Central Perk

vineri, 11 mai 2012

It bothers me to watch the hordes at the farmer's market, swooping in to each booth, grabbing a sample and walking away. The thin slices of handmade rye bread, or the perfect strawberries or the little glasses of juice--all of them disappear into the hands of people who have no intention of buying.

Sure, someone stops and buys now and then, which is why the farmers keep offering the samples. To them, it's merely a cost of doing business, a relatively inexpensive way to keep prospective customers coming. I'm not sure I could do it--the people afraid to look me in the eye, all that slinking around, and most of all, the profits walking out the door, over and over again. Enough thin slices makes a loaf.

This is vexing, even to someone who merely makes ideas. Watching people sneak endless tastes with no intention of making a purchase--sometimes I gasp at the audacity.

The distinction in the digital world is profound. In the digital world, the more free samples you give away, the better you do. The miserly mindset that afflicts the merchant watching inventory walk out the door at the market is counterproductive in the digital world. That's because more free samples cost you nothing.

The scarce resources in the connection revolution are connection, attention and trust, not molecules, atoms or strawberries.

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joi, 10 mai 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Whale of a Story: JPMorgan Loses $2 Billion on "Ineffective, Poorly Monitored, Poorly Constructed" Hedging Strategies; Reflections On the Volcker Rule
LPS Home Price Index (HPI) Shows National Home Prices Rose .2%, First Rise Since March 2010; Sales Volume 30% Lower Than Any Point Since 1998; Another Low-Volume Failure?
Hard Times for Bookies: UK Bookmakers Suspend Betting on a Greek Euro Exit
Marc Faber: "Bureaucrats in Brussels make US government look like an organization of geniuses", says Markets Will Crash like 1987 Without QE3
More Anecdotes From China on Plastics, Metalworking, Unused Roads, Vacant Housing

Whale of a Story: JPMorgan Loses $2 Billion on "Ineffective, Poorly Monitored, Poorly Constructed" Hedging Strategies; Reflections On the Volcker Rule

Posted: 10 May 2012 08:46 PM PDT

In a special conference call this evening Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan disclosed a "trading loss" of at least $2 billion from a failed hedging strategy.

The strategy "morphed over time" and it was "ineffective, poorly monitored, poorly constructed and all of that," said Dimon.

Last month, he denied there were any problems, most likely hoping they would go away or he could cover them up. Instead, Dimon went to the confessional.

Bloomberg has additional details in JPMorgan has trading loss of at least $2 billion, reputation hit.

The April Wall Street Journal report said a trader in JPMorgan's Chief Investment Office, nicknamed the 'London Whale' had amassed an outsized position that had caused hedge funds to bet against his position. In the bank's earnings conference call in April, Dimon called the concern "a complete tempest in a teapot."

Regulators and lawmakers are now likely to push Dimon for more details about the trades. Those details will guide how regulators now view the issue and its impact on the Volcker rule, said Karen Petrou, managing partner of Washington-based Federal Financial Analytics.

Reflections on the Volcker Rule

Interestingly, Dimon says this should not be an excuse to implement the Volcker Rule (a ban on proprietary trading). The problem, he said, was with the execution of the hedging strategy.

That's his opinion. Here's mine.

I believe banks should be banks and not hedge funds. I believe "too big to fail" means too big period. And finally I believe this should cost Dimon and the entire board their jobs.

That said, if we would just end fractional reserve lending and the mammoth leverage it allows (and end FDIC insurance right along with it), we would not be discussing this kind of monumental greed coupled with monumental stupidity in the first place.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

LPS Home Price Index (HPI) Shows National Home Prices Rose .2%, First Rise Since March 2010; Sales Volume 30% Lower Than Any Point Since 1998; Another Low-Volume Failure?

Posted: 10 May 2012 03:00 PM PDT

The latest LPS HPI Release suggests home prices are flattening out if not bottoming. Data is from February.

