Free Republic

A tea party leader says he is pleased that New Hampshire officials want to thoroughly investigate voting irregularities regarding Dominion-owned voting machines.The hand recount recently conducted for a New Hampshire state representative race in which Democrat Kristi St. Laurent came within 24 votes of winning revealed that the four Dominion-owned voting machines in the town of Windham had shorted her Republican challenger by 99 votes. Three other Republicans there were also shorted 6% by the machines that were used in 85% of towns throughout the state."New Hampshire was like one of the biggest successes for Republicans in the whole 2020...

The rules here are simple: Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose.For those who haven’t heard, there’s a bit of a brouhaha brewing with the video game retailer GameStop, which is publicly traded. Much of Wall Street soured on the company, believing it to be the next Blockbuster or Radio Shack: a dinosaur from a bygone era that has no hope of succeeding in the increasingly internet-run future. As a result, a major Wall Street hedge fund worth billions decided to make a bet that the company’s already low stock price would just keep going lower. The traditional way to...

<p>It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.</p>

China “fraudcaps”: how to profit May 25, 2011 8:07 pm by Alexandra Stevenson Clerks work in the Eurodollar pit at the CME Group following news from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting concerning short-term interest rates January 27, 2010 Longtop this week became the latest in a recent wave of US-listed Chinese companies that have disclosed they are being investigated by the SEC. Investors in Chinese small stocks have taken fright and long-time China bear Jim Chanos on Wednesday expressed his regret at missing a chance to short these companies. So what’s the deal – and if Chanos isn’t...

Traders 'Short' Dollar as Currency Loses Attraction Financial Times | 07 Mar 2011 | 01:59 AM ET Hedge funds and forex dealers are betting record amounts against the dollar, reflecting a growing belief that the U.S. currency has lost its haven appeal and that euro zone interest rates will soon rise. As the crisis in the Middle East has worsened, the latest exchange data show that traders are selling “short” the currency. The big U.S. fiscal deficit and concerns about the effect of rising oil prices have been blamed by some for the dollar’s slide. Figures from the Chicago Mercantile...

The stock market fell deeper into the red amid reports that Germany will issue new restrictions on bearish trading. SNIP Germany will ban so-called naked short-selling from midnight, a lawmaker with the ruling Christian Democratic Union told Dow Jones Newswires. He added that Chancellor Angela Merkel will announce the plan in her speech to the lower house of parliament Wednesday morning. Naked short selling—which differs from short selling in that the sold shares aren't borrowed in advance—came under fire at the height of Greece's struggle to refinance its debt, with many euro-zone governments saying such transactions in credit-default swaps, a...

SEC Probes Wall Street Selling of Muni Bonds: Report Friday, May 14, 2010 08:08 AM The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Wall Street banks used their own money to bet in financial markets against municipal bonds that they had sold, the Wall Street Journal reported. Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper reported that the regulator is examining trades of municipal credit default swaps

You Could Now Be Arrested, In America, Just For Mentioning Europe's Problems Over Dinner Vincent Fernando | Mar. 3, 2010, 12:01 AM You know a company/country/continent is in trouble when authorities start cracking down on short bets against it. That's why it's so disturbing how much heat European currency and sovereign debt speculators are getting these days. Even the U.S. has climbed aboard the bandwagon now. Reports of a U.S. Justice Department investigation into Soros Fund Management, SAC, and Greenlight Capital short positions against the euro broke last week. Yet now the speculator clamp down is evolving into something completely...

Hedge Funds Target Euro Zone's Weak BY JOANNA SLATER, GREGORY ZUCKERMAN AND CASSELL BRYAN-LOW The sudden spotlight on troubled government borrowers is presenting a long-awaited payday for investors who placed early bets against countries now under pressure. Investors including Balestra Capital Ltd., Hayman Capital Partners LP, North Asset Management LLP and Pivot Capital Management Ltd. have been anticipating such flare-ups for at a year or longer, betting that some countries would emerge from the financial crisis in much worse shape than others. Those bearish positions had led to a difficult 2009, as investor confidence picked up and rivals gained by...

