Trading pros may not think things are different. However, the public is reacting to suggestions that Wall Streets may be rigged against them.
In this cartoon, Darkow draws the Carnival Midway Game of Wall Street, "Spill the Milk" … which disguises the super-fast high-frequency stock trading center for insiders only.
The Carny beckons to the 'Little Guy': "Step right up, friend… It's a game of skill. Trust Me!".
This kind of public sentiment often triggers regulatory scrutiny … which, in turn, triggers new games of 'skill'.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
Did you see the 60 Minutes report on Michael Lewis' new book, "Flash Boys," that reveals some of the ways that high speed traders work the stock market to their advantage.
Here is an excerpt from the intro.
Steve Kroft: What’s the headline here?
Michael Lewis: The Stock Market is rigged. The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism is rigged.
Steve Kroft: By whom?
Michael Lewis: By a combination of these stock exchanges, the big Wall Street banks and high-frequency traders.
Steve Kroft: Who are the victims?
Michael Lewis: Everybody who has an investment in the stock market.
The 60 Minutes piece has a interesting explanation of what is happening.
Let me know if you want to talk about high frequency trading or what is likely to happen as a result of press coverage like this and the ensuing regulatory scrutiny.
When Facebook bought Instagram for $1B, I remember thinking that seemed like a lot of money. Well, this deal is like Facebook buying 19 Instagrams … That's lots of lots of money!
So, why does Facebook think WhatsApp is worth $19 Billion dollars?
The answer is surprisingly easy to understand.
When Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp last week, it revealed some interesting statistics about WhatsApp's user base and overall usage. They are eye-popping.
According to Facebook's presentation slides, WhatsApp's 450 million monthly active users send 19 billion messages per day … and receive 34 billion (the seeming discrepancy is caused by WhatsApp's group chat feature, where one message can be sent to several receivers).
This chart shows how much an average user uses WhatsApp per month.
WhatsApp's growth and usage numbers are absolutely mind-boggling. As noted, it has 450 million monthly users … but 70 percent of them (310 million) use the service daily.
More impressively, Facebook claimed that the number of messages being sent through the company’s service is “approaching the entire global telecom SMS volume” (according to telecom market researcher Informa, this was about 19.5 billion last year).
And for a 'cherry-on-top', Whatsapp continues to bring in over a million new users each day. That’s the kind of growth that Facebook can’t ignore if it wants to remain a leader in social networking and communication, and the company knows it.
In other words, WhatsApp has both offensive and defensive value to Facebook.
One last thought on the subject … word on the street is that Whatsapp only had 55 employees. It is a testament to what cloud-scale is making possible.
As the Olympics unfold in Sochi, countries continue to compete in the global economy. This chart, by the Economist, shows how ‘thin’ the Emerging markets really are. For example, the market cap of Google equals the market cap of all 379 Brazilian stocks.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
Conference calls are often mind-numbing and frustrating. ConferenceCall.Biz is a site that captures that brand of white collar existential tension and dread … as performance art.
It is a simulated conference call in which the participants seem perpetually talking at cross purposes, coming into the conversation late, and expressing frustration that they’re discussing material they’ve already covered. Lucky you, it even has distracting background sounds, like a dog barking.
The audio and images are randomized so that each conference call proceeds in a new way.
It's kind of like the Eagles' song "Hotel California" … you can check-in any time you like, but you can never leave (at least until you close the browser window). From the sound of it, the ConferenceCall.Biz participants have been attempting to get the deliverables to management for a long time.
According to IFI Claims, IBM was assigned a record 6,809 patentsin the United States last year, marking the 21st straight year that IBM has topped the unofficial U.S. patent ranking.
Google and Apple, often considered the most innovative companies in the world, were ranked 11th and 13th, respectively, both breaking into the Top 20 for the first time.
