Good things happen to those who wait

It had been a rocky week. The market is still correcting. CEMJQ, F and C were showing a lot of positive signs. I thought C will hit the $ 5.25 mark but it went up to $ 5 to get back down to $ 4.60. I should have unloaded on the $ 5 mark and reloaded. Anyway, another missed opportunity.
We got some snow last week. I think it’s earlier then last year but then again it was not too bad. I am hoping we will have a better and busier winter. I am looking forward to our trip to Vancouver. I hope Malahat will enjoy the trip.

- Oil prices were up to near $78 a barrel Friday, continuing a weeklong rally amid an unexpected drop in U.S. gasoline inventories. By mid-afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for November delivery was up 10 cents at $77.68 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, it rose as high as $78.17. On Thursday, the contract rose $2.40 to settle at $77.58. The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that U.S. gasoline supplies fell 5.2 million barrels while analysts had expected a jump of 1.6 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. Crude supplies rose 400,000 barrels, the EIA said, while analysts had anticipated an 2.2 million barrel gain. Until this week, oil had bounced between $65 and $75 since May. "The transition to a $70 to $80 range is now in full cry," Barclays Capital said in a report. "We expect further transitions upward to occur in line with improvements in the underlying market data." A falling U.S. dollar has also helped boost oil this week.

- CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. said Friday it lost more than $2.2 billion in the third quarter as loan losses kept rising, providing further evidence that consumers are still struggling to pay their bills. The nation's second-largest bank said it wrote down loans on its books by almost $10 billion during the July-September period, up almost $1 billion from the second quarter. The bank also added $2.1 billion to its reserves to cover bad loans, bringing its provision for credit losses to $11.7 billion. The bank's total allowance for loan and lease losses now totals $35.83 billion. Bank of America's results were aided by profit from investment bank Merrill Lynch, including income from bond, stock and currency trading. Its earnings follow the pattern set earlier this week by Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which also reported more loan losses during the third quarter as consumers struggled to keep up with their credit card and mortgage payments. And on Friday, General Electric Co. reported that its GE Capital business, which includes credit cards, saw an 87 percent drop in profits, although it was also weighed down by commercial real estate losses. Together, the reports depict a financial industry that is still deeply troubled.Bank of America said it lost $2.24 billion, or 26 cents per share, after accounting for the preferred dividends of $1.24 billion. That compared with earnings of $704 million, or 15 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue in the quarter increased 33 percent to $26.04 billion.

- NEW YORK – Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s third-quarter earnings more than tripled from the depths of the financial crisis as income from the company's trading operations offset a drop in its investment banking business. Goldman's stock fell 2.5 percent Thursday as investors reacted to the slide in investment banking revenue, the result of a general slowdown in takeover activity. Shares fell $4.71 to $187.57 in afternoon trading. Some profit taking after the better-than-expected results also sent the stock falling, analysts said. Goldman earned $3.03 billion, or $5.25 per share, easily beating analysts' expectations for a profit of $4.24 per share. The bank earned $810 million, or $1.81 per share during its fiscal third quarter last year, which ended in August. During the peak of the credit crisis last fall, Goldman became a bank holding company and changed to calendar quarterly reporting periods. Goldman also had $5.35 billion in compensation expenses during this July-September period. The company said bond, commodities and currency trading buoyed its profits for the second straight quarter. "They're just good traders," said David Easthope, a senior analyst at consulting firm Celent. Trading and investment revenue nearly quadrupled from the third quarter last year and dipped 7 percent from record results in the second quarter. But investment banking revenue, considered the foundation of the company's business, fell to $899 million in the third quarter. The results were 31 percent worse than the similar quarter last year as the credit crisis was worsening and 38 percent worse than the most recent quarter.

