Dreaming of Streaming

Said Timmy to Jimmy & Dre:
"Whether Apples keep Dr.s away,
It sweetens the tones
On iPods & -Phones
If revenue streams when they play."

Said the Dr. & Jimmy to Tim,
On the music they're making with him:
"Without some new Beats,
One's coolness depletes
And the revenue outlook is dim."

Said Timmy: "A streaming solution
May not be the next evolution,
But it's better I blew
3 billion on you
Than a shareholder cash distribution."

In a move that was so long anticipated, many investors forgot about Dre, Apple yesterday confirmed its intention to buy Beats Electronics LLC.  The $3 billion acquisition brings with it Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.  Though best known for its high-end, sexy headphones, Beats is thought to be more valuable to the provider of iTunes, the leading online music store, for its nascent music streaming service.  As Heidi Moore reports in the Guardian, music downloads have peaked, and actually declined 2% to $3.9 billion last year, while subscription-based revenues rocketed up by 50% to $1.1 billion.

Mr. Iovine, a long-time record industry leader, "was one of the first industry executives to anticipate the download business's decline and advocate for subscription and streaming services as music's future," according to one analyst.  Mr. Iovine has also maintained a long and friendly relationship with Apple and iTunes, going back to the origins of online music sales under Steve Jobs.

Apple CEO Tim Cook must certainly hope that the combination with Beats will once again put the company in the position of knowing what the consumer wants before the consumers themselves do. 

Central Bankers Respond to the Employment Crisis

"Our house is foreclosed on in days,
And we can't find employment that pays; 
Pray what can you do
To carry us through
Our long economic malaise?"

"Central bankers are touched by your trouble,
So our efforts we'll boldly redouble
To keep money soft
And hold you aloft
On a frothier stock-market bubble."

These were my thoughts on reading yet another article on the likelihood of more ECB stimulus to address that continent's deflationary dangers.  Not that I have anything against ECB (or Fed) stimulus  per se; it's just that I'm skeptical that the management of inflation and deflation will do very much to address the serious long-term unemployment problems in the Old World and the New, and I'm not sure that the risk of frothier markets is worth it.

Nothing Is Better Than Something

The Fed stirred up market festivity,
In spite of low business activity,
From the joy that relates
To their keeping the rates
At zero, as is their proclivity.

With rates so depressingly low,
Fixed income has nowhere to go
So the stock market beckons
To each one who reckons
The chance that their nest egg may grow. 

It highlights how hard to discern it is
To know when the bond market's turn it is,
But with rates to be found
At the null lower bound,
The Dow lacks investment alternatives.

Recovery?

Fed Chairmen (paternal or motherly)
Have made a depressing discovery:
If demand isn't great,
You can lower the rate
But you can't cut your way to recovery.

ABCs of HFTs

Of late we have heard much verbosity

Expressing the Street's animosity

Toward traders who trade

With programs they made

To profit by rapid velocity. 

Indignant stock-pickers confront one

With evidence (and it's a blunt one)

That HFTs aim

To rig the whole game

By trading so fast they can front-run. 

HFTs claim, in defense,

Their volume may lower expense 

And help to enrich

The others from which

They're skimming off fractions of cents. 

My view may be non-analytical

But in this matter tends toward the critical,

For it's hard to ascribe

A positive vibe

To a practice at heart parasitical. 

*************************************************

High-frequency trading represents a sort of "rise of the machines" over Wall Street, in which powerful computer algorithms are dedicated to exploiting market information almost literally at the speed of light. The practice has long been controversial among market professionals, where opinions differ as to whether such machines personify R2D2 or the Terminator. 

Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker, has written a new book called Flash Boys, which comes down on the side of "hasta la vista, baby."  In an interview on 60 Minutes, Mr. Lewis brought this Wall Street issue on a perp-walk down Main Street. 