Highlights

Nationally, February seasonally-adjusted prices rose 0.2%, the first such increase since March 2010
The average US home price in February was $195K, on par with levels seen back in June of 2003
LPS projects a further 0.3% increase in the national average home price for March 2012
The average discount on a short sale property in March was 23%; for a foreclosed property sale, 29%
Of the 26 MSAs tracked by both LPS and the BLS, only Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco saw price declines in February
Honolulu, Portland, OR., Seattle and Tampa all saw increases of more than 1% over the month

LPS HPI Chart

U.S. home prices (black line) have declined since April 2009 at a slower rate than immediately following the market peak. The rate was slowest for April 2009 through April 2010, as indicated in the figure. Prices at the current level match those seen in June 2003. The seasonally adjusted LPS HPI (blue dashed line) shows the trend changes even more clearly.

Cautious Optimism or Another Low-Volume Failure?

From the Report ...

Lender Processing Services, Inc., a leading provider of technology, data and analytics for the mortgage and real estate industries, today announced that its LPS Applied Analytics division updated its home price index (LPS HPI) with residential sales concluded during February 2012.

"Our HPI shows an increase in seasonally adjusted prices this month for the first time since March 2010, and for only the third time in five years," said Raj Dosaj, vice president of LPS Applied Analytics.

"There have been signs of price declines slowing for a few months now, and our estimates for next month are flat to slightly positive.

Without a pickup in sales volumes from their current anemic levels, it's hard to be more optimistic that the market may be nearing the end of its fall.

"Reasons for caution are clear, as we've been here before. Non-seasonally adjusted prices increased for a few months in early 2009, 2010 and 2011 – trends that all ended by summer, after which all the gains – and then some – were lost.

As is true this month, those temporary increases were on low sales volumes – about 30 percent lower than at any point since 1998. Furthermore, the inventory of distressed homes remains high, which will continue to put a drag on prices."

The report is along the lines I stated in New American Dream is Renting; Reflections on Renting Houses, Cars, Books, Clothes; Will Rentership Fuel the Next Boom? What About Home Prices?

When sentiment on houses reaches the widespread belief "It's Better to Rent", prices are bottoming. I expressed that thought on numerous occasions since 2005.

This is how I currently see things, and arrows in red represent my calls in real rime.

click on chart for sharper image

Bottoming Process

Some cities are further from the bottom than others, but it is likely some cities have now finally bottomed.

That said, I do not think home prices are going much of anywhere "in general" because there is still years of shadow inventory and years of foreclosures to work through.

Moreover boomer demographics suggest much downsizing is ahead (and who will boomers sell their mansions to?)

Finally, generation Y has far different attitudes than boomers regarding wealth, debt, and possessions and will carry those attitudes for a long time having seen firsthand the trouble their parents and grandparents got into with too much debt, and how they are in the same boat with student debt.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Hard Times for Bookies: UK Bookmakers Suspend Betting on a Greek Euro Exit

Posted: 10 May 2012 10:49 AM PDT

Hard times for bookies: NewsMax reports UK Bookmakers Suspend Betting on a Greek Euro Exit

Want a flutter on Greece leaving the eurozone? It may already be too late. A surge in bets has forced Britain's biggest bookmakers William Hill Plc and Ladbrokes Plc to suspend betting on the odds of Greece dropping out.

William Hill said the level of betting on Greece quitting first was such that it had become too risky to continue taking bets, with the odds pushed right down to 1/4.

"We've had Greece as hot favorites for some time but increasingly it was becoming the only one that people wanted to bet on," said a spokesman for William Hill, Britain's largest betting firm.

"It wasn't a healthy situation for bookmakers. We found it was virtually impossible to make a book."

Britain's second-biggest betting firm Ladbrokes said it had suspended betting on Greece dropping out of the eurozone by the end of the year, after repeatedly slashing the odds.

