditional areas of strength such as trade finance, where its profit margin is down 18% this year. Such trends will make it hard for Standard Chartered to achieve its medium-term goal of a midteens return on equity, in itself not much above a cost of equity of roughly 10% to 11%.
For a bank still trading at 1.5 times tangible book value, a roughly 40% premium to European banks, based on Berenberg Bank estimates, that looks a meager prospect.
Write to Andrew Peaple at andrew.peaple@wsj.com
This is a couple of days old, but I don't think it's been posted -
WSj
A Commodities Rally Isn't Carved in Stone
With Another Bad Year for Raw Materials' Returns, There Is No Reason to Think 2014 Will Be Any Better
By
Liam Denning
Dec. 2, 2013 12:30 p.m. ET
If the market had its own Ten Commandments, near the top would be "thou shalt revert to the mean"—or, what goes up must come down and vice versa.
Commodities bulls betting on this lifting their favorite investment out of its funk need to ask themselves where that mean is, though.
It looks like commodities in 2013 will rack up their second consecutive year as the worst-performing asset class in terms of risk-adjusted returns, according to Deutsche Bank. The Dow Jones- UBS Commodity index is down 10% so far this year.
But hope is one commodity that never runs out on Wall Street. As Deutsche Bank noted Monday: "Given the tendency of past losers to become future winners, this might imply a more constructive outlook" for next year.
There is little fundamental support for a recovery, though. U.S. natural gas, oil and related products, copper, aluminum, gold and silver account for 61% of the DJ-UBS index.
Natural gas's dashing of hopes for a recovery has become a cruel cliché at this point—and continuing increases in production despite low prices suggest 2014 will bring more of the same. With oil, output is now rising so fast that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel may soon have to agree to production cuts to avoid infighting.
Meanwhile, aluminum is chronically oversupplied and copper looks set to join it at least for a few years as mining expansions reach fruition. As for gold and silver, 2014 will likely see the Federal Reserve rein in its bond-buying program, suggesting real interest rates will rise, pressuring precious-metal prices further.
Above all, in historical terms, prices for copper, oil and gold aren't even that cheap—they only look so compared to recent dizzy peaks. Somewhere in those alternative commandments is another instruction for investors: Thou shalt not catch a falling knife.
Write to Liam Denning at liam.denning@wsj.com
And it still thinks it needs money, or has decided to go to the filling station while it's still open.
FT
This week's borrowing binge by corporate America continues.
Mondelez International, which was spun out of US food and drink company Kraft last year, is selling fixed and floating-rate notes in euros.
According to its prospectus, it's selling floating-rate and fixed-rate notes due in 2017 and 2021. The company, which owns confectioner Cadbury, didn't specify how much it is seeking to raise.
As the FT's Vivianne Rodrigues reported on fastFT on Tuesday, a handful of the biggest names in corporate America, including drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft, have sold bonds this week in both euros and dollars.
But "jellybean" on the Values board dismissed it out of hand. Not certain why, unless he has reason to question the writer's credentials. If he has, he doesn't lay it out.
You can see that there's a lot of unrest
Obvious typo - or maybe not?
What's the charge? What's the evidence?
Further, we would argue that the longer Teva stock continues to underperform, the more likely it is an offer would materialize
Underperform? He must be looking at a chart from three weeks ago.
Very good discussion indeed, with the takeaway being that the drug will return to the market but not necessarily in the very near term.
How did your one-second-before-the-open execution compare with the opening market?
Schwab, Fido and Ameritrade all have a box to check if you want to trade after or pre- hours, otherwise the order is only good in the regular hours. I'm not aware of any restrictions with those three.
Don't listen to me
Not a problem.
Thank you.
The conversation with Celgene must have been quite interesting.
Do you know the time stamp on that AMGN release?
TIA
Thanks. I was tunnel visioning on pets.
ZTS ag?
Quite a resume. How much will they have pay for a person with those qualifications and skills I wonder?
WSJ
Deere Outlook Cloudy, Slight Chance of Sun
By
Justin Lahart
Nov. 19, 2013 3:45 p.m. ET
Investors have written Deere & Co. the stock-market equivalent of a Dear John letter this year.
Shares of the big agricultural machinery company are down about 4% since the start of 2013, a poor performance considering only about one-tenth of the stocks in the S&P 500 are in the red this year. Declining cash receipts at U.S. farms—the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts they will fall 1% this year—as well as weakness in the used-equipment market present a challenging environment for Deere.
