[mrfreetruth]

I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. All I can see is stories about BBRY being bought out for $12 - $13 per share [BOX][/BOX]

Lol don't those Americans wish. BlackBerry will be sold for well over $18 book value. I hope BlackBerry forms partnerships with Asian companies as BlackBerry needs to look to the future and not the US past. At worse watsa and Canadian pension plans will take BlackBerry private and again for prices no less then $18 book value. American media us more comedy or propaganda?

Posted via CB10

[BergerKing]

[rarsen]

Happy Birthday CJ.

Don't know if this article was previously circulated:
Internet of Everything to generate profit of $613bn in 2013 | SmartPlanet

And for those worried about hackers exploiting weakness of Internet-connected home appliance or system—such as an Internet-connected door locks—could think of a cellphone brand known for its security .

[leafs123]

At least one reporter gets it.

Michael Kane

[cjcampbell]

Thanks for the B-Day wishes guys... my head hurts a little but I've now got a smile on my face

[Bilaal]

Happ Birthday, CJ. Sit back and enjoy the finer things in life.

Posted via CB10

[neteng1000]

Thanks for the B-Day wishes guys... my head hurts a little but I've now got a smile on my face

Still shaking the cobwebs from last evenings partying?

Posted via CB10

[silversun10]

Halted again, Now What?

[silversun10]

Halted again, Now What?

oh wait that might be a Stockwatch issue, they show a halt for every stock i look up now

[bungaboy]

Hold your nose and read with disdain.

JPMorgan ex-workers charged in 'London Whale' loss

Associated Press
August-14-13 8:46 PM GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Two former JPMorgan Chase & Co. traders falsified bank records to try to cover up trading losses that were spiraling out of control, prosecutors said Wednesday in a criminal case that raises fresh questions about whether Wall Street learned its lessons from the 2008 financial crisis.

Javier Martin-Artajo, 49, and Julien Grout, 35, and their co-conspirators were accused of marking up the market value of an investment portfolio to hide the fact that it was plummeting in value. The portfolio eventually sank into an eye-popping $6 billion loss attributed to Bruno Iksil, a trader who became known as the "London Whale" for his location and the supersized bets he made.

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, hinted that the misconduct was not just the work of a couple of rogue traders, but was systemic in a bank that failed to keep adequate watch over its traders. He said companies need to pay closer attention to the cultures they create.

"This was not a 'tempest in a teapot,' but rather a perfect storm of individual misconduct and inadequate internal controls," Bharara said at a news conference — a jab at JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who once dismissed the controversy around the trading loss with that flip phrase.

The "London Whale" controversy has burdened the bank for months, but the new charges shift the narrative of the tale. Iksil, whose name has long been associated with the embarrassing loss, tried to raise questions about how his colleagues were recording the trades, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors also portray bank employees as knowing exactly what they were doing, not workers simply overwhelmed by complicated systems — a defense banks have mounted for missteps in the financial crisis and its aftermath.

John Alan James, executive director of the Center for Global Governance, Reporting and Regulation at Pace University's Lubin School of Business in New York, called the case a milestone.

"They're shaking a big stick at the biggest bank in America," he said.

Lawyers for Grout and Martin-Artajo, both based in London when they worked at JPMorgan, did not return calls for comment. Martin-Artajo is a citizen of Spain and Grout is a citizen of France, which could potentially complicate the prosecution.

Bharara said his office had contacted the two men's lawyers. "We are hopeful they will do the right thing and present themselves in the United States," he said.

Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor who is a criminal defense attorney at Wilk Auslander in New York, said Martin-Artajo and Grout might try to mount a defense by placing the blame on their superiors.

"It would be a full and complete defense here that these people were transparent" to superiors who determined what the bank said publicly, Epner said.

Martin-Artajo supervised JPMorgan's trading strategy in London, and Grout, his subordinate, was in charge of recording the value of the investments each day. They were charged criminally with conspiracy to falsify books and records, commit wire fraud and falsify Securities and Exchange Commission filings. They also were charged separately in an SEC civil complaint.

The charges focus on an investment portfolio whose components were supposed to be marked at their market value each day as best as the bankers could approximate. The charges say that from March to May 2012, following Martin-Artajo's direction, Grout began using prices for the portfolio "deliberately chosen to minimize losses rather than represent fair value," the SEC said.

