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United Airlines Lost a Billion Dollars This Morning

by MeiPoidevin305 Posted on April 11, 2017

Mother Jones

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The most important story of the past 24 hours—by a mile—is the guy who was dragged off an overbooked United flight yesterday by a security team. The details are still a little sketchy, but the YouTube video is awesome and the guy has an actual scratch on his face. The Chicago PD officer who dragged off the passenger has been suspended, and United’s president has apologized. Luckily for social media, he apologized in kind of a ham-handed way that gave the incident a whole new cycle of snark on Twitter. So far President Trump hasn’t weighed in, but give him time. He might get bored and decide later today to nationalize UAL.

In the meantime, Felix Salmon wants us to believe that this hasn’t hurt United’s stock price. Hah! What a corporate shill he is. Behold the chart below:

That’s about $1 billion in market cap right there. This is the power of Twitter and Facebook, my friends.

On the bright side for UAL, this will probably last only a day or so, sort of like Donald Trump’s random taunts at companies he doesn’t like. Tomorrow some other airline will do something outrageous and we’ll all vow never to fly them ever again. I’m pretty sure most of us have vowed never to fly every airline at some point or another, but since they all suck we don’t have much choice, do we? And they all overbook. And they all ferry their crews around on their own planes. And they all call security if a passenger won’t follow crew orders. This particular passenger just fought back a little more intensely than most. And people with cell phones were around.

Bad luck for United. Really, it could have happened to any of the fine holding companies that control the surly skies of America these days.

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United Airlines Lost a Billion Dollars This Morning

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4 Reasons Why It Makes Sense to UN-dam a River

by ValeriaDriscoll Posted on August 17, 2014

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4 Reasons Why It Makes Sense to UN-dam a River

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In Defense of "Flash Boys"

by Ethel3847dlr Posted on April 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Felix Salmon reviews Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys today, and he’s not impressed. I think Salmon’s basic criticism is on point: the big problem with high-frequency trading isn’t that small investors get ripped off, it’s that the system is so complex that literally no one really understands how it works or what kind of danger it poses:

By far the biggest risk posed by the HFT industry, for instance, is the risk of the kind of event we saw during the flash crash, only much, much worse. The stock market is an insanely complex system, which can fail in unpredictable and catastrophic ways; the HFT industry only serves to make it much more brittle and perilous than it already was. But in Lewis’ book-length treatment of HFT, he barely mentions this risk: I found just one en passant mention of “the instability introduced into the system when its primary goal is no longer stability but speed,” on Page 265, but no elaboration of that idea.

HFT cheerleaders like to brag that their algorithms increase liquidity. And that’s probably true. The problem is that HFTs don’t guarantee liquidity. In fact, it’s far worse than that: they displace other sources of liquidity during normal times, but there’s a good chance that during a crisis, at precisely the moment when liquidity is most important, HFT traders could suddenly and systematically exit the market because events have outrun the parameters of their algorithms. This could easily spiral out of control, turning a bad situation into a catastrophe.

Is this a real threat? Nobody knows. And that’s the problem. HFT is so complex that literally no one knows how it works or how it will react in a crisis. This is not a recipe for financial stability.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for a very entertaining book, so Lewis instead focuses on the ability of HFT shops to “front run” orders in the stock market—that is, to see bids a few milliseconds before anyone else simply by virtue of having computers that are physically closer to a stock exchange than their competitors. An HFT algorithm can then execute its own order already knowing the direction the price of the stock is likely to go. But even though this isn’t the biggest problem with HFT, I do think Salmon is a little too dismissive of it. Here he is on the subject of Rich Gates, a mutual fund manager who discovered he was being front run

Gates “devised a test,” writes Lewis, to see whether he was “getting ripped off by some unseen predator.”….Gates “was dutifully shocked” when he discovered the results of his test: He ended up buying the stock at $100.05, selling it at $100.01, and losing 4 cents per share. “This,” he thought, “obviously is not right.”

Lewis does have a point here: It’s not right….In Gates’ mind, what he saw was the 35,000 customers of his mutual fund being “exposed to predation” in the stock market. Between them, those customers had lost $40: 4 cents per share, times 1,000 shares. Which means they had lost roughly a tenth of a cent apiece, buying and selling $100,000 of Chipotle Mexican Grill within the space of a few seconds.

But there’s always going to be a nonzero “round-trip cost” to buying $100,000 of a stock and then selling it a few seconds later….But still, $40 for two $100,000 trades is hardly a rip-off. Especially when you consider the money that Gates himself is charging his 35,000 mom-and-pop customers.

When Gates was running his experiments, his flagship fund, the TFS Market Neutral Fund, had an expense ratio of 2.41 percent: For every, say, $100,000 you had invested in the fund, you would pay Gates and his colleagues a fee of $2,410 per year. That helps puts the tenth of a cent you might lose on Gates’ Chipotle test into a certain amount of perspective. TFS trades frequently, but even so, any profits that HFT algos might be making off its trades are surely a tiny fraction of the fees that TFS charges its own investors.

