Author: Patrick McFadden, M2 Global
Covestor model: M2 Global
Beware of a Facebook (FB) top! Ahead of the social network's initial public offering on May 18, there were competing news reports about the level of investor interest and outlook for Facebook. It is refreshing that we can see exactly where people stand on Covestor.com.
Facebook's IPO price was set at $38 per share on May 17 giving it a market value of about $104 billion or in the range of eight times-plus net book value per share post offering. The most recent updates to the S1 also indicated that net operating margins and profit margins may be under pressure. (In the first few days after the social network site's offering, Facebook's stock has performed poorly.)
Surely this makes sense as Facebook's management has hired aggressively and expanded infrastructure to accommodate growth. The issue: The company may be starting to run into the law of large numbers and simply may not be able to continue to grow at the previous pace. Remember, they are banned in China.
Operating leverage will be key for the future price of this stock, but with large number of Facebook users moving primarily to mobile platforms, it will be more difficult for the company to monetize users via display ad-click through. Will Facebook be able to draw an increasing share of the online ad dollars spent by the Fortune 500?
If they can continue to take share from Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), and AOL (AOL), Facebook will be successful. However, much of this success seems to be priced in at anything above 20 dollars per share.
The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) has been saying for months that its database of forward indicators on income and consumption is predicting that we will go back into recession this year.
The S&P 500 index (SPX) has threatened to roll over and has bounced off the 100-day moving average and lower Bollinger Band technical supports a number of times near the 1349 level.
With 200-day moving average at 1275, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is running out of time for a third round of quantitative easing ahead of the Presidential election or more potential trouble in Europe later in the year.
Hopefully our analysis is wrong. However, in the past two plus centuries we have experienced 47 recessions, or one every 4.75 years on average according to ECRI, and the current expansion hasn't gained escape velocity. We think investors need to be prepared, especially since the market has returned years of average performance in the past few months and hedge funds are likely to sell in mass if the clouds gather quickly.
We have stepped back from Mannkind (MNDK). We still believe that there is a significant long-term opportunity, however, the continued inability to address the long-term viability of the capital structure while in Phase III trials for their first product, Afrezza, leaves the stock technically open to gap downs. We have largely avoided the most recent, and are now price vigilant; however we believe the long-term warrants make more sense for large positions given the risk/leverage ratio and the bi-polar nature of an FDA review which may not start for another year.
Diabetes is a complicated disease and is becoming a major global health hazard that will cost hundreds of billions to treat. We believe that Mannkind's Afrezza will fit into the treatment regimen for a wide array of patients in the future.
Nevertheless, we are constantly doing research on the topic and will continue to advise. Those interested in more information can take a look at a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine to see just how complicated the disease is for children in example.
We have initiated a position in Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). Europe is clearly in recession and the stock has given back all of the substantial gains made in 2011 based on a turn to profitability for the company. This is a price based opportunity, albeit, on a company we have some knowledge and experience.
There are only a few companies in the world with the experience and IP to develop Core routers and switches. Even less that can do it with technology they didn't misappropriate. ALU is one and the combination of their position in data centric and wireless technologies far outweighs the legacy costs that are becoming a smaller anchor over time.
Also, the emergence of a left-leaning government in France may actually be a positive for the company. In any event, we view Alcatel as a super cyclical, getting hit by the global slowdown first and hard but with a chance to come out first and hard.
The company's clients in both developed and emerging markets is second to none. Volatility is high, but as the ADR approaches $1.50 the upside potential more than compensates.
Covestor Ltd. is a registered investment advisor. Covestor licenses investment strategies from its Model Managers to establish investment models. The commentary here is provided as general and impersonal information and should not be construed as recommendations or advice. Information from Model Managers and third-party sources deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Transaction histories for Covestor models available upon request. Additional important disclosures available at http://site.covestor.com/help/disclosures. For information about Covestor and its services, go to http://covestor.com or contact Covestor Client Services at (866) 825-3005, x703.
