Naked Hedge Fund

From the Financial Times article:

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday apologised for its role in the financial crisis and pledged $500m – or about 2.3 per cent of its estimated bonus and salary pool for 2009 – over five years to help 10,000 small businesses across the US recover from the recession.

The moves come as Goldman tries to defuse a political and public backlash at its plans to share billions of dollars among top dealmakers after rebounding sharply from the turmoil and earning record profits in the first nine months of the year.

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, told a corporate conference in New York that the bank regretted taking part in the cheap credit boom that fueled the pre-crisis bubble. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Mr Blankfein said. “We apologise.”

Well when you have the SEC busy prepping their resumes and fighting off congressmen its easy to let some things slip by. This could be the case today when the AA ramp up started around 3:30pm right before the close and their surprise “in the black” EPS numbers. You can really see the big gorillas in the last minutes loading up on this with the volume spikes. Im guessing that right about now they are enjoying a nice steak at Luger’s.

One thing that I find funny is that if you look at the Alcoa numbers year over year:

* Q3 revenues are down 34% from last year
* Q3 EPS is down 90% from last year (q3 2008 $0.33 vs q3 2009 $0.08)
* Q3 Profit down 71% from last year
* Stock price last year $14.71 … after hours tonight $14.99

Well I guess we can throw them the ol “the market is forward looking” bit to get the market pumping on this.

Tim Geithner in the hot seat with the Wall Street Journal. Video shows interview with some good questions thrown at him.

Sorry for this rant, but Im sick of everyone in the media concerning themselves with the facts that GS made a ton of money and are going to pay their workers well.

All the conspiracy theories and websites dedicated to such are probably true, but where does it all get you? Lets talk about relevant information and by relevant I mean makes us money.

Looks like someone forgot to boot up the computers today that have been doing the majority of the buying in the markets as of late. Or maybe GS and the boys are starting to feel a little heat for all the manipulation?

A very disturbing coincidence is happening over at the NYSE with regard to program trading. The NYSE has moved to decommission the requirement of involved firms (such as GS, MS, JPM) to report their DPTR (Daily Program Trading Report).