From Climateer Investing

The content below is cut and pasted from Brandon O"keefe's Climateer Investing blog at http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/ . I don't why I did that. It had stuff on Facebook, which is my obsession for the day. I guess that is why I did it. Poor me. Wednesday, May 30, 2012 A Look at Options on Facebook Common (FB) Sometime headline writing is challenging. If I had gone with a simple "Facebook Options" folks might think we were talking about the Facebook phone or the Facebook browser, charging for Facebook in New Zealand or Zuckerberg's $0.00 tip on a $40 tab. So I ask myself "What would Henry Blodget do?" and instead I use a clumsy locution to avoid a bait-and-switch. In pre-market action the stock is down a few pennies at $28.77. First up, Barron's: Bears Draw Blood on Facebook's First Options Trading Day As the stock for the first time dipped below $30 midday Tuesday, options investors are betting it can fall further. Facebook's stock now has something in common with Mark Zuckerberg, the company's founder. Both are under 30. And it appears that option investors think that the stock can sink further. Almost from the moment the options on Facebook began trading for the first time Tuesday morning, investors actively bought puts that would increase in value should Facebook (ticker: FB) fall below $30, which it did by noon. Scores of likely scorned stock investors bought puts that were at, or just below, $30, which they financed by selling bullish calls. In essence, the sophisticated strategy offers one of the first signs from Wall Street that Facebook's botched stock offering has painted a target on Facebook's stock that bearish traders want to fire away at. In the New York Stock Exchange's options market, for example, the day's first trade entailed selling 743 June 32 calls, and selling 743 June 30 puts. The strategy -- a short strangle -- indicates that a sophisticated investor believes Facebook's stock will remain under significant short-term pressure and slip below $30. At 28, which also happens to be Zuckerberg's age, the strangle seller indicated he would buy the stock. At that price, Facebook's stock would be 26% below the $38 price the stock was priced at for its initial public offering. The bulk of Facebook's trading action is occurring in options that expire in June and July, which telegraphs another important message to stock investors from the options market. No one is willing to make a long-term bets on the stock even though they can buy or sell Facebook options that expire in January 2014. By focusing on options that expire by July 20, investors are expressing a view that they do not have any confidence pricing Facebook's stock....MORE And from Option Pit: A Breakdown of the New Facebook Options I promise this will be one of the only Facebook options posts I put up over the next few weeks. However, I wanted to make sure that I pointed out a few interesting tidbits about options on facebook that, maybe, the average retail trader might not have noticed. Stuff everyone should know before reading the rest of this piece: Facebook options started at an implied volatility below 60% this morning, while the realized volatility has been closer to 100% in its first week of trading. What does that say about facebook? Not much. The stock is so new, and has been beaten down on its open, that we really don’t know what the volatility will be. My guess though, the stock is going to slow down its free fall, and the volatility will settle in closer to GOOG levels (around 30%) than to ZNGA levels (near 85%). The stock is also hard to borrow right now. While that was likely more of a problem with the stock at 33 than 29, as long as the borrow is hard, the stock will have problems. Keep an eye on that. I think the HTB tag goes away around 26-28 dollars a share as the easy money leaves. In terms of skew: skre.JPG Livevol (r) www.livevol.com As one might expect, the skew is a standard investment skew, with puts seemingly expensive due to the rate of decline. On the other hand, calls seems pretty flat (this could set up well for a bullish fly if/when the stock gets a bounce). It also sets up well for front spreads. Finally, and most interesting is the term structure. fb.jpg Livevol (r) www.livevol.com Notice that June is super bid while July is much cheaper. This implies that there is high demand for gamma in the near term. August is over July as well, as that is an earnings month....MORE Posted by climateer at 6:06 AM "Spain Ejects Clean-Power Industry With Europe Precedent" A few years ago Spain was so flush they were paying, without questions, subsidies to a developer who claimed to be generating electricity at night. With solar. Good times. From Bloomberg: Spanish renewable-energy companies that once got Europe’s biggest subsidies are deserting the nation after the government shut off aid, pushing project developers and equipment-makers to work abroad or perish. From wind-turbine maker Gamesa Corp. Tecnologica SA (GAM) to solar park developer T-Solar Global SA, companies are locked out of their home market for new business. These are the same suppliers that spearheaded more than $69 billion of wind and solar projects since 2004 that today supply more than 50 percent of Spain’s power demand on the most breezy and sunny days. Saddled with a budget deficit more than twice the European Union limit and a ballooning gap between income and costs in its power system, Spain halted subsidies for new renewable-energy projects in January. The surprise move by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy one month after taking office helped pierce investor confidence in stable aid for clean energy across Europe. “They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium,” European Wind Energy Association Chief Executive Officer Christian Kjaer said in an interview. “The wider implication of this is that if Spanish politicians can do that, probably most European politicians can do that.” Spain’s $69 billion of investment in power capacity from 2004 to 2011 was about triple the spending per capita in the U.S. in that period, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Most of the 2012-2013 spending will be for the legacy of projects approved before the aid cuts to wind, solar, biomass and co-generation....MORE Posted by climateer at 5:32 AM Tuesday, May 29, 2012 "Holy Cow! India Is the World's Top Beef Exporter" I thought Holy Cow was just a term used by Harry Caray, FT Alphaville and yours truly.* From the Atlantic: India, homeland of the sacred cow, is on pace to become the world's leading beef exporter in 2012. This graph is based off data from the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service. It forecasts that India, shown in blue, will be ship roughly 1.5 million metric tons of beef, passing reigning export champion Australia. It's a remarkable rise from just three years ago, when the famously bovine-friendly country exported less than half that amount.

