Finance Shorts 22/08/06

Finance Shorts 22/08/06

*It's been a busy week in [http://moneyscience.org/tiki/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=4|hedge fund news]. *Robert Merton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and co-founder of the defunct hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, [http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/17/bloomberg/bxshake.php|shut down] his firm's latest fund after three months because it did not raise enough money. *The US stock market Nasdaq will not shy away from [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5270326.stm|a price war] if its bigger rival, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) cuts prices, a report says. *[http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1854587,00.html|Only four chief executives in the FTSE 100 went without a bonus last year], as companies increasingly rely on the extra payments to reward their top executives. *[http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1854990,00.html|A covert programme] under which confidential information about British banking transactions is passed to the CIA with the full knowledge of the government may breach both British and European law. *[http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1853752,00.html|Are you a safe-bet "number one" or a risky "number nine"?] Lloyds TSB has categorised every one of its 15 million customers into nine bands - and the number flashes up on screens behind the counter without the customer's knowledge when they carry out a transaction in the bank's branches. *A majority of people in Europe's biggest economies do not want [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5270042.stm|limits on working hours], a poll by the Financial Times newspaper has indicated. *If something looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble, there's a good chance it may be a bubble. Figures out last week showed [http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1854607,00.html|a renewed frenzy of buying in the UK buy-to-let market], an area of the economy that is flashing warning signs as never before. *[http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/articles/FreakFreakonomics.pdf|Ariel Rubinstein on Freakonomics] (PDF). *The owners of [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5268556.stm|a UK coal mine] have bought state-of-the-art machinery worth £37m - the biggest such UK order in over 20 years. *Russian firm Sual has refused to comment on reports that it is to merge with compatriot Rusal to create [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5269958.stm|the world's largest aluminium company]. *[http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2006/pi20060818_059934.htm|The Contrarian Case for Oil]. *The US Department of Agriculture tracks [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5241544.stm|the price of cheddar cheese] to help determine the health of the American dairy industry. *Max Stone, a Managing Director of D. E. Shaw & Co. rang [http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/200608/market_close_081506.stm|The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell on Tuesday, August 15]. *A US couple have been charged over an allegation they made m via [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/sec_spam_scam_suit/|a stock market pump-and-dump scam], promoted using spam emails. Jeffrey Stone, 42, of Greenwich, Connecticut, and his missus Janette Diller Stone face a civil lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over their alleged use of junk mail tactics to artificially increase the value of stock they held in start-up firm WebSky Inc. *Morgan Stanley has apologised after 15,000 customers had extra interest added to their accounts as a result of [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/morgan_creditcard_mixup/|a botched computer migration]. *"Poker has what are currently some of the biggest challenges to (artificial intelligence) systems, and uncertainty is the primary hurdle that we're facing... The same techniques, the same principles that we're developing to build poker systems are the same principles that can be applied to many other problems." - Michael Bowling, head of the research group that developed [http://technology.sympatico.msn.ca/News+and+Trends/ContentPosting.aspx?newsitemid=29356021&feedname=CP-TECHNOLOGY&show=True&number=5&showbyline=True&subtite=&detect=&abc=abc|Hyperborean], a poker-playing computer that recently went undefeated at two tournaments hosted by the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. *[http://www.moneyscience.org/tiki/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=6|Sci-Tech-Business Blog] is always worth a read. {content id=220}{content id=35}

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