"It is safer for us to suspend betting than to keep cutting the odds," a spokesman for Ladbrokes said. "We have been slashing the odds repeatedly over the last few days."

Ladbrokes is still taking bets on the Greek stock market losing more than 25 percent of its value in a single day's trading by the end of 2012.

And if you fear Greece is just the beginning of the end for the European single currency, Ladbrokes is offering odds on the euro ceasing to exist by the end of 2012, which would make punters 33 times their original stake.

Ladbrokes is offering odds of 5/6 that the euro will cease to exist by the end of 2015 and 4/1 on two or more states to leave the euro by the end of the year.

It's a safe bet the Euro will not go away in 2012. But Laying 33-1 odds is not my cup of tea. The bets on 2015 are more interesting.

The euro is highly likely to be around in some form, even if not as a national currency.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Marc Faber: "Bureaucrats in Brussels make US government look like an organization of geniuses", says Markets Will Crash like 1987 Without QE3

Posted: 10 May 2012 09:54 AM PDT

The quote of the day goes to Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report. Faber says "I do not have a high opinion of the U.S. government, but the bureaucrats in Brussels make the government in the U.S. look like an organization consisting of geniuses."

Marc Faber spoke with Bloomberg TV's Betty Liu also stated "The market will have difficulties to move up strongly unless we have a massive QE3 and if it moves and makes the high above 1422, the second half of the year could witness a crash, like in 1987."

Link if video does not play: Marc Faber on U.S. Equities, Economy, Euro Zone

Transcript from Bloomberg

Faber on whether he still thinks that profit margins will shrink and record profits seen will be no more for U.S. corporations:

"Yes, if you look at the statements by corporations, it is very clear. Earlier on, you had a commentator who said the exports to Europe from the U.S. are irrelevant. I agree with that. What is relevant are the businesses of American corporations in Europe and the earnings they derive from these businesses. That is definitely slowing down. The revenue growth is slowing down and, in my view, you will have more and more corporations that report earnings that are actually good but they do not exceed expectations…The bottom line is I think the market will have difficulty moving up strongly on less we have a massive QE3 and if it moves here and makes the high above 1422, the second half of the year could witness a crash."

"A crash, like in 1987…because the market would become technically very weak. I would expect the market making a new high. If it happens, it would be a new high with very few stocks pushing up and the majority of stocks have already rolled over. The earnings outlook is not particularly good because most economies in the world are slowing down. People focus on Greece but Greece is completely irrelevant. What is relevant are two countries -- China and India -- 2.5 billion people combined. They are a huge market for goods and these economies are slowing down massively at the present time."

On whether more Fed stimulus will put a floor on the S&P 500 this year:

"Yes, I think we had a rally that began March 2009 at 666 on the S&P. We made an orthodox pop a year ago on May 2, 2011 at 1370. Then we made a new high on April 2 of this year. The new high was not confirmed by the majority of shares and many shares are already down 20% or so and every day, there are shares that are breaking down or they no longer go on good news which is a bad sign. I think maybe we have seen the high from the year unless you get a huge QE3. That may not be forthcoming."

On whether the Fed will issue QE3:

"I think that QE3 will come, but it depends on asset markets. If the S&P dropped here another 100-150 points, I think that QE3 will occur. But if the S&P bounces back and we are above 1400, I think the Fed will essentially be waiting to see how the economy develops. The economy in the U.S. consists of different economies, some of it is very strong. I was in southern California and there the economy is doing fine. In other places, it is not doing fine. It is not universally bad. Compared to other countries, it is actually doing relatively well."

On whether Greece will exit the euro:

"There is a very good chance they will exit the euro and it would have been desirable if the euro countries had kicked out Greece three years ago. It would have saved a lot of agony. As a result of the bailout, the problem has become bigger and bigger and bigger."

On whether policymakers can manage the exit properly:

"I think it would be much better for Greece and the entire euro area if Greece were kicked out. Spain kicked out. Italy out and even France should be out. At the end you just have Germany with the euro. The other countries can have their own currencies and still trade and use the euro as an international currency."

