Mark Cuban is going long

October 8th, 2008 by Mike

He had recently bought about $224,000,000 worth of DIA puts, which he just sold for a huge gain. Now he’s going long:

One thing I know is that starting tomorrow the shorts can get back in the market. I love shorts. Short create a foundation of demand for their positions. If a good company gets shorted, whether as a hedge, or because someone thinks the company will underperform, that short will need to be covered at some point. If the company outperforms, or the demand for the stock exceeds the supply, the price of the stock, like any baseball card, iwll go up. Which will provide incentive for the shorts to cover sooner than later. When that happens, the stocks go up. Shorts are good for the market. They make good companies go up in price.

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October 5th, 2008 by Mike

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October 4th, 2008 by Mike

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October 2nd, 2008 by Mike
  • Netflix API Launches – I desperately want an iphone app that allows searching/adding to instant queue
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October 1st, 2008 by Mike

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September 30th, 2008 by Mike

469 stocks closed at all-time lows today

September 29th, 2008 by Mike

That’s right – 469 new all-time lows on a day when the DOW drops a record 777 points. I think this is an all-time high for the all-time lows (since I’ve been keeping track, two years ago). Yes, it blew away the old record of 196 set on August 16 2007. Some notable new all-time lows are Wachovia (WB), which dropped 81% today. Sovereign Bancorp Inc. (SOV) which dropped 72%. (Isn’t a reason to promote shorting is because it helps to stabilize crashes with short covering?) Nortel Networks Corp. (NT) also made a new low, as well as Blockbuster Inc. (BBI), CROCS Inc. (CROX), and many others.
But how many all-time highs? Well, it was an all-time low for the all-time highs with only 12. Some of these are short ETFs, too, which doesn’t really count. Congratulations to all shareholders of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. (HE), which made a new all-time high today. Also, Vital Signs Inc. (VITL), which “engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of airway management products for the anesthesia, respiratory/critical care, interventional cardiology/radiology, and sleep disorder markets worldwide,” is doing fantastic.

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September 29th, 2008 by Mike

Eat 6.7 grams of chocolate per day for optimal health

September 29th, 2008 by Mike

That is about half a dark chocolate bar per week (and it must be dark chocolate). Anything more and the health benefits disappear.

Researchers wanted to sweep all the doubts away. They took into account that chocolate lovers might consume other healthy food too, as wine, fruits and vegetables. Or they might exercise more than others people do. So the observed positive effect might be ascribed to other factors but not to cocoa itself. “In order to avoid this- researcher says- we “adjusted” for all possible “confounding” parameters. But the beneficial effect of chocolate still remained and we do believe it is real”.

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September 28th, 2008 by Mike