When Deere reports results Wednesday, analysts polled by FactSet expect the company to post earnings of $1.90 a share for the fiscal fourth quarter that ended Oct. 31 versus $1.75 a year earlier, an uptick supported by a combination of higher profit margins and fewer shares outstanding.
Sales, on the other hand, are estimated to fall to $8.6 billion versus $9 billion a year ago.
The future doesn't seem so bright either. With the USDA forecasting that farms' cash receipts will continue to fall, analysts expect earnings and sales at Deere, which does most of its business in the U.S., will be lower in the fiscal year that just began than in the one that just ended. The drop in corn prices, which recently fell to a three-year low after the Environmental Protection Agency suggested lowering the amount ethanol refiners are required to blend into gasoline, adds another layer of concern.
Deere is reporting results Wednesday. Pictured, John Deere tractors are displayed for sale in Shelbyville, Ky. Bloomberg
Such worries, though, may already be reflected in Deere's stock, which trades at 10 times expected earnings versus a median price/earnings ratio of 15 times since 1998. Moreover, investors may be giving short shrift to some things that could go right at the company over the next year.
To judge from the USDA's history of conservative forecasts, for example, the outlook for farm receipts may be brighter than it appears. And although the agricultural sector accounts for about two-thirds of Deere's revenue, Morgan Stanley estimates another 15% is from construction, with an additional 6% coming from sales of consumer goods like riding mowers. As the recovery in the U.S. real-estate market expands, those businesses should improve.
Even a little reassurance from the company could make investors decide Deere is worth fawning over.
Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com
Japan Times
Yamanaka team finds genes to identify defective iPS cells
A research team led by Nobel laureate and Kyoto University professor Shinya Yamanaka, the discoverer of induce pluripotent stem cells, has turned up genes that can help identify defective human iPS cells lacking differentiation ability.
The discovery could make it easier to remove such inferior cells before clinical application of regenerative medicine using iPS cells, which can theoretically develop into any type of tissue, experts say.
According to a report published online by the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yamanaka’s team converted 40 human iPS cells into neural cells.
After the neural culture differentiation, seven human iPS cell clones retained “a significant number of undifferentiated cells,” the proportion of which stood at more than 10 percent.
The team then found three common genes in the seven defective iPS cell clones and all of the genes had the so-called LTR-7 sequences.
The researchers also reported neural cells derived from the defective iPS cells formed teratoma when transplanted into mouse brains.
Frankly I've admired your patience in the face of petty jabs. I would have given up long ago and only responded to that post because its premise was so bizarre.
which equates to 1-2B additional births per year.
1 to 2 BILLION? Per year?
The question is, why would this person want to comment on a company he has stated in the past he has no position in?
I have a good number of stocks that I have no position in that I track very carefully, and comment on occasionally. Aren't most investors like that?
He's had a few good ones along the way, but I guess we should ignore those and concentrate on his failures.
Rex Tillerson fungible? With what?
Seriously, don't you think management and technical superiority serve to differentiate? I assume you do so I must be missing your point.
FT
Buffett now owns 1% of ExxonMobil
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed it has purchased 40.1m shares of US oil and gas giant Exxonmobil, a stake now worth about $3.7bn.
Exxon shares rose 0.68 per cent in after hours trading. The 13F filing to the SEC gives information current as of Sept 30.
As the FT's Stephen Foley and Ed Crooks pointed out, the stakebuilding represents a bold move in a sector that has burned Mr Buffett in the past.
Frankly I'd prefer to leave that to Aria's scientists - not to Pazdur in his recent mood, though. I can skate around the outskirts of the problem but I have no standing in the science. I do hope your intimation turns out to signal a path the scientists can go down.
The stock tanked not because of the short sellers but simply because the drug turned out not to have the risk profile the market was counting on when the stock was at 20. It doesn't do any good to deny this and look to other fantasies to explain the current price.
Feuerstein was right - this drug has problems.
I am not a short. I am very long and have added to my position substantially since the crash, with a current average around 8.
I think he was acting on information, however acquired. Clearly he knew more than I did, and next time I will be less quick to diss him. It cost me money.
AF was right before rpt BEFORE the fact,whether you think he's a scummy low life or not.
AF was absolutely right about Pona. I wish I'd listened to him
I'd forgotten about that one.
