Posts Tagged CNBC

Mark Cuban Sells Facebook Stake; ‘It was Gambling Money’ – MarketBeat – WSJ

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Facebook, Wall Street on July 1, 2012


 

Mark Cuban Sells Facebook Stake; ‘It was Gambling Money’

By Steven Russolillo

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban’s foray into Facebook didn’t last long.

The billionaire investor and Dallas Mavs owner sold his stake in the social network, less than a month after initially disclosing he had built a position in the company following its bungled initial public offering.

“I took my hit, my thesis was wrong,” Cuban said in a CNBC interview. “I thought we’d get a quick bounce just with some excitement about the stock. I was wrong, and when you’re wrong you don’t wait, you just get out. I took a beating and left.”

Late last month, Cuban disclosed on his blog that he had snatched up 150,000 shares of Facebook in three separate purchases. He said he bought 50,000 shares at $33, another 50,000 at $31.97 and 50,000 at $32.50. All three investments are currently underwater. Facebook today is up 4.2% at $31.26, but still down about 18% from its $38 IPO price.

At the time, Cuban described the move as “a trade, not an investment” and compared it to trading baseball cards.

“It was gambling money, to be honest with you,” he said on Monday. “Any time you try to time the market, you get what you deserve. Sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you’re wrong. This time I was wrong.”

Facebook’s trading debut last month was marred by technical glitches on the Nasdaq Stock Market, which left many investors confused over whether their orders to buy and sell shares had been fulfilled. The stock’s steep decline over its first month of trading left it as the worst-performing IPO of $1 billion or more for a U.S.-based company, according to Dealogic.

Cuban says much of the decline is due to basic supply and demand issues. Days before pricing the IPO, Facebook boosted the size of the deal to 421 million shares.

By comparison, LinkedIn issued only 8.4 million shares when it debuted last year. The stock more than doubled durings its first day of trading. ”If Facebook did the same, the stock would be at about $200 right now,” Cuban says.

Cuban also had strong words about the role of high frequency trading in today’s market.

“High-frequency trading has zero place in the market,” he said. “They should get rid of it altogether because it’s an unquantifiable risk that can impact the market in ways that we can’t even define.”

 Mark Cuban Sells Facebook Stake; ‘It was Gambling Money’ – MarketBeat – WSJ.

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Warren Buffett’s 5-Minute Plan to Fix the Deficit – CNBC

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Government on October 26, 2011


By: Alex Crippen
Executive Producer 

Screen grab from CNBC of Warren Buffett in Sun Valley, Idaho

CNBC

Warren Buffett says he could fix the U.S. deficit problem very quickly.

Here’s his not-entirely serious (but not entirely joking either) plan, as told to Becky Quick during this morning’s live interview on CNBC:

“I could end the deficit in five minutes.  You just pass a law that says that any time there’s a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.  Yeah, yeah, now you’ve got the incentives in the right place, right?  (Laughs)

So, it’s capable of being done.  And they’re trying to use the incentive now that we’re going to blow your brains out, America, in terms of your debt-worthiness over time.  And that’s being used as a threat.  A more effective threat would be just to say, ‘If you guys can’t get it done, we’ll get some other guys to get it done.’”

The only problem: the people who would have to pass such a law are the same people who would lose their jobs.

UPDATE:  An attorney in St. Louis, Jarrad Holst, points out by email that there is a way to enact Buffett’s idea without the cooperation of Congress.  Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution , a “Convention for proposing Amendments” is convened when called for by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states.  A proposed amendment would then need to be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states.  If that happens, and it is a very, very big if, Buffett’s deficit plan would become the law of the land.  That process would, however, take more than five minutes.

They covered many other topics.  You can find the full transcript and video clips here on Warren Buffett Watch.

 Warren Buffett’s 5-Minute Plan to Fix the Deficit – CNBC.

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