Source: www.benzinga.com
Law Enforcement In Six States And The US Military Honored For Work Involving Missing Or Sexually Exploited Children - Consumer Electronics Net
Source: www.consumerelectronicsnet.com
Law Ministry rules in favour of Health Ministry over no-smoking rules, Information and Broadcasting Ministry to follow rules - indiatoday.intoday.in
Rules restricting onscreen smoking scenes - notified by the Ministry of Health - can't be set aside by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I& B).
This has been conveyed by the Law Ministry in response to clarification sought from it, following disagreements between the Health and the Information and Broadcasting ministries over implementation of the rules, which require running of anti-tobacco messages, scrolls and spots in movies with smoking scenes.
The Health Ministry had notified the rules on October 27 under the anti-tobacco Act. Following this, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry issued directives to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) to defer implementation citing "practical difficulties". The matter was then referred to the Law Ministry.
Since the notification has been issued under Section 31 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 2003, it can only be set aside or stayed by a competent court of law and not by mere administrative instructions or direction, a note by Law Ministry said. The legislation is regarded as 'validly made' and is part of the law of the land until a court decides otherwise. Therefore, all rules are presumed to be valid.
The Health Ministry officials said the two ministries were discussing the matter to reach a solution. The ministry has written to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting asking it to implement the rules. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in Parliament said he had also written to CBFC and Advertising Standards Council of India for implementation of the rules and their monitoring.
He said the rules at present were being followed only to a limited extent. The two ministries were trying to minimise practical difficulties faced by the industry to ensure complete implementation of rules.
The two ministries have been at loggerheads over the rules. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has been accused of favouring the film industry over the health of people. Earlier, a note sent to the Health Ministry by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting made it appear that the ministry was never in favour of regulating scenes showing any form of tobacco use in movies.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting states that the Health Ministry's decision to come out with a notification was taken despite the I& B ministry's advice to the contrary.
Source: indiatoday.intoday.in
Ukraine: Draft Law No. 10006 "On Peculiarities Of State Procurement In Single Business Spheres" - Mondaq
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How to arrange your finances after... divorce - Citywire.co.uk
Dealing with the fallout of a divorce is an emotionally painful process, which is why you should give yourself time before making any important financial decisions after the breakdown of a marriage.
Clive Weir, a director at Somerset-based independent financial advice firm Albert Goodman Financial Planning, specialises in helping divorcing couples arrange their finances, and he recommends not rushing into any decisions about money that can wait until a later date.
‘The financial decisions made following a divorce may possibly be some of the most important ones made during a person's lifetime. However, it should always be remembered the considerable stress and upset that the individuals have gone through, and that now may not be an appropriate time for making some or all of these important decisions,’ he said.
Supporting children
However, certain financial decisions may not be able to wait if they concern the welfare of children, particularly maintenance payments.
Weir suggests parents paying maintenance for their children should protect those payments with an insurance policy that will continue to pay out in the event of death or ill-health.
‘A Family Income Benefit policy that provides a continued income stream rather than a lump sum may be more cost-effective,’ said Weir.
He added that the payer of the policy should not think of this as just being another cost from the former partner but a payment for the children, for example to cover the cost of university.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics state that half of marriages end in divorce, and many of those end acrimoniously. But Weir urges couples with children to put their differences aside when dealing with a financial decisions that affect their children.
Pensions split
Splitting a pension is often ‘fraught with problems’, Weir said. When dividing a pension between ex-spouses, a report is prepared by a pensions expert detailing how much each partner can expect to receive – called a ‘pension sharing order’.
However, Weir said ongoing management of the pension is needed to ensure the outcome of the pension is in line with what they expect.
‘Often at the time of divorce a lot of time and trouble is taken to calculate the split of the pension pots to provide equality at retirement, often with a detailed report being prepared by a pensions expert. These reports by their very nature are based on various assumptions such as investment returns, inflation rates and future annuity rates,’ he said.