The warning banners were miles wide, and I still got caught.
(As to the main point of your post. The mantra is - if you don't think there's a conspiracy behind all this, with the FDA at its center, you must be hopelessly naive.
I wish you luck, but I'm not aware of any instance where the SEC has acted on the basis of the sort of trading pattern you describe, even against the background of a huge increase in volume.
Maybe someone with a huge and flexible data base (like Dew) has the answer.
If you're suggesting the volume was high today - it was actually lower than the average of the past 30 days by a significant amount.
Informative series of posts.
NYT
People with fatal diseases may be willing to try risky treatments that have a chance of saving their lives. But when is the risk too high?
Dr. Brian Druker, of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University, said, “My patients are panicked.”
Enlarge This Image
Iclusig was approved in December 2012 to treat patients who had chronic myeloid leukemia that did not respond to other drugs.
That question was at the heart of a decision announced Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration to suspend sales of a leukemia drug, Iclusig, that was keeping patients alive but also significantly raising their odds of heart attacks, strokes, blindness, death and amputations.
Despite the potential consequences, several doctors who treat people with the disease, chronic myeloid leukemia, said there were patients for whom nothing else works, and whose lives depend on the drug.
“My concern is that I have patients right now who are benefiting from this medication with very few side effects, and if they’re on the end of a one-month prescription, what’s going to happen when their medication runs out?” said Dr. Brian Druker, the director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University. “Without this medication, they won’t have long to live. My patients are panicked.”
The drug agency has said that patients who need the drug will still be able to obtain it, but that doctors will have to file applications for each patient, a process that some say is cumbersome and might leave patients tangled up in red tape, with no pills.
Dr. Michael Mauro, a leukemia specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said that 23 leukemia specialists and three patient advocacy groups had sent the drug agency a letter saying they were concerned that the sudden withdrawal of the drug would interrupt treatment for patients with no other good options.
Iclusig, also called ponatinib, was approved in December 2012 to treat patients who had chronic myeloid leukemia that did not respond to other drugs. The disease is a relatively uncommon form of leukemia, with about 5,000 cases a year and 600 deaths in the United States. The wholesale price of the drug was $115,000 a year.
Iclusig was given accelerated approval by the drug agency under a program that allows some important drugs to reach the market quickly, without the full evidence of safety and efficacy that the agency usually requires but subject to further studies to confirm the drug’s benefit.
Critics might say Iclusig’s approval is a sign that accelerated approval can allow dangerous drugs on the market. But supporters of the program say the fact that marketing of Iclusig is being suspended is a sign that the system is working as intended.
Iclusig is part of a new generation of “targeted” drugs that act against specific biochemical defects that fuel the explosive growth of certain types of cancer. The first of these drugs for chronic myeloid leukemia was Gleevec. (Dr. Druker was one of its developers.) It revolutionized the treatment of the illness and transformed it from a death sentence into a chronic disease that people could live with for many years.
Iclusig is one of several drugs developed for patients who did not respond to Gleevec, or who became resistant to it.
But even though these powerful new drugs are specifically designed to fight cancer cells, they also find their way to other targets, including the cardiovascular system.
In a bulletin on Thursday, the drug agency said that 24 percent of patients taking Iclusig who were studied for a median of 1.3 years, and 48 percent studied for a median of 2.7 years, had suffered “serious adverse vascular events.” Those figures are unusually high, and higher than what was reported from the initial studies done before the drug was approved.
The events included blockages in blood vessels that led to heart attacks, strokes, blindness and lack of blood flow to the extremities. Some of the patients were young, in their 20s, and some had no risk factors for heart or artery disease.
A spokeswoman for the drug agency, Stephanie Yao, said that in studies of the drug to date, which involved 530 patients, at least 14 had died from cardiovascular problems.
Dr. Frank Haluska, the chief medical officer of Ariad Pharmaceuticals, the Cambridge, Mass., company that makes the drug, said the company was working with the drug agency to analyze the problems and hoped to return the drug to the market. Over all, he said, about 2,000 people have taken the drug.
Are you seriously saying NVS is in cahoots with the FDA to undermine ARIA?????
Serious discussion of ARIA taking place on Biotech Values board, especially from jq1234.
iandy is really into deleting posts and controlling what people say. Power abuse.
iandy is one of the few people who make sense on this board. I'll miss his voice of reason.