"The bureaucrats in Brussels and the media are brainwashing everybody that if Greece exited the euro, it would be a disaster. My view is the best would be to dissolve the whole euro zone and that the countries would go back to their own currencies and still use the euro as an international currency the way you travel through Latin America and with a dollar you can pay anywhere you with. In my view, that would be the best. These countries that have financial difficulties, you will have to write off their debts and make it difficult for them to access the capital market in the future. Just to keep bailing them out will increase the problem. It will not solve the problem."

On how economic catastrophe can be avoided if the euro is dissolved:

"Explain to me why there would be an economic catastrophe. Many countries have pegged currencies have given up the peg to another currency and it was not a catastrophe. The public has been brainwashed that the breakup of the euro would be a complete disaster when in fact, it may be the solution."

On whether there will be a race to the bottom among various countries to devalue their own currencies if the euro is dissolved:

"I do not have a high opinion of the U.S. government, but the bureaucrats in Brussels make the government in the U.S. look like an organization consisting of geniuses. The bureaucrats in Brussels are completely useless functionaries and they want to maintain their power. They always talk about austerity being bad but if you look at the government expenditures of the EU, in 2000, it was 44% of GDP. Since then, it has grown by 76% under the influence of the Keynesian clowns and now it is 49% of GDP. That is the problem of Europe -- too much government spending and lack of fiscal discipline."

On whether it's a mistake to short the euro:

"I want to make this very clear -- the investment markets may move in different directions than the economic reality because if you print money. That's why in the Bloomberg poll, Mr. Bernanke is viewed so favorably because fund managers and analysts and strategists, they are only interested in having stocks up so their earnings increase and their bonus pool increases. But in reality, the economy can go downhill and stocks can go up just because of money printing and in Europe, the ECB has proven now that they are very good money printers."

On where to invest in Europe:

"Actually, usually when socialists come in or there is a crisis such as we have in Greece, it occurs usually near market lows. If someone really wanted to take speculative positions, he should look at quality non- financial stocks in countries like Spain, Italy, France, and Greece. I think rebound is coming. The market on a short-term basis is oversold. But if you look at the market action -- first of all, we made a low on the S&P last October at 1074. We went to 1422. The market is down from 1422 to less than 1360. The whole world is screaming we're in a bear market. This is a minor correction. I think it may become a more serious correction as the technical picture of the market has deteriorated very badly and as the S&P made a new high this year on April 2nd, all the European markets are lower than they were a year ago."

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

More Anecdotes From China on Plastics, Metalworking, Unused Roads, Vacant Housing

Posted: 10 May 2012 07:54 AM PDT

Reader Steve responded to Chinese Architect Comments on "Dark Apartments", Vacancies, Residential Malinvestment with anecdotes of his own on Plastics, Metalworking, Unused Roads, Vacant Housing.

Steve writes .....

Hello Mish

I was in Shanghai for a couple of days last month. This was my first trip to China so I don't have any history to compare it to.

One day we took the high speed train to Nanjing. It was amazing all of the completely new, pristine roads everywhere between Shanghai and Nanjing. And none of them had a single car on them!

Sometime a road would just stop dead in its tracks and start up a few miles later. Sometimes the train would pass close enough to apartment buildings that you could tell no one was living in them. You could see straight through out the window on the other side.

No clothes drying on a line outside and no air conditioner provided two additional clues the dwellings were vacant.

We publish magazines for discrete parts manufacturing in the U.S. We make money from advertising equipment suppliers. This business is very strong right now in the U.S., but for how long is anyone's guess.

However, everyone we talked to in China, Korea, and Taiwan said the Chinese market for capital equipment (our focus is metalworking and plastics molding equipment) was slowing down noticeably and they were looking to the U.S. to pick up the slack.