‘Having received a pension sharing order, and perhaps with still a number of years to go until retirement, it is important that the recipient of the pension sharing order continues to seek the support of an experienced pensions qualified financial planner to implement a pension sharing, to monitor the future actual outcomes against these assumption to maintain and adjust the recipient’s expectations.’
Source: citywire.co.uk
Minister opens East Kent Access Road - Kent Online
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East Kent Access Road during construciton, from Minster to Pegwell
An £86m road is to be officially opened today by local transport minister Norman Baker.
The front bencher will join Kent County Council leader Paul
Carter and South Thanet MP Laura Sandys to officially open the East
Kent Access Road.
Its completion aims to help support economic growth and create jobs
across the eastern part of the county.
It also means better transport links to such sites as Manston
Airport; the Discovery Park on the former Pfizer
site, Eurokent - a mixed-use site - and Manston Business
Park.
Eurokent and Manston business parks are joint initiatives
between Kent County Council and Thanet District Council that have
the potential to deliver 550 homes and 4,000 jobs.
The new road was built by Kent County Council with £81.25 million
funding from the Department for Transport and £5.75 million from
KCC.
Tuesday, May 22 2012
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hsdeal wrote:
Great news... now we just need Thanet Council to ignore the NIMBYs and back Manston.
23 May 2012 9:22 AM
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Source: www.kentonline.co.uk
A 3 minute law degree? Clever but no mention of Eddie Stobart barristers - The Guardian
The ongoing legal education and training review (LETR) is expected to lead to the biggest shake-up of UK law study for decades, potentially dramatically cutting the time it takes to qualify as a lawyer. But few expect the review panel to sanction anything as radical as Birkbeck University's new "three minute law degree".
Inspired by the pop-up bars and clubs that have sprung up around in the arty south London district of Camberwell, where the event was held, the quirky course promises to get students thinking like lawyers and become "creative problem solvers." Not, of course, that it confers upon its graduates the right to practise – although they do get a degree certificate, as I found out last week when I went along and successfully completed the programme.
It began with each of the students being handed a copy of the fictional Stop and Search Act 1986, which we were required to analyse before answering some quick-fire comprehension questions about who "Constable Alan" could stop and search. Lesson one: applying the law to the facts.
Moving swiftly on, a second Birkbeck lecturer jumped to her feet and began a description of European law "in five simple steps". One student was required to play a Spanish sex toy importer. I was assigned the role of English sex toy manufacturer attempting to protect his turf against cheap imports. Lesson two: there's no discrimination allowed between citizens of different EU members states, and a bunch of other European law principles rapidly acted out under similar role play scenarios.
For reasons of accuracy and truth, I should mention at this point that considerably more than three minutes had elapsed by the time we got round to lesson three – about 25 to be precise. But hey ho. That's still pretty fast in traditional degree length terms.
Had we been following the Abu Qatada/Theresa May catgate/Prisoner votes stories?, human rights law professor Bill Bowring asked us by way of introduction to the third and final act of the show. "Kind of," we replied. Mercifully, Bowring opted against singling out individuals to interrogate, instead embarking upon the sort of clear, unpretentious explanation of these cases found in the articles of my esteemed colleague Joshua Rozenberg.
And that was it: 39 minutes in total (not including questions at the end). All in all, a pretty impressive concentration of the essence of what it means to study law. The minds of the architects behind the course were doubtless focused by their three minute pledge, even if it lay in tatters by the end. Certainly, it gave a more authentic insight into the law than Silk, the BBC legal drama that returned for a second series last week, enraging legal professionals throughout Britain with its unfaithfulness to procedure and tendency to glamorise legal life.
But then Birkbeck's clever little law degree – whose purpose, let's not forget, is the highly commercial one of getting bums on seats of the university's real law degree – rather glossed over the unsexy direction in which parts of the legal profession appear to be heading following recent deregulation, the most recent instalment of which has seen the company behind Eddie Stobart lorries launch a barrister arm.
Still, I'd have relished the opportunity to attend such a course before I made the decision to convert to law via the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) from an English Literature degree eight years ago. Now, at a time when students are to be required to shell out much more money to go to university, tasters like this are going to be an important part of the process of helping them make the right decisions.