- NEW YORK (AP) -- Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is offering struggling lender CIT Group a $6 billion lifeline. In a letter Monday to CIT's board of directors, Icahn is offering a loan to the New York-based lender to small and midsize businesses. He says the loan would save the company $150 million in fees. The move would allow bondholders to avoid voting for a revised debt exchange offer CIT Group proposed late Friday that Icahn says unfairly favors large bondholders. CIT is trying to reduce its near-term debt burden by $5.7 billion as it attempts to stave off collapse. CIT Group's losses have been mounting as its borrowing costs have outstripped its income amid the credit crunch. Shares of CIT are up 16 cents, or 14.3 percent, to $1.28 in morning trading.

- As a billionaire hedge fund manager, Raj Rajaratnam wooed Wall Street for years with his talent for picking high-flying technology stocks. But the spectacularly successful Sri Lanka-born philanthropist built his fortune through lies, according to federal agents who swooped on him for insider trading in New York yesterday. Rajaratnam, a 52-year-old financier ranked by Forbes as the 559th richest man in the world, was arrested alongside five alleged conspirators in a dramatic series of raids by the US department of justice, based on evidence compiled from phone calls intercepted by wire taps. In the largest insider trading case ever to be brought against a hedge fund manager, Rajaratnam was charged with 13 criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy. He is accused of making at least $20m of profit at his US fund, Galleon Group, through illegal tips from inside sources about companies including IBM, Intel, Google and the Hilton hotel chain. He was picked up as he prepared to board a flight from New York's Kennedy airport to London after becoming suspicious, according to prosecutors, that the FBI was on his tail. "He is not a master of the universe," said Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission. "He is a master of the Rolodex." Rajaratnam established Galleon in 1996 after a successful career as an analyst at a US stockbroker, Needham & Co. His firm's funds have produced a remarkable annual return of 22% and have amassed some $6bn under management.
Among those arrested in the same operation were Rajiv Goel, 51, a director in strategic investments for the computer chip maker Intel, and Robert Moffat, 53, a senior vice president at the hardware manufacturer IBM. The technology executives are said to have given Rajaratnam a sneak preview of market-moving events. Goel is accused of passing on tips about an investment by Intel in an internet service provider, Clearwire, allowing Galleon to trade shares at a quick $579,000 profit. Moffat allegedly leaked information about a deal between Intel and a chip maker, AMD. Others charged were Anil Kumar, 51, a director of the management consultancy firm McKinsey, and two executives from a fund management firm, New Castle Funds, named as Danielle Chiesi, 43, and Mark Kurland, 60. Privileged information obtained by the gang included a tip-off from an analyst at the credit rating agency Moody's that the Hilton chain was to be taken private in July 2007. Rajaratnam bought thousands of Hilton shares and made a $4m profit when a private equity firm, Blackstone, bought the firm.
"Greed is not good," said Preet Bharara, the New York federal prosecutor bringing the case. "This case should be a wake-up call for Wall Street." The investigation is the first time US authorities have successfully used court-authorised wire taps to pinpoint insider trading, and it is the largest of its kind ever targeted at a hedge fund. One of those arrested, Chiesi, was allegedly recorded passing on information about AMD with a remark referring to the celebrity home stylist Martha Stewart, who was convicted of insider dealing in 2004.
"I'm dead if this leaks. I really am," said Chiesi, according to the US department of justice. "And my career is over. I'll be like Martha [expletive] Stewart."

- LAHORE, Pakistan – Islamist militants launched coordinated assaults on three police compounds in Pakistan's second largest city Thursday, the latest in a wave of attacks by insurgents bringing the war to the country's heartland ahead of an expected offensive against their Afghan border sanctuary. The dramatic escalation in violence appears to be an attempt by the Taliban- and al-Qaida-led insurgency to seize the initiative from the army and deliver a warning to the U.S.-backed civilian government: Attack us in South Waziristan and we will fight back in your cities. It also discredits Pakistani claims that the Taliban were on the ropes after this year's military campaign in the Swat Valley and the killing of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a U.S. airstrike in August. The United States wants Pakistan's army to launch the operation in South Waziristan to root out militants who use the remote mountainous region as a base for attacks in Afghanistan, where the American war effort is faltering amid spiraling violence eight years after the invasion. Thursday's assaults in Lahore added to a sense of crisis in this nuclear-armed country, now shaken by five major attacks by the Islamic extremists in the last 10 days that have killed more than 150 people — including a 22-hour siege of army headquarters over the weekend. At least 19 people were killed in the Lahore attacks, most of them security officers, along with nine heavily armed attackers. Gunmen in all three attacks carried dried fruit and apparently were preparing to dig in for a long siege, said Rana Sanaullah, the provincial law minister.