Iksil, uncomfortable with Martin-Artajo's instructions, asked Grout to keep a spreadsheet to track the difference between the manipulated prices and the actual prices, according to the Justice Department's charges.

At one point, after Iksil reported a higher loss than Martin-Artajo wanted, Martin-Artajo told Iksil in a phone call, "This only creates — it just creates more tension, you understand? It's not going to help me as much, right?" Finally, Martin-Artajo told Iksil, "I think that you're an honest guy, you know. It's just that, I did not want you to do it this way."

In April 2012, media reports publicized the large bets wagered by the portfolio, the SEC noted. The first London trading day after the reports surfaced, the portfolio fell in value by hundreds of millions of dollars, it said. Still, Martin-Artajo directed Grout to disclose to management only about $6 million in daily losses, a figure Grout put out but replaced later in the day with a loss of $395 million, the SEC said.

A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.

The "London Whale" accusations have been a heavy burden for JPMorgan, tarnishing its reputation as a stellar risk manager and the favorite of Washington lawmakers. It has been an embarrassment for a bank that's used to coming out ahead of its peers, forcing it to restate earnings and face bruising hearings in front of Congress.

Wednesday's charges are hardly the end: The Federal Reserve, U.S. banking regulators and the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, among others, are also looking into the trading loss.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who heads a Senate subcommittee that investigated the loss and found that key JPMorgan executives made inaccurate public statements about it, hinted Wednesday that ultimate responsibility may not end with the two London traders.

"It is important that this matter be thoroughly investigated and that all those who are determined to be responsible be held accountable," Levin said in a statement.

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, has so far weathered the storm. Last year, even with the trading loss, the bank pulled in its biggest annual profit ever and its stock is up by a third from its pre-"London Whale" price.

The bank has also gotten rid of top executives and taken back bonuses of some who were responsible. It has acknowledged mistakes but has been adamant that it did not try to mislead investors.

Prosecutors also announced Wednesday that they had agreed not to prosecute Iksil. The deal requires him to cooperate fully with law enforcement.

Bharara, explaining Iksil's "rare" non-prosecution deal, said of the ex-trader: "I don't think you would call him blameless."

But, Bharara added, he "did sound the alarm more than once."

[m0de25]

At least one reporter gets it.

Michael Kane

... Except, how in the world is this possible 'headfake' supposed to sell more units? If that was indeed their 'squirrel call' to shift attention, it pretty much killed unit sales and halted developer support for the foreseeable future, at the same time.

[bungaboy]

At least one reporter gets it.

Michael Kane

Thanks for posting this. Very much worth the read!

[cjcampbell]

Still shaking the cobwebs from last evenings partying?

Posted via CB10

No cobwebs here.... pea soup fog is where I'm at

[Tinomane]

... Except, how in the world is this possible 'headfake' supposed to sell more units? If that was indeed their 'squirrel call' to shift attention, it pretty much killed unit sales and halted developer support for the foreseeable future, at the same time.

I agree this is going to hurt unit sales even more bc consumers won't want to buy a phone from a company that may not even exist a year from now.

The one good thing this has done is gotten investors to evaluate BBRY and its assets more objectively. Funny that absolutely nothing has changed from a cpl of weeks ago, but analysts are raising their price targets.

[bungaboy]

So. Where is the outrage? Where are the screaming headlines?

[B]Microsoft restores Outlook after outage[/B]

Technical difficulties started Wednesday morning

The Associated Press
Posted: Aug 14, 2013 11:56 AM ET
Last Updated: Aug 14, 2013 8:36 PM ET

Microsoft has fixed a problem that prevented some people from getting their email on Outlook.com.

Service had been restored on the Web shortly after 2 p.m. PT Wednesday, according to an update on Microsoft's website. That's more than seven hours after Microsoft first acknowledged that some people had been locked out of their Outlook.com accounts.

Some Outlook.com users trying to check email on mobile devices might still be encountering trouble that engineers are trying to clear up, according to a Microsoft statement.

Earlier in the day, some people also could not retrieve their files stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive service. But that problem had been resolved by late morning PT.

Microsoft blamed the breakdown on an unexplained "incident." The Redmond, Wash., company said only a small number of users were affected, but didn't provide further specifics.

Even if only a small percentage of Outlook.com users were cut off, millions of people could have been inconvenienced. Microsoft boasts it has more than 400 million accounts on Outlook.com.

