Taxing manipulators

by BlatantNews.com
Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street
[Via Blog Maverick]

Today was a brutal day on Wall Street. Through no fault of investors.

Today was brutal because of traders and financial engineers who trade on every piece of data . Those that work from quantitative formulas that drive trades based on data input. Not a single one of them acts like a shareholder. And that is the reality of the stock market.

The market is no longer driven by shareholders. The market is driven by formulas that drive trades.

So what should the government do ?

Tax every single share of stock that is bought and sold 25 cents per transaction. One quarter. If you buy a share of stock, your brokerage pays a 25c tax. If you sell a share, your brokerage pays a 25c tax. 1 share, 100 million shares. Its 25 cents per share.

Of course the tax will be paid for by those of us who are buying and selling stocks. So what? Here is the reality. If you are a true investor. Someone who wants to own a share of stock in a company you believe in, then its an amount that is not going to impact your investment decision making process. You bought those shares to be a shareholder.

If you dont think the company you are buying is worth at least a quarter more than what you are paying , why are you buying shares ?

[More]

If the rumors are true. there was a huge drop in the market yesterday because a trader hit the wrong key. Some stocks lost over 90% of their value during this apparently accidental but possibly manipulative event.

Here is pure speculation regarding how someone could make a large amount of money in this confusion. I wonder if it was possible.

Anyone can set up buy orders at a set price. These get automatically tripped when that price is reached,

So, during this ‘manipulative event’, the prices of many stocks dropped over 90%. You could have completed a buy order for 10 cents. Then when things got back to normal, you could have sold those shares for $40 or more a share. (Using Accenture as an example.)

Of course, the exchanges look for things like this and canceled a lot of orders. But, they have to pick some limit because they do not want to cancel all orders. So the NASDAQ set a level of 60%. Buy orders that were 60% below the price at 2:30 PMwill be canceled.

But that also means that anyone who was within 60% of the price will get to complete the transaction.

Nasdaq’s cancellation threshold of 60 percent meant that trades in Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., which fell as much as 37 percent for the biggest intraday drop in the Dow industrials, would stand. The world’s largest consumer products company said stock trades that pushed its shares down were probably an error.

So, if someone happened to know that a ‘mistake’ might be made, they could put in buy orders for AAPL for 220, which was at 247 at 2:30. Since it dropped to 216 at 2:44, those trades would have gone through.

That someone could have sold those shares later in the day for 245 or higher. $25 per share. 10% profit for a few hours of holding.

I would hope that the SEC is looking into this really carefully. Sure this might have been an accident this time but it sure indicates the possibility of manipulating the system. The cheats could have moved their ill-gotten gains and themselves to a nice tax haven by the time their malfeasance was found. How tempting would making millions on a typo really be?

Perhaps if there was a tax like this, the trading organizations would be a little more careful in their oversight during these sorts of events. Maybe there would not be the need for so many billions of shares to be traded by manipulators.

Possibly not. But it would be a start.

HTML5 is God

by Stoned59

Scribd in HTML5
[Via Daring Fireball]

Using their new HTML5 document presentation technology to explain their new HTML5 document presentation technology.

[More]

(Apologies to Eric Clapton) This is one of the coolest and most useful things I have seen yet for HTML5. I’ll have to see just how well this works on the iPhone and iPad. But on my laptop in both Firefox and Safari it works well. I love being ale to easily search and highlight.

My favorite iPad apps so far

by blakespot

After almost 2 weeks, I find myself really drawn to a couple of apps I use all the time.

As I wrote earlier, I spend time using the IMDB app while watching TV. I look at Wikipedia a lot but find that their app is not as useful on the iPad as using the website. So I guess I will look around for some good wikipedia readers, although the view from their website is pretty nice.

Goodreader is becoming a favorite, although I am still fumbling around trying to figure out how to get a pdf I downloaded in Safari over to Goodreader. Sometimes a button appears that does this and sometime not. I feel kind of stupid tapping all over the screen to see if it works. I figure it is going to be a simple solution because I have eventually gotten everything over.

And I like its ability to move files over from my computers via WiFi. I wish more programs allowed this.

As for games, I have fond that the money I spent on Mondo Solitaire was worth it. I have gotten really hooked on a couple of different games rather than playing Klondike all the time. It makes for a much more enjoyable experience in the bathroom.

I bought a little Belkin case to carry my iPad in and that also holds the connection kits I bought. But I am looking at other possibilities. This could be fun.