Steve

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Damn Cool Pics

The Bubble Hotel in France

Posted: 10 May 2012 06:35 PM PDT

Sleep under the stars without the fear of getting gobbled up by a bear or infested with creepy crawlies at the Attrap Rêves in Marseille, France. Small bubbles are designed by designer Pierre-Stephane Dumas, they allow you to stay in the room, but at the same time as though and in the open air.

The bubbles are small and cozy, about 13 feet in diameter. Some are fully transparent, while others allow a little more privacy and are half opaque. Staying the night in a bubble will cost you upwards of 109 euros, while tasty meals are provided at the nearby lodge-style restaurant.

Girls And Guns [Infographic]

Posted: 10 May 2012 06:09 PM PDT

This infographic is about how more and more women are carrying concealed weapons. For instance, in the Gallup poll from late last year it showed that 23% of women own a gun. And it's not just buying guns. The National Shooting Goods Association indicated that target shooting among females is up 46.5% from 2001 to 2010. So, perps beware these women are armed and dangerous.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via: visual.ly

The Real Impact of the Google SmartPhone Crawler (Part 3): Avoiding Mobile Mis-Indexing

Posted: 09 May 2012 03:11 PM PDT

Posted by Suzzicks

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

This is the third and final installment in this mobile SEO blog post series, covering the impact of the new Google smartphone bot and how you can use it to make the most of your mobile content. The first article in the series discussed how the new smartphone bot works and which sites will be most affected. The post from last week discussed how to author redirects correctly to ensure that your mobile content will be properly indexed by the smartphone bot. This final post will review common search engine indexing problems that mobile sites and mobile platforms have, and how you can prevent them.

Some SEOs insist that we must believe what Google tells us about how and why they index things the way they do; that indexing is consistent, predictable and flawless. Unfortunately, that is not the case, especially in mobile where there are more pages and more potential for things to go wrong. Believing that indexing will always happen correctly, and that you need not mitigate risk factors for mis-indexing will not create the ideal SEO scenario. It will leave your sites (mobile/desktop/tablet) exposed when there are changes to the algorithm, or when new crawlers are evaluating your site for the first time.

If you are trying to ‘dot all your ‘i’s’ and cross all your ‘t’s’ in the world of mobile search engine indexing, here is what you need to know to prevent mis-indexing:

Avoid Duplicate Content

Google has never and will never like duplicate content. Google’s new smartphone bot, and their decision to index and cache mobile redirects may be a way for Google to avoid or minimize the need to index entire mobile pages (possibly), but it is still hard to tell how it all works. Adding mobile pages into a mix will always presents the RISK that something will be misunderstood as ‘duplicate’ and cause problems.

To keep Google happy, in the mobile world it is especially important to avoid the sneakier kinds of duplicate content that some webmasters forget about, otherwise known as DUST. The acronym stands for Duplicate Url Same Text [Acronym shared with my by the awesome Lindsay Perkin-Wassle, of Keyphrasiology]. DUST happens any time more than one version of a URL will resolve in the address bar but the browser shows the same page. The easiest example to understand is a page rendering with or without inclusion of the ‘www’ in the URL (the canonical v. non-canonical discussion usually stops here), but DUST can also be seen when there are multiple versions of a home page or category level page, as in the examples below:

Desktop	http://www.yoursite.com/ http://yoursite.com/ http://www.yoursite.com/index.asp http://yoursite.com/index.asp	It is quite common for sites to allow all four of these URLs to be linked to or typed into the address bar so that the home page will be served. (This can happen at category level pages too, like www.yoursite.com/cindy and www.yoursite.com/cindy/index.asp)
Mobile	http://m.yoursite.com/ http://m.yoursite.com/index.asp	Adding mobile pages to the mix makes this even more confusing and cumbersome for Google.

