The Exchange Times

Google, Facebook don't say no to e-G8 rule

2011-05-25T23:00:00.003+02:00

At the conclusion of a two-day forum in Paris, their comments exposed deep rifts between tech titans, academics and policy makers even as they tried to agree on a message to take to world leaders at the Group of Eight industrialized nations meeting on Thursday in Deauville, France.

With the forum, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was seeking to put his stamp on the debate over regulating the Internet and encouraging the digital economy during his one-year term as president for the G8.

Despite a glittering guest list, the event dubbed the eG8 ended up with few concrete policy recommendations and mostly vague conclusions that the delegation of six technology chief executives, including Schmidt and Zuckerberg, will present to leaders in Deauville on Thursday.

The outcome highlights the difficulty of finding a way to regulate the Internet that is acceptable to both governments and industry.

Zuckerberg, the 27-year-old entrepreneur who created the social network with 500 million users around the world, was greeted like a rock star during a question-and-answer session on Wednesday and praised for creating a tool that helped touch off democracy movements in the Arab world.

"People tell me on the one hand 'it's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring, but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," said Zuckerberg, who was clad in a T-shirt and jeans.

"But it's hard to have one without the other .... You can't isolate some things you like about the Internet and control other things that you don't."

Schmidt sounded a similar note earlier when he told the assembly: "Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences."

The divisions on copyright proved too large to be bridged, as well as the question of how the burden of investing in telecommunications networks should be shared among telecom operators and the Web giants that rely on them.

At the final panel intended to finalize the message to the G8 leaders, Schmidt squared off with Vivendi CEO Jean Bernard Levy over copyright issues.

Levy, whose company puts out music and video games that are often pirated, said: "I don't think you can compromise on copyright. It's the right of the artist to decide how his work is used."

Schmidt shot back: "I would be opposed to any absolute statements. Copyright is not an absolute right; it is a shared right. Copyright in one form or another is a balance of interests."

Maurice Levy, chief executive of advertising firm Publicis, which is hosting the conference, said they didn't have to resolve the many debates over the Internet's future.

"We are not going to Deauville with a list of grievances or requirements," said Levy at the close of the forum. "We are going with the idea of sharing our points of view and to have an exchange with leaders."

selling calls on the FAS and the FAZ

2010-11-12T15:12:00.005+01:00

Some of you may have considered selling both the FAZ and the FAS leveraged etfs in order to capture the time decay that is eating these 2 products and will make them both fall to zero, as you can see in the shot above, since august, the FAZ went down 26% while the FAS went up only 20%, if you have bought both you would now have an unrealized loss of 6% but if you shorted both you would have had a risk free profit of 6% but you first have to find a broker that is willing to let you short them, there are 2 brokers that let traders do that, they are Thinkorswim (now owned by Ameritrade) and Interactive Brokers, there are certainly other brokers but these two are the most advanced even if their conditions make this arbitrage not very profitable since the interest charged on shorting them is ridiculous, in the case of Thinkorswim, you have to phone in order to short a stock or an etf which is quite laughable in 2010.

The solution to this is to sell call options on both, you can do that on TOS and IB and as its just options and not stocks/etfs, there is no interest involved. i don't need to tell you though that you first have to try it on a demo account to see if there are any strings attached to this arb trade, for those who are lazy, i will do it myself and bring you the result. stay tunned.

Dividend hike at Siemens

2010-11-11T10:11:00.001+01:00

BERLIN (AP) -- Hefty one-time charges pushed Siemens AG to a loss in the July-September quarter, but a recovering global economy fueled a healthy rise in new orders and earnings for the company's full fiscal year increased, the industrial conglomerate said Thursday.

Siemens said it lost euro396 million ($545 million) in its fiscal fourth quarter, still better than a shortfall of euro1.06 billion a year earlier.

At the same time, revenue was up 8 percent to euro21.23 billion from euro19.71 billion, and new orders climbed by a quarter, rising to euro23.47 billion from euro18.75 billion.

The strongest order growth of 40 percent came from the company's energy division, as global energy markets improved and more large orders were received, Siemens said.

"We are coming out of the economic downturn with full momentum," CEO Peter Loescher said. "Our growth is gaining speed."

