Thursday, March 31, 2011
How Good Is Your Hard Asset Investment?
Hard Assets Investor submits:
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By Brad Zigler
The past 12 months have been pretty good for financial assets. Blue chips in the S&P 500 Composite have gained 15.5 percent since March 30 last year. Domestic bonds, too, have appreciated. Before coupons, the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index (AGG) has risen 5.2 percent.
The advances in physical assets?the stuff that's supposed to provide an inflation hedge?have been even more dramatic. The S&P/Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSC) is 21.1 percent higher than it was a year ago. Oil is up 26.9 percent and gold's 27.9 percent is above its year-ago price.
That hedge business is becoming more important as investors smell the aroma of inflation wafting from the Consumer Price Index and other metrics.
Our Monetary Inflation Index (the 365-day rate) returned to positive territory back in January, after an eight month-sojourn into disinflation.
U.S. Inflation Metrics
Inflation is corrosive to financial assets, and in times
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Dent: Crash Coming
We have been due for a correction (20-25%) for some time now –I dont by the 3000-3800 stuff . . . ~~ Source: Harry Dent: ?Major Crash? Coming for Stocks, Commodities Already Topping Out Aaron Task Daily Ticker March 31, 2011 http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/harry-dent-major-crash-coming-stocks-commodities-already-20110331-080715-415.html
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+1 with a bullet: Google lets the people vote up search results
Google is adding a service that allows users to vote on search results to flag them as good content, the company announced on its official blog today. The service, named +1, is similar in functionality to dedicated content aggregation sites like Reddit, and all votes are tied to your Google account.
+1 is a feature that users can now enable through Google Labs' experimental search options. Once on, +1 adds a little button next to every search result that allows searchers to flag content they find "pretty cool" or "useful." When one of your contacts has given their +1 seal of approval to a search result, it shows up in your search results with a line of text saying your friend "+1'd this."
Google is a little late to the upvote party, but unlike services such as Digg or Reddit, the timeliness of the mob's approval doesn't seem to be a factor. Content that has won someone's approval will game your results until the distribution of +1s shifts.
Given the size of the Internet, limiting the crowd that is able to sort through it for you to your circle of friends doesn't seem like the best solution. In the same vein, the assumption that Google users only have contacts whose opinion they respect may be a little off-base. The service could prove useful if you have a cadre of impeccably tasteful friends, but we hope this isn't meant to be the magic bullet for Google's increasingly SEO-burdened results.
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Trade Sees American Express at a Top
optionMONSTER submits:
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By David Russell
American Express (AXP) has been range-bound for months, and one investor apparently thinks that the trend will continue. The financial-service giant peaked at $46.29 yesterday, marking the fourth time since December it has failed to break above $47. During that time, it has also mostly held support around $43, but the situation could now be turning more bearish because it made a lower low this month and a lower high this week.
That could make some chart watchers conclude AXP is ready to make a push to the downside. The stock fell another 1.59 percent to $45.18 in late morning trading today.
The two most active options contracts are the January 40 calls and the October 43s, both of which were heavily sold according to our monitoring programs. The 40s traded more than 5,000 times, mostly for $7.45 to $7.55. Volume was below open interest, so the
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Flixster Update: Warner Bros. Very Interested, as Yahoo Drops Out of Bidding for Social Movie Site
Warner Bros. appears to be the frontrunner in various talks to buy Flixster, the social movie site, while Internet giant Yahoo has dropped out due to price concerns.
Sources said the reason for interest from the Time Warner-owned studio is due to a spate of recent digital efforts, including its expansion of a movie rental experiment on Facebook.
Sources said the reason for interest from the Time Warner-owned studio is due to a spate of recent digital efforts, including its expansion of a movie rental experiment on Facebook.
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Games work "neurological magic," says QWOP creator
Bennett Foddy, deputy director of the Institute for Science and Ethics at Oxford University, makes games about embodiment, and the “neurological magic” in gaming which allows us to inhabit the heroes on screen.
But unlike most artsy, experimental games with a point to make, Foddy’s free Flash games are hilarious, alarmingly addictive and eminently playable. His latest, a fiendishly compulsive rock-climbing simulation called GIRP, is a masochistically difficult game that turns your keyboard into a cliff face.
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Direct2Drive knocking 15% off March's best sellers
Head over to Direct2Drive to see the full list of titles, and enter the promo code "MARCHMAYHEM" at checkout to receive the discount.
Direct2Drive knocking 15% off March's best sellers originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Don't Rain on Microsoft's Ad Parade (Except It's Raining in Seattle, Natch!)
BoomTown scrambled the All Things Digital jet (aka, United Airlines, Seat 7A) late last night to get up to Microsoft's big event for its online advertising clients today.
Called "Imagine 2011: Marketing Leadership Summit" and held at its Redmond, Wa. HQ, the two-day event is designed to wow peeps by trotting out a spate of strategery concepts those who buy advertising on Microsoft's various digital offerings from its Bing search service to MSN to Xbox to Windows Phone 7.