Alex Aldridge is the editor of Legal Cheek
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
As Student Loan Default Rates Rise, Is the Law School Bubble Bursting? - US News and World Report
Here at the Student Loan Ranger, we recently read about Educational Credit Management, a Minnesota nonprofit that is earning commissions of up to 31 percent for collecting on defaulted student loans. Seven of their employees earned more than $400,000 in 2010, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ironically, we just got an E-mail from a woman who defaulted on her federal student loans and is struggling to rehabilitate them. Like so many borrowers we talk to, she genuinely wants to pay back her student loans but is struggling to do s.
[Explore your options to manage student loan debt.]
As the exorbitant pay at Educational Credit Management indicates, she's not alone. As we've pointed out before, default rates have continued to rise in this bad economy; the fiscal year 2009 national student loan cohort default rate is 8.8 percent, almost two percentage points higher than the previous year. Delinquency rates are even higher.
She's also not alone in finding that defaulting subjects people to what law school professors might call a parade of horribles that are all too real. Defaulting on federal loans can result in seizure of tax refunds, garnishment of wages, and the taking of a portion of Social Security payments without a court order.
And, as the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) recently reported in Borrowers on Hold: Student Loan Collection Agency Complaint Systems Need Massive Improvement, borrowers lack an accessible way to lodge complaints when problems do arise. Private lenders can't go as far, but defaulting on private loans will still be very unpleasant.
We aren't consumer protection attorneys and don't give out personal legal or financial advice, but there are resources that can help, such as Student Loan Borrower Assistance, a site run by the NCLC.
Hopefully even periodic readers of this blog also know how important it is to take out federal student loans whenever possible and to utilize their borrower protections, such as income-driven repayment plans and hardship deferments, to avoid default. These are proactive steps that can make sure the Educational Credit Managements of the world will not be profiting off your pain.
[Find out how to begin paying back student loans.]
In other news, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which administers the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), has raised its testing fee from $139 to $160. Why? Because of the significant decline in the number of LSAT test takers over the last couple of years.
As you can see in this chart from the Law School Admission Council, the number of test takers fell by 9.6 percent in the 2010-2011 cycle, and then a whopping 16.2 percent in 2011-2012. Only 129,958 people took the LSAT in 2011-2012, the lowest number since 2000-2001. And this is coming off a recession-driven all time high of 171,514 in 2009-2010. Not surprisingly, law school applications are down by almost 11 percent.
The author of the LSAT Blog: Ace the LSAT points out that some of the decline is driven by policy changes implemented by LSAC. But the Student Loan Ranger tends to agree with them and others that a big driver in this decline is the word is getting out about the stagnant legal job market and the difficulty law school graduates have dealing with their staggering burden of student debt. (The burden can exceed $200,000 for those who have to rely on loans to pay the full cost of tuition and living expenses.)
[Find out how to get more law school financial aid.]
In the short run, this will make law school less competitive for new applicants. Unfortunately, it won't do much to help the prospects of the law students graduating into an oversaturated legal market over the next few years.
Ultimately, we don't know if this decline is the sound of a law school bubble bursting—much less if it is a harbinger that the trillion dollars in student debt is a bubble that is about to burst—but we'll be watching closely.
We do know that you should consider cost when choosing a college or graduate school and control your spending. You can also download our Educational Debt Manual, keep up with the latest news by following us on Facebook and Twitter (use the #studentdebthelp hashtag), and attend one of our free student debt webinars.
Isaac Bowers is a senior program manager in the Communications and Outreach unit, responsible for Equal Justice Works' educational debt relief initiatives. An expert on educational debt relief, Bowers conducts monthly webinars for a wide range of audiences; advises employers, law schools, and professional organizations; and works with Congress and the Department of Education on federal legislation and regulations. Prior to joining Equal Justice Works, he was a fellow at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP in San Francisco. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Source: www.usnews.com