In the mobile SEO world, it is quite common for mobilization platforms to control the servers and databases that generate the mobile content, and they are infamous (maybe only in my mind) for generating lots of DUST. Even the best mobilization platforms typically have minimal understanding of SEO; they try to set their servers to be very flexible with what page requests they can correctly render, and render as many different variations of a URL as possible. Instead of doing this, the platforms should be setting up the servers to 301 redirect any version of the URL that is not the canonical ‘chosen’ to redirect to the ‘chosen’ version of the URL. This is also how you can set up your own servers to prevent DUST.

Avoid 404 Errors and Misdirects

There is a risk that Google’s new smartphone crawler may be overly literal at first, and rely exclusively on the redirects that are in place, but not evaluate other signals or algorithmic elements. This means that it will probably also have a heightened the sensitivity to errors that are present on a site or in a redirect.

In general having lots of errors on your site can hinder crawling and indexing and cast your mobile site (and possibly desktop site too) in a bad light. Be sure that you check the content frequently for indexed 404 errors in Webmaster Tools, especially if you are generating dynamic mobile pages or using a hosted mobile solution to generate your mobile pages. To make finding and fixing 404s easy, you should set your mobile content up in a separate Webmaster Tools account. This way, you can see just the errors and information related to the mobile content, and not have to subtract out desktop figures to generate meaningful information.

Many 404’s in mobilization platforms are caused by improperly expired mobile content, but you should also watch for 404 errors caused by a lack of capitalization normalization and trailing slash rules set up on the server. See the example below, where one version of a URL is working fine, but the same URL with a capital letter is understood as missing, and being redirected to the mobile home page. (This is also DUST – your server can automatically normalize URLs to remove capitals.)

Capital letters in the URL cause a 404 or redirect to the mobile home page:

Actual URL:
URL with a Capital ‘C’:

http://m.yoursite.com/cindy/
http://m.yoursite.com/Cindy/

Successful
404 Error or Redirect to Home Page

The presence or absence of trailing slashes can also cause problems, as shown below:

Actual URL:
URL with a Trailing Slash:

http://m.yoursite.com/cindy
http://m.yoursite.com/cindy/

Successful
404 Error or Redirect to Home Page

Whether the page is 404 or just redirecting to the home page, this is a problem. Stuff like this REALLY happens all the time, especially when the mobilization platforms are in charge of the server, so if you are working with an external mobilization vendor, go check this stuff out when you are done reading the article. Error-based redirect to the home page could be somehow mis-indexed as the mobile redirect.

Mobilization platforms will usually not archive mobilized pages for long periods of time, especially for sites that generate new content on a daily basis, but they also generally don’t have a proper mechanism to expire the content in a way that is good for SEO so a very similar scenario could happen with a 404 error on a page that has expired.. Mobilization platforms will generally just remove the content and leave a 404 error, which makes the mobile site look bad, because as you are constantly generating new content, you are also constantly generating new 404 errors at the same rate.

What if Google took the 404 errors on the mobile pages seriously? What if Google somehow associated the errors on the mobile pages with the corresponding desktop pages even though they were still live and fine? Hopefully Google would not let the 404 on the mobile page drag down the credibility and rankings of the desktop page that was redirecting to it, but it is not worth the risk! If you are worried about it, there is a Mobile SEO Tool to help you check indexing of one domain across the desktop and WAP index.

When you are optimizing your mobile content, the best bet is to always play it safe, and keep your content and your server settings as neat and tidy as possible. Avoid the risk of mis-indexing by checking your URLs and watching for errors. When you add more pages and more redirects, and potentially even more servers and different companies to the mix to achieve a good mobile user experience, you increase the risk of mis-indexing.

Thanks for tuning in to this mobile SEO series about optimizing for Google’s new smartphone bot! If you missed the previous articles, they cover important information like how the new bot works, which sites will be affected and how to generate the right kinds of redirects to ensure that your content is correctly indexed by the new bot. Good luck with all of your SEO efforts and stay mobile!

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