"The stock market is rigged," declares Mr. Lewis, by a combination of HFTs, big banks and the exchanges themselves. The HFTs are allowed to see everyone else's trades a split second before the general market does, giving their lightning-fast algorithms time to get out in front of market-moving order flows. This amounts to small-scale theft, repeated so often and so quickly that it becomes large-scale. 

However, some knowledgeable insiders disagree, and say that HFTs have been good for the small investor. Their big volume of small trades has lowered the bid-ask spread, reducing everyone's cost of execution. Much of the complaining, says Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, comes from money managers who can no longer place large orders without moving the market. "Well, sorry," counters Mr. Asness, "but prices responding quickly—and traders not being able to buy or sell a ton without the market moving—is what is supposed to happen in a well-functioning market."

A compelling counterpoint to be sure, but the fact remains that some firms trade with high frequency while losing with rarity, or not at all.  "How is it possible that one of the largest high-frequency trading firms executes millions and millions of orders for four years without ever having a down day?" asks Barry Ritholtz.  "The short answer is what they do is not trading -- it is skimming. I call it legalized theft. High-frequency trading is a tax on investors, encouraged by the exchanges, allowed by the SEC."

Are we ready to prosecute the Terminator for algorithmic inside trading?

March Productivity Madness

Economists show the proclivity
Toward lamenting the lost productivity
When Americans cling,
From the first day of Spring,
To basketball bracket activity. 

At work we may go to extremes
Of collegiate basketball dreams,
And glance in our laps 
At websites and apps
With brackets and video streams. 

Consultants engaged by the boss
To reckon the March Madness cost
Deduce from the gauges
Of hours and wages
That 1.2 billion are lost.

But a national payroll statistic
As a measure is much too simplistic,
As workers are apt
In March to adapt
In a manner that's deft and holistic.

Despite how the experts may warn
That brackets are worthy of scorn,
It's easy to see
For office esprit,
They're better than downloading porn. 

Guinness Taps Out

Guinness could not find a way

Of sponsoring St. Patrick's Day,

Having failed to have swayed

Those who run the parade

To authorize floats that are gay. 

It's a green of a diff'rent complexion

That causes the brewer's objection,

As the times, they have changed

And hence rearranged

The sponsorship fiscal projection. 

It's not that they don't see the profit

In St. Paddy's, and what they make off it;

It's how they appraise

The changing mores

Of the many straight drinkers who quaff it. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to those who wear the green, as well as all the other colors of the rainbow. 

Financial Fraud Trilogy

There once was a fellow named Chubley

Who mortgaged collateral doubly.

"It's a trick," he confessed,

"I effectuate best

When markets are frothy and bubbly."

_____________

It's fruitless to place one's reliance

On oneself in defrauding one's clients;

Much better to work

With the back-office clerk

And ideally, the head of compliance. 

_______________________

A credit swap trader named Moore

Keeps tickets of trades in his drawer.

Though transactions all post

By an e-trading host,

It's a throwback to dealing room lore. 

________________________________

Today's idle limerick musings, unlike most of the verses in this space, do not describe any particular incident or people.  However, I was prompted to reflect on financial fraud by events at the Citigroup subsidiary Banamex, which has just suffered a $400 million loss from nefarious goings-on at one of its customers. The Mexican oil field services company Oceanografía, a supplier to the national oil company Pemex, had been selling their Pemex receivables to Banamex to raise funds - a routine trade finance transaction - and apparently were so pleased at their funding success that they decided to sell another $400 million of receivables that they didn't have. 

It's another reminder that financial fraud may be detectable and even, in our too-big-to-jail era, punishable; in the hands of a determined practitioner, however, it is rarely preventable. 

Here is a link to the latest background on this case from the Wall Street Journal:

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304585004579419371032316620

Ukraine & Putin's Reign, Explained

Said Putin, regarding Crimea:
"Don't get the mistaken idea.
I may not contain
The western Ukraine,
But the east is a part of my spheah."