MORE: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?

That’s true. But the whole point of HFT has always been to skim tiny percentages from a large number of trades. Nobody has ever suggested that individual traders are losing huge amounts of money to HFT shops. Nevertheless, that’s no reason to downplay it. In fact, that’s one of the things that makes HFT so insidious: it’s yet another way for Wall Street players to game the system in a way that’s so subtle it’s hardly noticeable. This is the kind of thing that permeates Wall Street, and I think Lewis is correct to aim a spotlight at it.

There are plenty of reasons to be very, very wary of HFT. I wish Lewis had at least spent a few pages on the potential instability issues, but let’s face facts. Front running is a perfectly legitimate problem to focus on, and it’s likely to generate a lot more public outrage than a dense abstract about the possibility of robots causing a financial crash sometime in the dim future. So if you’re the rare person who can attract a lot of attention to a legitimate financial danger, it makes sense to write a book that concentrates its fire on the most accessible aspect of that danger. That’s what Lewis chose to do, and I don’t really have a problem with that.

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In Defense of "Flash Boys"

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Hopes for a Fish Revival as a Dam Is Demolished

by Myrna Posted on July 25, 2013

The Penobscot River is expected to begin yielding river herring, Atlantic salmon and other fish in numbers not seen in centuries. Continue reading:   Hopes for a Fish Revival as a Dam Is Demolished ; ;Related ArticlesNational Briefing | Midwest: Michigan: More Money to Combat Asian CarpDot Earth Blog: Arctic Methane Credibility BombCalifornians Consider a Future Without a Nuclear Plant for a Neighbor ;

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Hopes for a Fish Revival as a Dam Is Demolished

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LG, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hopes for a Fish Revival as a Dam Is Demolished

Farmed Fish Production Overtakes Beef

by Jeff Howard Posted on June 12, 2013

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Iyanden – A Codex: Eldar Supplement – Games Workshop

For thousands of years, the Eldar of Iyanden have sailed through the sea of stars, defending the galaxy’s eastern rim from the threat of Chaos. They have won great victories, but have known terrible tragedy also; what was once the most populous of craftworlds is now but a shadow of its former glory. This supplement to Codex: Eldar allows you to ta […]

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Index Astartes: Codex Astartes – Games Workshop

The Codex Astartes details the doctrine of the Space Marine Chapters, compiled and written by the Primarch of the Ultramarines, Roboute Guilliman. While not every Chapter follows the Codex completely, it lays the foundation for their organisation and tactics. About this series: The Adeptus Astartes are genetically engineered warriors, created by the Emperor […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]

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Warlords of the Dark Millennium: Azrael – Games Workshop

Grand Master Azrael Azrael is the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels Chapter, the Keeper of Truth and bearer of the Lion Helm. Armed with the Sword of Secrets and Lion’s Wraith, Azrael guards the ancient lore of his Chapter and leads their hunt for the mysterious Fallen. About this series: The galaxy burns with the fires of countless wars and conflicts, […]

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Trident K9 Warriors – Michael Ritland & Gary Brozek

As Seen on “60 Minutes”! As a Navy SEAL during a combat deployment in Iraq, Mike Ritland saw a military working dog in action and instantly knew he’d found his true calling. Ritland started his own company training and supplying dogs for the SEAL teams, U.S. Government, and Department of Defense. He knew that fewer than 1 percent of […]

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Index Astartes: Dreadnought – Games Workshop

Dreadnoughts are powerful fighting machines piloted by the entombed remains of great Space Marine heroes. Often used in shock assaults or boarding actions, Dreadnoughts are capable of using heavy weapons with deadly and brutal proficiency. About this series: The Adeptus Astartes are genetically engineered warriors, created by the Emperor of Mankind and tempe […]

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Codex: Eldar – Games Workshop

Codex: Eldar is your comprehensive guide to wielding the deadly warhosts of the Craftworld Eldar upon the battlefields of the 41 st Millennium. This volume details the craftworlds of the Eldar, and the different types of army they field. The Eldar embody excellence in the arts of war, from their psychic might to their deadly aircraft, and their ranks co […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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Munitorum: Shuriken Catapult – Games Workshop

The shuriken catapult is the preferred weapon of the Eldar and uses solid-state ammunition carved into monofilament discs, which are propelled into the enemy. Reliable and deadly Eldar Guardians use these weapons to great effect where their ‘shurikens’ cut easily through enemy armour and flesh. About this series: Weapons are the tools of war, and with them a […]

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Farmed Fish Production Overtakes Beef

Posted in aquaculture, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, organic, organic gardening, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Farmed Fish Production Overtakes Beef