In the stock market, short selling is the practice of borrowing, then selling shares of a stock that you do not own with the intention of profiting by buying them back at a lower price at a later point in time. Shorts sellers get a lot of unnecessary negative publicity in my mind. They're really just part of the stock market eco-system. Often times they're the first ones to sniff out corporate malfeasance, and they add liquidity to the market overall.
Naked short selling is an altogether different story. Naked shorting involves selling short shares that you did not borrow, which means that when it comes time to settle the trade, you have no shares to deliver to the buyer.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
Class Action Lawsuits
Homer Simpson once said of beer: "...the cause of and answer to all of life's problems." One could substitute "lawyers" for "beer" and the phrase would still ring true. Of course not all lawyers cause as many problems as they solve. Many are upstanding members of the community; professional, smart and ever-so-helpful when we need them. But there does exist in the litigation-ecosystem a certain breed of lawyers who often put their own interests ahead of both their clients and society in general; and they seem to congregate in the realms of personal injury and class-action.
Vonage is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company that recently went public with much fanfare. The
Vonage is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company that recently went public with much fanfare. The
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Dictator's Dividend
Max Boot nails it in the LA Times today:
Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That's it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.
My associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ian Cornwall, calculates that if oil averages $71 a barrel this year, 10 autocracies stand to make about $500 billion more than in 2003, when oil was at $27. This windfall helps to squelch liberal forces and entrench noxious dictators in such oil producers
Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That's it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.
My associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ian Cornwall, calculates that if oil averages $71 a barrel this year, 10 autocracies stand to make about $500 billion more than in 2003, when oil was at $27. This windfall helps to squelch liberal forces and entrench noxious dictators in such oil producers
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