Goldman Sachs Program Trading

I wrote an article about Goldman Sachs program trading that I hope doesn't create too much controversy for Kapitall.com.  I debated putting it on my own website instead but thought my explanation was pretty balanced.  

In the disclosure section I talk about what I've done since leaving Morgan Stanley as well.

911 For Math

A four year old calls 911 for help with his "take aways". Apparently, his mother couldn't be asked to help him with his subtraction emergency.

AT&T Annual Meeting and Proxy Vote

1.) The ATT Proxy has the election of all 15 directors: This is a complete slate and not staggered. Good. The compensation for being a director of ATT is $284,000. This is a part time job. All of these people have full time jobs doing something else. Normally, I would only vote against the members of the compensation committee if the CEO were overpaid. In this case, the board is overpaid and I have to vote AGAINST all directors. 2.) Ratification of Independent Auditors:

Click to read more ...

Twitter Instead of Face to Face Communication

I'm starting to think that many people use Twitter to communicate when a phone call would do.  A cartoon at Being Five sums it up.

How I Voted My General Electric Proxy

I love proxy season. I wrote about my Coke proxy on Kapitall Backstage. Rather than overwhelm another site with my personal proxy positions, I will post them here.

BOARD STRUCTURE:

General Electric (GE) has a slate of the entire board up for election. This is a good thing; some companies have staggered board appointments to prevent shareholders from replacing the board all at once. This means shareholders have less power and the board doesn't have to respond to takeover offers.

COMPENSATION COMMITTEE:

CEO, Jeffrey Immelt:
Salary:$3,300,000:
Total Compensation:$14,096,603.

Even after all the stock has fallen, I like G.E. and plan to hold the stock. I was going to vote for all the proposed slate of directors unitl I saw the compensation of CEO, Jeffrey Immelt.  Now, I know the guy has a tough job managing over 300,000 employees, but this has been a tough year for everyone. Shouldn't it have been a tough year for Immelt too? And this is not to mention all ther perqs. Private Jet, apartments, security etc. I don't blame him for getting all he can out of the board, so I'll blame the board's compensation committee. Thus, I voted FOR all the board members except the compensation committee. Members of the GE compensation committee are as follows: Andrea Jung, Ralph Larsen, Sam Nunn and Douglas Warner III.

GENERAL CORPORATE GOVERNANCE:

The other shareholder resolutions all concerned corporate governance that concerned greater management accountability to shareholders: I voted for all of them except for an independent study of a breakup of GE. I think GE should not be broken up and an independant study would be a waste of time. I'm sure management and the board consider a breakup every year.

The company does an excellent job of communicating with shareholders via their website. The GE 2008 proxy statement can be found in the investor relations section of the ge.com.

Disclosure: I own GE. I plan to continue to hold it. I've bought GE for a few family members' IRAs. I am short 10 strike calls against one-tenth of my GE position.

How I Voted My CocaCola Proxy

I wrote on the Backstage section of Kapitall.com about proxy voting.  I also just happened to include my own personal votes on directors as well as several shareholder initiatives at CocaCola (KO).

Disclosure: I own Coca Cola Inc (KO).  I drink Diet Coke when I cannot find coffee.

Barney Frank Sounds Like An Emerging Market Minister

Barney Frank's comments remind me of the kind of comments I heard back in the 1990's regarding foreign capital inflows to emerging economies. Countries like Brazil, Thailand, Korea and Chile were very nervous about fickle foreign capital actually hurting financial stability and would rather not have it even if that meant increasing the cost of capital.

Goodbye Godaddy

For the last three years I have been using Godaddy to host my personal website.  I have also been using their blog content management system.

Why I'm leaving the GoDaddy Quickblog:  

- Multiple passwords to remember.
- No flexibility to customize the headers.
- Limited templates that force usage.
- If users sigh up to be on a mailing list I cannot see who they are.
- Zero support
- Random changes to formats have occurred when there is a turnover.

Reasons why I'm switching to Squarespace.

- It's what I'm using at Kapitall.com to write news, market opinions and the company blog.
- Squarespace has much better customization
- Squarespace has customer support and it's quick
- Squarespace offices and my office at Kapitall are in the same building in Soho.
- After using it for Kapitall, I found that Squarespace is very resilient.
- Really easy blog import and export functions 

Disadvantages:

- At $8.00 a month for the basic package it costs more than Godaddy at $4.99.  
- Squarespace is young but given that I know they have been cash flow positive since inception I'm not worried about them going anywhere. This is offset by the easy export function, if they have problems I can just export to WordPress, TypePad or Blogger and keep going.
- I cannot import my old entries from the Godaddy Quickblog.
- Since it is new, it does not seem to support of the groovy functionality for instant exporting from tools.  (more on this as I test the "blog this" on my social net work sites. 

I haven't changed the DNS unt

Patents

Funny things people send you when they are doing Web Stalking.  A friend found a patent that Morgan Stanley filed while I was there.  Technically, John Armstrong and I are the inventors but Morgan Stanley owns the patent.  I've never been listed as an inventor before.

How Lehman Collapse Made Me Thankful and Changed My Life

I had just gone to the doctor with Natalie. She had to have blood drawn and was very nervous about getting some blood drawn. I met her there to help her relax. I didn't know what to do so I told her every joke I knew for 45 minutes in the waiting room. She walked me back to my Soho office and on the way, we saw a cyclist killed in the very same intersection I ride through every day. The next day she asked me why I didn't say anything to her about the Lehman collapse. Even though I left Lehman three years earlier, she knew I'd lost all my executive compensation, pension, stock and my other investments were down my almost half. Basically, my financial future changed forever. "In didn't seem relevant at the time. In the end, what I lost didn't seem to make much difference relative to what that bicycle messenger lost that day."

Click to read more ...