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Currently at 27.05 in premarket trading, previous close was at 27.69

How much would it have netted to short GM when news of the strike broke?

How much would it have netted to long GM when news of the contract broke?

And just how accurate are google finance’s premarket and after hours numbers?

the answers to come…

Brilliant, scathing…genius!

Wall Street Journal Article on the ridiculous BSC and Warren Buffet rumors today

premarket spike to 36.01 on news of uaw strike ending, opened at 36.91, high of 36.98 and now sold off to 36.09

the stock had slid from 36.50 to 34.50 on news of the strike hitting

volatility and news developments yielded a nice return

bbby opened at 33.50, low of 33 and now at 33.78, rise of 1.75% in anticipation of earnings release after hours.

based on target and lowes, negative guidance from last quarter, it seems unlikely that bbby will beat.

expect it to slide in after hours…expectations are for .52/share

in the past has enjoyed a solid run up prior to earnings and then a rapid sell off, even in the face of positive earnings.

would follow chart, short just before close

Rumors of BHP Billiton learning they possess the world’s largest single supply of gold at their Olympic Dam location. The news will be confirmed or denied this coming Wednesday, September 26th. The news of the rumor broke over the weekend, and according to Google, opened at 75.75 this morning in pre-market trading. It climbed as high as 77.66, but then tapered off to close at ‘only’ 75.94, still a nice 4.7% pop over the previous close.

Google Portfolio for BHP

I tried a little experiment this past week, selling a share (yes, only one share) of a stock in after hours the day before it went ex-dividend. My hope (a slim one, at that) is that because the market had already closed, I would still be an owner of record (and thus be eligible for the dividend). By watching the stock price and the drop in the pre-market the next day, I’m fairly certain this strategy will -not- work. I’ll know for sure around October 3rd. Had I held until the next morning, I would have gotten the dividend, but the price would have tanked. To add further insult, the stock rebounded in a couple of days to its pre dividend level. Well, it’s a good lesson and a relatively inexpensive one.

Oracle beat street estimates and enjoyed a +4% gain on Friday. Nike also beat, but shed about 1.8%. Why the difference? Some claim options expirations, some claim profit taking (and it’s true, NKE had a nice run up from 56 on Tuesday to 61 (9%) immediately after earnings announced). Actually, for those who had their limits placed at 61, it never hit — the rally stalled at 60.99. Remember, it’s a good idea to not put even numbers in your limit orders.

Oracle also had a nice gain from 20 to 22 (10%) during the week. So both stocks went up in anticipation of earnings, and both had given guidance that they would beat.

I was looking through the companies who are announcing earnings today, and lo and behold stumbled upon Global Crossing. For those who don’t know, back in the glory days of the dot com bubble, Global Crossing was one of the golden, do-no-wrong poster children. Except, of course, that they did do wrong. The executives exorbitant spending and fleecing of the company led to bankruptcy. For example, they owned 7 planes, a $50 million property for their central office in Beverly Hills, and CEO Gary Winnick bought the then most expensive home in American history at $92 million dollars. There was a Picasso in front of his office bought for $15 million. Per Wikipedia, “Between 1998 and 2001, Winnick sold approximately $420 million in Global Crossing stock. Other executives with the company sold an additional $900 million, totaling $1.3 billion, an amount equal to the Enron inside sales for the same period.^[3]“

Global Crossing’s stock went from $60/share to zero. There were numerous investigations, by the FBI, the SEC and others into their accounting practices. No charges or fines were ever levied against Gary Winnick.

Global Crossing, with 24 billion dollars in assets and 14 billion dollars in liabilities, declared bankruptcy. How can a company with a net worth of $10 billion declare bankrupcy? I don’t know. What I do know is that the shareholders lost everything.

Now, Global Crossing is back. They emerged from bankruptcy. Their stock is around $20/share. They have good earnings. They still own the original hardware, the fiber optic backbone, that made them so popular to begin with. Will anyone trust them a second time?

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The Dow Jones has been experiencing a great deal of volatility over the last month. We’ve seen 100 point swings or greater as nearly an everyday occurance. What gives? Well, bond traders may provide part of the answer. The New York Times reports, “stock investors often take their cues from the fixed-income market anyway, because bond investors have a better reputation for accurately forecasting the economy.” Bond traders started the year by predicting the economy would tank as a result of all the defaults in the housing mortgage market. The conventional wisdom was that the U.S. economic boom came about thanks to the recent boom in the housing market. When the new home sales took a downturn, common sense dictated that the overall economy would follow suit. However, other areas of the GDP including retail sales have made up for these shortcomings, and the U.S. economy has done much better than most analysts expected. Now that an interest rate cut does not appear to be on the horizon (if we’re reading the Fed’s tea leaves correctly), buying bonds at this point is probably not the best course of action. Stay tuned for further developments.