Microsoft Corp. transferred all the users of its other Web email, including those with the hotmail.com and msn.com domains, to Outlook earlier this year as part of its attempt to outshine Google Inc.'s Gmail and Yahoo Inc.'s email.

[greyw0lf01]

The earnings last night out of Lenovo were interesting last night. It pays to be a "known" brand in your home country. The margins there are incredibly thin however. It'll be interesting how they move forward but the CEO was coy (rightfully so) about future m&a opportunities. The news that another android OEM bucks the trend that you can't make money when you don't have to spend a ton on developing the OS.

Back to the daily "grind"... managing the risk... stops raised to see where this goes.

[leafs123]

So. Where is the outrage? Where are the screaming headlines?

I was pretty outraged when service resumed and my inbox was flooded with emails.

[Dapper37]

Great analysis. The only issue is that we don't know if and how often Prem used options to reduce has ACB. I won't be surprised if Prem protected his interest in BBRY by buying puts or selling in-the-money calls.

As a previous member of the board, I don't believe that to be legal!

Posted via CB10

[StormieTwo]

Details
Published on Thursday, 15 August 2013 08:49
Written by Paul Williams
Our morning technical snapshot today' focuses on shares in the two laggards of the global smartphone sector: Nokia and BlackBerry. Which of the two is a more attractive trade?

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) shares ended yesterday 0.99 pct higher at 11.04; futures at 09:10 in London are pointing to an open 0.83 pct higher.

Have markets factored in news of a potential Blackberry sale? We consult the charts to contextualise recent price action in BBRY.

The short term charts (2 to 6 weeks) have geared up nicely for those positioned for further gains.

We note the number of bearish events on the chart are now outweighed by bullish events by a ratio of 2:4.

However, the upward trajectory of the BlackBerry Ltd share price has been compromised following the formation of a bearish Inside Bar at 11.04 registered in yesterday's trading session, this could cool the short-term recovery.

Yet, according to Recognia Inc the short-term resistance level is found at 14.61, so there is still space towards the upside.

The intermediate picture (time frame of 6 weeks to 9 months) is however negative; we see 2 bullish events stacked against 5 bearish events. The two positive signals came on the 12th and 14th of August (Price Crosses Moving Average on the 14th, Head and Shoulders Bottom on the 12th).

Recognia Inc say that those looking to trade BBRY in this timeframe should give consideration for a stop at $9.84 when going long and a stop at $12.71 when going short.

[Dapper37]

Fairfax currently uses swaps on Russell index to hedge their equity portfolio.... currently they are 109% hedged.

Powered by QNX

This makes sense.

Posted via CB10

[m0de25]

I agree this is going to hurt unit sales even more bc consumers won't want to buy a phone from a company that may not even exist a year from now.

The one good thing this has done is gotten investors to evaluate BBRY and its assets more objectively. Funny that absolutely nothing has changed from a cpl of weeks ago, but analysts are raising their price targets.

I think that in general, price targets have raised simply because this type of announcement opens the door to a complete management overhaul (whether private fund /competitor takeover / partnership). In other words, patent X or asset B would be more valuable in the hands of a group that can actually take it to another level. I know that this opinion won't make me popular here, but I don't have confidence in BB's leadership anymore and cannot to give them the benefit of the doubt going forward. I take decisions at face value now, and don't think this latest announcement is anything other than 'we are screwed and need saving'.

I just hope that whatever transpires actually saves the brand and aligns them with their proper niche, and aligns them well without any fuzzy lines. They literally need someone with 'lazer focus' to lead them out of this.

[Soumaila Somtore]

Happy B-Day
I hope you enjoy your day !!

Still shaking the cobwebs from last evenings partying?

Posted via CB10

[Aham1984]

Happy birthday CJ!

I think BBRY is as hungover as you are!

[Bugmapper]

No cobwebs here.... pea soup fog is where I'm at

Happy Birthday... we'll understand if you don't bang the cowbell very hard today.

[rarsen]

Hey bungaboy,

JP Morgan are also additionanlly in the media for activities in the US. For those not following this story, Morgan has recently settled charges with FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) that its “creative” bidding practices represented market abuse (or manipulation) for just over $400 million.
JP Market Manipulation Case and Complexity | The Energy Collective