Michael Gracie 

I’d call this “stealthy postponement“: While it falls short of the global opt-out feature that our readers seemed to think Facebook would announce in today’s poll, this seems like a reasonable change that will make Beacon much more transparent. On the other hand, as Beacon adds more partners, being notified of all of these actions [...]

The headline is gravely amiss. Sales rose 1.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 728,000 last month from a revised 716,000 in September, which was a 11-year low. September’s sales pace had originally been reported as 770,000. August’s sales were also revised sharply lower to 717,000, down from 735,000 estimated a month ago and [...]

The story begins: Investors may do well by taking Citadel’s investment in E*Trade as a sign the worst of the mortgage market turmoil is behind us. And while it goes on to tout Citadel’s incredible returns from buying up distressed assets as the big sign to jump on the bandwagon, there’s probably more reason to [...]

Agreed. No mention of quality control issues, although none of it will make any difference as long as the cheerleaders stay on board.

At least in the US. Branches of Northern Rock were where the first official runs took place, but the Northern Rock is UK based. And this case isn’t exactly a bank, but it might as well be (particularly if you are a local government in Florida). The State of Florida runs an investment pool for [...]

You barely have to read past the first paragraph to know how this one is going to turn out: In the bond market, commercial property investors are about as creditworthy as U.S. homeowners with subprime mortgages. I guess that means things aren’t so good. To credit, there is a lot of conflicting argument within, although [...]

Terms of the deal. (h/t to Andrew Clavell)

Mr. Blodget says: One headline after another trumpeting the Comscore (SCOR) release that Cyber Monday sales “jumped”, “broke records,” etc., but not one (so far) contains the actual news: sales came in exactly as expected–up 21% year over year, the same growth rate as the first ten months of the year. Here’s the kind of [...]

More of this from someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Side note: Hedge funds heavy on the sell-side will certainly have reason to hurt, but what about institutions who still think they’re safely hedged?

I found the whole bit from Piper Jaffray suspect, at best. It seems PJ completely blew their iPod projection, and the iPod touch isn’t breaking any records either. The analysts failed to mention that Apple was handing out big red sale flyers on Friday which subsequently wound up on shopping mall benches (hence, the draw). [...]