Global Warming to Glass Steagall

There's a global warming trend toward Glass Steagall. Now, even Time Magazine is getting down with smash the big banks. How quaint. See:

Time Magazine Promotes Glass-Steagall Option

The continuing publicity and calls for reinstating Glass-Steagall are prominently led by Time Magazine, in a new article, "The Case for Banking Regulation," datelined June 4, by Rana Foroohar, and posted this week in advance.

Time's two-page piece opens by citing the JPMorgan Chase "fiasco," to say that Wall Street interests have lobbied and dictated in Washington, D.C., all along — from Dodd-Frank becoming law in July 2010, to the present — for so-called banks to do anything they choose to.

"Dodd-Frank was supposed to be a way of capturing the spirit of the Glass-Steagall banking law, enacted in 1933... But under constant assault by the banking lobby, Dodd-Frank retreated from that goal, which is why a small but vocal group of economists, politicians and activists are asking whether we shouldn't restore Glass-Steagall, or put in place something like it, as a way of making banking safer. As Senate candidate from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren puts it, 'Banking should be boring, and that's inconsistent with trading.' "

VA Loans and the Environment

Things are rough, but we still have dear old Uncle Sam creating a great environment for veterans with VA loans. That can be a great advantage because with the credit crunch, a lot of people are not getting the loans that they need to buy a home. If you have veteran loan options then you are in the driver seat. You can also get a VA refinancing that can come in very handy. A 1-percent reduction in your interest rate can save you $100 to $600 a month, depending upon how large your mortgage is. Other options to look into is $6,000 of help in financing energy efficient home improvements. That plus tax credits on home insulation and on green energy options could end up being quite financially significant. Fixed interest rates under 4-percent are certainly something that you can get excited about right now, and get to enjoy the benefits for 30 years.

Bad Environment

We have a bad environment of war threats and war games. That includes Obama and his administration's threats against Russia, China, Iran and Syria. Naturally, a reaction by Russia, the other leading nuclear power, has occurred. Will this lead to thermonuclear war?

On the eve of his trip to the United States, where he will meet with Prsident Barack Obama, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev delivered an unequivocal message to Obama and his NATO cohorts, who are threatening to intervene with regime-change operations in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere: Such actions can lead to "full-scale wars, even with nuclear weapons."

Medvedev's warning, delivered at an International Legal Forum in St. Petersburg, comes in the wake of similar warnings issued May 3 by Russian Chief of Staff Nikolai Makarov, that the U.S.-NATO policy of Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe could lead to a Russian pre-emptive strike, and by Medvedev himself last November....

Remarks by Medvedev: "I would like to emphasise that we need to act in unison against such modern global challenges as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, organised transnational crime, drug trafficking, and the threat of natural and man-made disasters. We can achieve this only through the collective efforts of states based on undeviating respect for the supremacy of law. ...