Called "Imagine 2011: Marketing Leadership Summit" and held at its Redmond, Wa. HQ, the two-day event is designed to wow peeps by trotting out a spate of strategery concepts those who buy advertising on Microsoft's various digital offerings from its Bing search service to MSN to Xbox to Windows Phone 7.
Direct2Drive knocking 15% off March's best sellers
Head over to Direct2Drive to see the full list of titles, and enter the promo code "MARCHMAYHEM" at checkout to receive the discount.
Direct2Drive knocking 15% off March's best sellers originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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$10 credit with Duke Nukem Forever, cheap Xbox Live Gold on Amazon
If you plan on snagging a copy for the Xbox 360, you might also look into a new one-year Xbox Live Gold subscription, which Amazon is offering for $40, a savings of $20 over the usual price. After all, you can't play the new butt-slapping multiplayer without Xbox Live, now can you?
$10 credit with Duke Nukem Forever, cheap Xbox Live Gold on Amazon originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Yep, it was us, the Fed did it
Retiring Fed member Hoenig, famous for his dissent vote all of last year on expanding Fed policy and actually calling for raising rates, is laying out again his call for the dangers of current policy in a speech. What is also of interest is his accusation that the Fed is largely to blame for the [...]
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Sina replaces Google engine with their own
Sina, the second largest online portal in China, has announced today that they have replaced their Google-backed search engine with their new search technology. Says Sina:
Our contract (with Google) ended this month and the whole website is now using our own search technology.
Google would not comment directly on the move, but did say:
We have had a number of syndication deals with partners in China, and have honored our contractual obligations to them. While we can't comment on specific partnerships, we announced last year that over time we would not be syndicating censored search to partners in China after fulfilling our contractual commitments.
China has 389 million Internet users, but Google has seen its market share fall to under 20 percent, while Baidu takes around 79 percent.
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The Flying Hamster's soundtrack takes off on a solo flight
You can stream it from Bandcamp for free, or if you want it to fly into your iPod, you can download a copy from Bandcamp or your favorite MP3 store for $3.99. To sweeten the deal, the album download includes an unreleased bonus track.
The Flying Hamster's soundtrack takes off on a solo flight originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Similarities Between the First Two Active Immunotherapies in Cancer
Michael Becker submits:
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Approval of Bristol-Myers Squibb?s (BMY) Yervoy [ipilimumab] for melanoma in March 2011 marked the second victory for the field of active immunotherapy in oncology within a year, with the first being the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approval of Dendreon Corporation?s (DNDN) Provenge [sipuleucel-T] for metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer [CRPC] in April 2010. Ipilimumab and sipuleucel-T were the first two active immunotherapies for cancer to demonstrate improved survival in randomized Phase 3 trials and both were published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine within one month of each other.
The similarities don?t end there, as both ipilimumab and sipuleucel-T have reignited enthusiasm for the field of active immunotherapy. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to highlight some of the other parallels between these two innovative agents.
Both Studied in Prostate Cancer
While ipilimumab was recently approved for the treatment of melanoma, the product has also been
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Scott Amos leaves Visceral for Crystal Dynamics, will help develop new IP
Prior to his work with Visceral, Amos also handled The Sims franchise at EA Maxis, developing the series for consoles. Amos will be relocating to Crystal Dynamics' Redwood-based studio, but we've heard he's got to make it all the way through The Angel of Darkness before he can start work. That's something we wouldn't wish on anyone.
Scott Amos leaves Visceral for Crystal Dynamics, will help develop new IP originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Drug Companies Overestimate Cost Of Developing A New Drug By Merely $1.26 Billion
It's one of those numbers that comes up every single time we talk about the pharma industry: the claim that it costs $1.3 billion for pharma companies to develop a new drug. In fact, in our recent discussion on the FDA banning drugs that have been on the market for decades, it didn't take someone long to toss out such a number (they used $1.2 billion, but $1.3 billion is the "standard" these days -- just a few years after it was $800 million). Of course, every time people point this number out, I point to the excellent research by Merrill Goozner who did a massively thorough debunking of the $800 million number seven years ago, showing that the true number was closer to $35 million.
And yet, the $800 million number has lived on, boosted by inflation to $1.3 billion.
And it's still bunk. Gerd Leonhard points us to some new research that appears to have dug deeper into the question today, and found (once again) that the $1.3 billion claim is total bunk and the real number is more like $55 million -- based on the same data used by the study used to support the $1.3 billion number. In fact, they point out that it appears the pharma industry and those seeking greater protectionism appear to be overestimating the actual cost of drug development by $1.265 billion.
Now, there are some reasonable quibbles with the lower number as well, but there's a growing body of evidence that the real number is a lot closer to the lower one than the higher one. There are certainly some outliers, but the idea that the average cost to develop a new drug is over a billion dollars, and therefore pharma companies need special extra protection is bunk and certainly shouldn't be cited any more.
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And yet, the $800 million number has lived on, boosted by inflation to $1.3 billion.