Siemens, based in Munich, makes everything from light bulbs to trams and turbines for power stations.

The company already had said in September that it would take a charge of up to euro1.4 billion to reflect revised growth prospects at its health care diagnostics business.

On Thursday, Siemens said it had taken a euro1.2 billion charge -- in addition to charges of euro383 million in charges to complete staff cuts at its information technology unit.

The company's sectors, or operating, profit for the quarter was down 45 percent at euro1.06 billion from euro1.92 billion. For the full fiscal year, however, it was up 4 percent to euro7.79 billion from euro7.47 billion.

Full-year net profit came in at euro4.07 billion -- up 63 percent from euro2.5 billion in 2008/2009. Revenue was down to euro75.98 billion, a 1 percent slip, but new orders rose 3 percent to euro81.16 billion from euro78.99 billion.

Loescher said in a statement that Siemens expects to "take this positive momentum into the next fiscal year."

"We expect clear growth in new orders compared to fiscal 2010," he added. "Also, revenue should again grow moderately. We expect to continue the positive trend in earnings growth."

The company said it had free cash flow from continuing operations of euro2.99 billion for the quarter and euro7.11 billion for the full fiscal year -- compared with euro3.79 billion in the previous year.

It said it is implementing a new growth targets system, dubbed "One Siemens," that will put the company on course to focus on "innovation-driven markets like environmental technology, the high-growth emerging countries and the service business."

Siemens said it has now defined a "clear dividend policy" for the first time and plans in future to distribute between 30 and 50 percent of its net income to shareholders. It said it will propose a dividend of euro2.70 for the 2010 fiscal year, up from the previous year's euro1.60.

Don't buy GM stocks

2010-11-07T06:56:00.004+01:00

General Motors is planing an IPO to sell 1.6 billion of stocks to who ever foolish enough to buy them. There is one think you shouldn't do and it is to buy stocks of a bankrupted company or you risk losing everything. Look at the chart above, the GM stock went from $35 to $0.01 in less than a year and then it got delisted from the exchange, it means all those who had $350,000 worth of GM stocks at that time now have $100 (not kidding).

My first look at sponsored blogging

2010-04-27T12:22:00.011+02:00

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have been debating with myself whether to enter the sponsored blogging sphere or not and finally decided i should give it a try, i made some research and found out that the IZEA group is a big player there, i joined their socialspark.com and iam waiting for them to review my blog.
It may take several days until they manually check my blog so i decided to talk about it now, the good thing is that they require all sponsored posts to display a disclosure inside the post itself that it is a sponsored post, this adds some fairness to the the activity of sponsored blogging and proves that its not a misleading advertisement.
i had a look at the IZEA terms and think i can comply with them, i will do my part of the job which is to post my opinion about the sponsors and hope they will do their part too by giving me what i deserve.
Not all sponsors have products to sell, some sponspors ask for an opinion about a product, service or a policy, others ask about thoughts about a trip somewhere, a movie or a singer.
if it goes well i will post about it and if it doesn't i will post about it too.
I think i have a decent blog with a pagerank of 1 and about 2000 visitors per day, i see no reason for them to reject me.
i will keep you updated!

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Leveraged ETFs under investigation

2010-04-24T18:48:00.008+02:00

CFTC rating for FX brokers

2010-02-25T09:31:00.002+01:00

The news about the NFA shaking up the forex industry by dramatically raising capital requirements has kicked off a lot of speculation. So I gathered everything I have learned about this new NFA proposal and am posting here for your review. As someone who has been burned by a bankrupted forex broker I can tell you it is not a pleasant feeling to watch your funds get sucked into some black hole. So my advice is to stay away from any firm that is not currently meeting the coming $5 million capital requirement. And if you already have money at such a firm, get it out, now.

Who has the Money & Who Doesn't

To find out how much money your broker has goto this link:

http://www.cftc.gov/files/tm/fcm/tmfcmdata0704.pdf

Healthy Forex Firms

FXCM ($51,000,000)

GFT ($48,000,000)

Oanda ($44,000,000)

FX Solutions ($20,000,000)

Gain Capital ($20,000,000)

CMS ($10,000,000)