... There have been many recent examples of the concept of state sovereignty being undermined. Military operations against foreign states bypassing the United Nations; declarations of illegitimacy of certain political regimes on behalf of foreign states rather than the people of the country involved and imposing various collective sanctions, again bypassing international institutions, are some of them. This does not improve the situation in the world, while rash military interference in the affairs of another state usually results in radicals coming to power. Such actions, which undermine state sovereignty, can easily lead to full-scale regional wars even—I am not trying to scare anyone here—with the use of nuclear weapons. Everybody should remember this especially when we analyse the concept of state sovereignty." (Emph. added)

Global Affiliate Marketing Warming

Affiliate marketing's easy; But global warming can be nonsense; Is it worth the thing you're doing;

I saw the brand Zac Johnson created; I can say the truth, I was not impressed; Not in the least;

At the top of Ponzi scheme it's hot; But what about Zac Johnson moral rot; Getting affiliate marketing raves; Leaving dupes at bottom in daze;

But oh well, guess I'll leave my blues at home.

Brought to you by:

Affiliate marketing, social spark, global warming debate, Zac Johnson, zacjohnson.com, affiliate marketing raves, and Ponzi schemes. Plus poem tune by Greg Allman, Leave My Blues at Home.

Education and Global Warming

Education can go together with Global Warming, as long as you don't take it seriously. Global Warming Education www.APUS.edu/Environment Online Environmental Science Degree Program. Accredited. Respected. Then you can build your greenie website with Free Website Creation GYBO.com/New-York Creating a website is fast and easy Free from Google to your business! But don't let the thieves steal your pipes with ADT® Home Security www.SecurityChoice.com/Save New Customer Limited Offer! $35.99 ADT® Monitoring Special.

Katrina was Bad News- Gordon Parks Gallery

I saw an art exhibit at the Gordon Parks Gallery at the College of New Rochelle Bronx campus, entitled ”Kamoinge: Revealing the Face of Katrina.” These remarkable photos show the area around New Orleans, Louisiana just after the Katrina hurricane disaster, and several years later. Shown are both the unbelievable devastation after Katrina hit, and the enduring hope of the people in the region. The 2005 photos are an incredible documentary of what destruction. A wrecked church-type of organ shows how the survivors were deprived of important parts of their lives. Likewise, houses were in clearly poor shape, still suffering from flooding in the photo by Frank Stewart “Katrina’s Houses New Orleans 2005.” Viewers see hope amid suffering, with a man holding a sign amid a big pool of mud that his church was coming back, in a photo by Russell K. Frederick, of Rev. Adams, New Orleans 2006. Even if the photo was posed, the sentiment is clear.

Too Little Pollution

You could almost say that there is too little pollution. With the shut-down of the U.S. economy, we import everything. The global warming, if it exists as a man-made phenomenon, is in the other countries like China and India. The environment is being destroyed there, not here. Oh, what is a greenie and an environmentalist to do?

At the turn of this century, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a warning, that "this presently ongoing collapse of the overblown U.S. financial bubble, will be known as, 'The Demise of the Great Importer of Last Resort.'" (December, 2000, published in EIR, January 19, 2001). The EIR report documented how every necessity, from clothing, to nuts and bolts, to machine tools, were increasingly no longer made in the U.S., but the capability to produce was progressively shut down, and the goods—for a time—have come in from abroad. Now, we're at the end of the line.

Over a decade later, the financial bubble has burst, and the extreme degree of import-dependence by the United States marks the fact that there is no functioning U.S. economy. The U.S. economy is dead. Look at a snapshot of a few relevant features:

* CONSUMER NECESSITIES—Today, nearly all general household merchandise in use in the U.S. is made in China. Garments have more varied origins, from Bangladesh to Vietnam, as well as China, India and Ibero-America.

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the U.S. and worldwide, and more than 80 percent of the merchandise it sells in the U.S. is made in China. Target, another big chain, obtains 60 percent of its merchandise in China, for sale in the U.S. Add in the "Dollar Stores" of all kinds, and the near-total extent of imports on this line is clear. In the self-reinforcing process, U.S. manufacturers, facing Wal-Mart as their principal wholesale buyer, went off-shore, for ultra-cheap labor and operations. In Ohio, for example, the process was documented in detail in the 2005 report, AFL-CIO Wal-Mart Campaign, in which brand-name companies quit the U.S.: Sunbeam/Mr. Coffee appliances, Husky bicycles, RCA TV (Thomson Consumer Electronics) and many more.

You can't have the pollution here if you don't make it here.