Credit-default-swap traders may need a shorter leash. LIQUIDATION. A GOOD SOAKING. PLENTY OF TEARS. It is real wet out there in the markets. Given all the known big-picture reasons for this drenching, does it makes sense to continue enabling the folks who make and sell umbrellas to force it to rain at will? The people with a stake in umbrella prices who are able to trigger a downpour are the traders who bid up credit-default swaps on individual companies, whether they own their debt or not, and short the stock. In combination, these actions feed signals into the market that...

** EXCERPT ** The Securities and Exchange Commission has a list, and it's checking it twice. It's a compendium of nearly 1,000 companies the so-called watchdog has now pronounced off-limits to short-selling. If this do-not-short list weren't such a travesty, it would be hilarious. Among the companies the SEC wants to "protect" are the ones -- Moody's and McGraw-Hill, to name just two -- that did such a horrendous job rating the mortgage paper that helped cause this debacle in the first place. In the end, SEC Chairman Chris Cox and friends will discover that this will turn out to...

Breaking News: SEC intends to temporarily ban short selling, but it's not clear if the commission has approved the move. Cox is briefing congressional leaders. Separately, the government is seeking congressional authority to buy distressed assets.

The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the president himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country. A troubled currency and financial system and large budget and trade deficits do not present an attractive face to creditors. Yet Washington...

$4.5 billion options bet on catastrophe within four weeks ANYBODY HAVE A CLUE, AS TO WHAT, THESE "INVESTORS" ARE EXPECTING? The two sales are being referred to by market traders as "bin Laden trades" because only an event on the scale of 9-11 could make these short-sell options valuable. There are 65,000 contracts @ $750.00 for the SPX 700 calls for open interest. That controls 6.5 million shares at $750 = $4.5 Billion. Not a single trade. But quite a bit of $$ on a contract that is 700 points away from current value. No one would buy that deep...

...Another factor some traders say is causing turmoil: an arcane rule change -- referred to as the "downtick" rule -- that kicked into effect in July that makes it easier for investors to bet on stock-price declines. Before July, investors typically had to wait until a stock was actually rising to bet on its downfall. Lots of selling can feed off itself, prompting nervous investors to sell more, which adds to volatility. Often, heavily shorted stocks can be particularly volatile. The old rule generally prohibited the shorting of a stock while its price was falling, or experiencing a "downtick" in...

The Chinese government has hinted that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds, potentially triggering a crash in the dollar, if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation, The Telegraph reported. The paper said that two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that China may use its 1.33 bln usd of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Xia Bin, finance chief at China's Development Research centre, which has cabinet rank, commented last week that China's foreign...

Two class action lawsuits filed by hedge funds in Manhattan federal court indicate major problems in U.S. stock markets. The hedge funds blame big brokerage firms for failing to deliver shares of stock "sold short" by the hedge funds. The problem: buyers who paid for shares didn't get the stock, but don't know it. The hedge funds - Electronic Trading Group LLC and Quark Fund LLC - say they were swindled by their "prime brokers," including Merrill Lynch, Banc of America Securities, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley. ETG and Quark allege their prime brokers conspired...

A Poker with Bill Gates (Account 990N : Sequel) The following are audio links to discussion on Account 990N. They are about 48 minutes long. In it, one of guests bring up an analogy that dealing with Account 990N is like playing a poker with Bill Gates with a billion dollar of betting money. Even if you have a royal flush and Bill Gates has nothing, Bill can raise the betting to a billion and you can't. Thus, you lose. Real Audio Link: A Poker with Bill Gates MP3 Link: A Poker with Bill Gates

990N by John Mackenzie June 17, 2004 Received this message from a member of my investment forum who is currently on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange: " Only have a minute but, write more later but... The entire S&P price action in the futures is being controlled by one counter party. All the guys frickin hate them: their CME clearing number is 990N and they clear through Gelber trading. That one account is solely responsible for the current level of the S&P. They are the ones that are throwing the S&P up overnight. Then they are the ones...