Finding Beavers with Google Earth

World’s largest beaver dam found
[Via Why Evolution Is True]

Discovered only through satellite imagery, since it’s in an inaccessible part of Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada, this bad boy is about 2,790 feet long. More info here.   Of course, there may be bigger ones that haven’t yet been found.

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While the widest hydraulically filled man-made dam in the US is about 10 times wider. I love that this was seen from outer space by satellites. And that they know it has been in place since at least 1990.

Just look at the effect of the flooding on the trees behind the dams. All brown. There are a lot more pictures detailing not only this dam but all of them that can be seen along a specific drainage system. Remarkable to see just what effect beavers have on the ecosystems.

And found using Google Earth.

What the iPad is starting to do to my family

by AskDaveTaylor

What iPads Did To My Family
[Via Chuck's Blog]

This one is most definitely off-topic, but you might find it interesting.

Last Sunday, I broke down and bought a non-3G iPad. I just was too damn curious. Walked into the Apple Store, played with it for 5 minutes, gave them my credit card, and walked out 15 minutes later.

Brought it home, set it up, downloaded some interesting stuff, and had a blast. Big geek fun.

I then went off to work for the week, and left it home. And that’s when things got interesting …

Some Context

I’ve been married for almost 25 years, and have three kids, the youngest of which is 14. We have always had a lot of tech in the house.

A lot.

As I think about it now, we’ve got a fleet of 6 PC desktops of various vintages and three Windows laptops — two of them that actually work well. On the Apple side, we’ve got an iMac and two MacBook Airs of different vintages. We just updated the family NAS server to the most recent Iomega device.

We use Verizon FIOS 20Mb service and can keep it busy. Add in 3 printers, three separate wireless domains to cover the house, a few thingies that connect between the TVs, stereos and the in-house tech, countless MP3 players and USBs, gaggles of cables, Harmony remotes and — yes — you could say that we have a decent amount of tech in my family.

Having all this stuff around is an indulgence of mine. My 16 year old son is in charge of first-level tech support. I get the really hard stuff, like fixing rootkit problems, or debugging dodgy hardware.

And then I brought home the iPad.

The Initial Reaction

My wife and kids summed it up in 30 seconds. “Oh no, Dad bought another toy“. “Why do we need something else with a CPU in it?”. “What does it replace?“. And so on.

Within four hours, my wife was playing with the photo app, and sending pictures to people — she’d be meaning to do so for a while. Tap, tap, tap. She was doing that from the back porch with a frosty adult beverage to complement the activity.

She was smiling.

That fun was followed by an extended Facebook session (she’s a big fan, I don’t use it). Tap, tap, tap. This was lying on the couch with a tennis match on. More smiles.

She left it on the table, and my 14 year old daughter (the artist in the family) started playing with an Autodesk illustrator app I had downloaded. Tap, tap, tap.

“Dad, this is cool”. Tap, tap, tap. “Look at this!” My email is now filling up with her drawings.

My college daughter is home from school. Late that night, she grabbed it and ran up to her room. Tap, tap, tap. “Dad, I want one“. “You do know, there’s wi-fi everywhere on campus — this would be perfect“.

Are you starting to get the picture?

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Our family is a little behind Chuck when it comes to tech. I’m the main support guy. We have one desktop Mac that will act as our server (movie, photo, etc.) once I get my act together. I’m planning on getting a blue-ray player that will also download Netflix. We have normal DSL service but I am looking at perhaps getting FiOS in as they have upgraded the neighborhood.

But we do have an entire family that watched TV with a laptop. Few programs hold our entire attention but we all sit on the sofa with our favorite programs and our Macbooks.

My wife is usually checking out things to buy for her crafting business. My son will be on Facebooks or playing games. I’m checking out who starred in what or where I saw that actress before

“Oh, Lucy Davis was in the original Office in Britain and look, she is married to Owain Yeoman, who was born in Wales” I said last night as we watched the Mentalist on our DVR.

Except I said it while using the IMDB app on my iPad. A month ago it would have been from my laptop but now I sit with my new toy.

And interacting with something like the IMDB app is much more fun and easier than doing it through the browser. That is because IMDB has created an app designed explicitly for my device, rather than the necessary generic form of the Web. So it loads faster, I get to important information faster and thus have a better experience.

It is nice for me right now because my wife is still exploring the wonders of ordering stuff online while watching TV and my son still does not really understand the iPad because he is more interested in Flash games right now. They have not really sat down with Dad’s new toy yet.

I know it is only a matter of time. They just have to see the possibilities. I’m not sure I will help them though. I like having the iPad to myself.

Like I said, we are a little slower but I think we are on the same trajectory. It may just take a bit of time.