And it's still bunk. Gerd Leonhard points us to some new research that appears to have dug deeper into the question today, and found (once again) that the $1.3 billion claim is total bunk and the real number is more like $55 million -- based on the same data used by the study used to support the $1.3 billion number. In fact, they point out that it appears the pharma industry and those seeking greater protectionism appear to be overestimating the actual cost of drug development by $1.265 billion.
Now, there are some reasonable quibbles with the lower number as well, but there's a growing body of evidence that the real number is a lot closer to the lower one than the higher one. There are certainly some outliers, but the idea that the average cost to develop a new drug is over a billion dollars, and therefore pharma companies need special extra protection is bunk and certainly shouldn't be cited any more.
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Rage to be prefaced by tie-in novel
The novel -- conveniently penned by Matt Costello, one of the game's writers -- will retain the game's title and tells the story of Lt. Nick Raine. It seems that poor Nick has emerged from stasis to discover "a new society where might is right, mutants plague the Earth, and 'friend' is a term for the person who hasn't stabbed you in the back."
We're going to hazard a guess that, at some point, the plot will also involve shooting. Rage, the novel, is set to hit book shelves on August 30. The game is due out in mid-September.
Continue reading Rage to be prefaced by tie-in novel
Rage to be prefaced by tie-in novel originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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1UP's Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime Giveaway
We'll post a secret message on our homepage, right next to our Top Story area. Here's a pic: HEWLETTPACKARD HIGH TECH COMPUTER HON HAI PRECISION IND HYNIX SEMICONDUCTOR INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES 1UP's Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime Giveaway
How To Play
Amazon Launches Digital Music Locker, Even As Legality Is Still In Question
Well, this could get interesting. While there are already a few digital music lockers on the market -- including services like MP3Tunes and MeCanto -- there's been plenty of talk over the past few months about the "big players" entering the market. Most of the focus has been on both Apple (which bought and shut down the music locker service Lala) and Google, but Amazon beat both companies to the starting line and launched its service a few hours ago.
The question that's most interesting to me is whether or not it's paying for licenses, and at this point, it's unclear. We've seen, for example, that the record labels are not happy about these services, with EMI in a legal fight with MP3Tunes. On top of that record labels are demanding additional fees and licenses, even though these lockers only allow people to store and stream music they already have. Whether or not Amazon paid any licenses is unclear. The News.com article linked above says "as of last week the online retailer giant had not obtained all the necessary licenses, but that Amazon might announce the service before all the negotiations were complete."
But here's my question: what necessary licenses? Why should anyone else have to pay a license to let me store and stream my own music? Update: Hypebot has more, saying that Amazon doesn't believe it needs licenses, and some of the labels (but not all) are upset. Specifically, Warner Music is pissed and is contemplating legal action, but other labels aren't quite as upset.
As for Amazon's actual service, I have no idea if it's compelling, but I will say it's rather silly and pointless that they're making me reupload music. I already have an Amazon S3 account which (among other things) I use to backup all of my (yes, legal and authorized) music. What would be great is if I could just point this new Amazon Cloud Player at my existing music that is already stored on Amazon's servers, and then stream it from there. But that does not appear to be an option. Instead, I would need to reload all of it (and since I have a lot more than 5 gigs of music, I'd have to pay multiple times for it. And, with anyone else launching a similar service, I'd probably have to upload it again and again.
Let's be honest here: that's not really a cloud service. A true cloud service would let me store my music wherever I wanted, and then point whatever streaming player I wanted at it... But, of course, I'm sure the record labels would want another bunch of licenses paid up in full before anything like that is ever allowed.
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The question that's most interesting to me is whether or not it's paying for licenses, and at this point, it's unclear. We've seen, for example, that the record labels are not happy about these services, with EMI in a legal fight with MP3Tunes. On top of that record labels are demanding additional fees and licenses, even though these lockers only allow people to store and stream music they already have. Whether or not Amazon paid any licenses is unclear. The News.com article linked above says "as of last week the online retailer giant had not obtained all the necessary licenses, but that Amazon might announce the service before all the negotiations were complete."
But here's my question: what necessary licenses? Why should anyone else have to pay a license to let me store and stream my own music? Update: Hypebot has more, saying that Amazon doesn't believe it needs licenses, and some of the labels (but not all) are upset. Specifically, Warner Music is pissed and is contemplating legal action, but other labels aren't quite as upset.
As for Amazon's actual service, I have no idea if it's compelling, but I will say it's rather silly and pointless that they're making me reupload music. I already have an Amazon S3 account which (among other things) I use to backup all of my (yes, legal and authorized) music. What would be great is if I could just point this new Amazon Cloud Player at my existing music that is already stored on Amazon's servers, and then stream it from there. But that does not appear to be an option. Instead, I would need to reload all of it (and since I have a lot more than 5 gigs of music, I'd have to pay multiple times for it. And, with anyone else launching a similar service, I'd probably have to upload it again and again.
Let's be honest here: that's not really a cloud service. A true cloud service would let me store my music wherever I wanted, and then point whatever streaming player I wanted at it... But, of course, I'm sure the record labels would want another bunch of licenses paid up in full before anything like that is ever allowed.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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