- NEW YORK – A mortgage fraud crackdown announced Thursday (October 15, 2009) resulted in the arrests of dozens of people, including six lawyers, seven loan officers and three mortgage brokers in four states. Thirty-one people were arrested in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina. They were among 41 people charged with engaging in mortgage fraud scams that defrauded lenders out of more than $64 million in home mortgage loans. Of the 10 other defendants, one was expected to surrender later Thursday, four were previously charged and five remained at large. Authorities gathering for an afternoon news conference in Manhattan said the crackdown, dubbed "Operation Bad Deeds," was aimed at the failure of gatekeepers in the mortgage industry to act responsibly and legally. "Unfortunately, instead of protecting our financial system, in some cases they abused their positions and joined criminal schemes to steal millions of dollars," said Richard H. Neiman, the superintendent of banks for New York State. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that he found it "especially alarming" that lawyers, loan officers and mortgage brokers treated their professions as a "license to loot banks and profit from other people's pain." Those charged also included an accountant and a residential property appraiser. Authorities said the arrests resulted from a series of investigations conducted by state and local authorities along with federal prosecutors, the FBI, the New York State Banking Department, federal housing authorities, the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Service investigators. Most of the bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges brought against the defendants carry potential prison terms of 20 to 30 years each.

- WASHINGTON – Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using European Southern Observatory telescopes didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400. Six of the newly found planets are several times bigger than Earth, increasing the population of so-called SuperEarths by more than 30 percent. Most planets discovered so far are far bigger, Jupiter-sized or even larger. Two of the newly discovered planets were as small as five times the size of Earth and one was up to five times larger than Jupiter. Astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva said the results support the theory that planet-formation is common, especially with certain type of common stars. "I'm pretty confident that there are Earth-like planets everywhere," Udry said in a Web-based news conference from a conference in Portugal. "Nature doesn't like a vacuum. If there is space to put a planet there, there will be a planet there."

- KABUL – U.N.-backed fraud investigators on Monday threw out nearly a third of President Hamid Karzai's ballots from Afghanistan's disputed August election, setting the stage for a runoff. The rulings dropped Karzai's votes to 48 percent of the total, below the 50 percent threshold needed for him to avoid a runoff with his top challenger, according to calculations by independent election monitors. It was unclear, however, whether the Afghan-led Independent Election Commission would accept the findings of the fraud panel and announce a runoff. Karzai's spokesman said it was too soon to make a judgment based on the figures released by the panel. That could mean a further delay in forming a new government that the U.S. believes is needed to help combat the growing Taliban insurgency. A protracted crisis could also lead to political unrest. "It's going to be incredibly important for the world to see that Afghan leaders are willing to make this process legitimate," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in Washington on Monday. The White House has also said no decision on sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan would be made before the election crisis is resolved — a stance reiterated Monday by the civilian chief of the NATO military alliance. U.S. Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was among a host of international envoys in Kabul on the weekend urging the president to accept the fraud rulings, returned Monday to resume meetings with Karzai, the U.S. Embassy said. Two international officials familiar with the investigation by the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission told The Associated Press that the findings showed Karzai falling below the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff with his chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. An independent calculation by an election monitoring group, Democracy International, showed Karzai with 48.3 percent, or about 2.1 million votes, after more than 995,000 of his votes were thrown out for fraud. Overall, about 1.3 million votes of the more than 5 million ballots cast were voided. Abdullah lost more than 201,000 votes, but his percentage rose to 31.5 percent from 27.8 percent previously.