August 2012
145 posts
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WatchIs there really a connection between greed and dishonesty in the accumulation of wealth? Can one become filthy rich without being filthy? Majority of Americans seems to think; No!
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Nets eye Red Hook for practice facility →
Brooklyn Nets officials were scheduled to walk through a site in Red Hook owned by real estate developer Joseph Sitt on Wednesday as they press their search for a site for a new practice facility.
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Rothschild renews its lease at 1251 Ave. of the... →
Continuing the trend of large lease renewals in Midtown, Rothschild North America, a global independent financial advisory group, has re-upped its lease at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, according to landlord Mitsui Fudosan America Inc. The financial services firm renewed its 70,000SF space for a 15-year term north of $90 pSF.
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George Comfort & Sons eyes 75 Rockefeller Plaza →
It’s been a busy week for George Comfort & Sons. The landlord, which formally placed Worldwide Plaza on the market earlier this week, is also in talks to buy 75 Rockefeller Plaza
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Flood insurance becomes a necessity in NYC →
New York area residents applying for mortgages to buy a new home or refinance an existing one are bumping up against a new obstacle: flood insurance.
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“High valuations did not tank tech IPOs; the real problem was information widely...”
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WatchThe Gardner brothers, founders of The Motley Fool, have marked Sept. 25 as World Wide Invest Better Day and have launched a campaign to “educate, inspire and motivate” individual investors to return to investing basics.
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CWCapital tightens grip on Stuy Town
CWCapital Asset Management, a subsidiary of CW Financial Services,increased its involvement in Manhattan’s Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town apartment community by making its sister company property manager.
CompassRock Real Estate — another subsidiary of CW Financial Services — will become Stuy Town’s property manager on Sept. 1. CompassRock is replacing Rose Associates as...
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Beige Book: Federal Reserve districts report... →
All 12 Federal Reserve Districts report home sales, home prices or housing construction increased in July and early August, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday in its Beige Book.
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“The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity.”
– Sir Alexander Bustamante
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“Be not afraid, do your duty towards your countryman, towards humanity. They will...”
– Sir Alexander Bustamante
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Job openings at Amazon reveal its future →
Amazon.com does not talk much about what it does in operating the world’s largest publicly available computing cloud BUT a look through the company’s help-wanted listings reveals a lot about where it is headed: global expansion, a new kind of Web browser, and spy work for the U.S. government.
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09/18: Motorola Mobility plans to launch Android...
Motorola Mobility (GOOG) plans to launch an Android phone featuring an Intel (INTC) Medfield Atom processor on Sep. 18. The launch will come 13 days after the expected unveiling of the Droid M with Verizon. Separately, details have leaked about Valleyview, Intel’s next-gen Atom solution for mobile devices. Like Intel’s Ivy Bridge PC CPUs, Valleyview, expected to arrive in late 2013,...
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“There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing...”
– Andrew Carnegie
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“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
– Warren Buffett
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WatchEx-Stock Broker Josh Brown: I realized that most of what I did was bad for clients–so I quit
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Conference Calls: Paying attention to the... →
New research from Jordan Schoenfeld, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, suggests analysts’ tone isn’t merely reflective of how analysts view a company’s results. It can be predictive of where the firm is heading. One can get a sense of how a company has fared from analysts’ tone on earnings conference calls. If they say,...
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WatchWhat the Drudge Report can tell you about the stock market… Once Drudge is talking about a financial story, as is everyone else, then the market has digested it, says Hickey. This makes it a classic contrary indicator i.e. when Drudge financial headlines rise, the market is at or near bottom.
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Madison Avenue’s appeal sparks luxe retail shuffle →
A collection of high-end retailers are in talks to shuffle retail spaces, in an effort to up their commitments to Madison Avenue.
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$0.02: apple
The cautious contrarian in me says there is more to Apple’s pursuit of the US Samsung phone sale ban than meets the eye. I think a cloud of disappointment looms over the iPhone 5 and the ban is a strategic move by Apple to prevent Samsung from gaining ground and increasing its market share with the Samsung Galaxy SIII that have gotten rave reviews. Though the stock price may not suffer...
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WatchThe Evolution of MANhattan
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WatchSlicing and dicing the big (green) apple: The statistics behind the city’s sustainability show a drive to preserve natural resources and improve the energy efficiency of commercial real estate and transportation.
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Citing misaligned interests, Wisconsin takes its... →
The $83B State of Wisconsin Investment Board last month sold $1B worth of funds from publicly listed private equity firms after concluding that those firms could no longer demonstrate that the pension fund’s interests came first.
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Housing recovery chugging along
Foreclosures declined 16% in July and bank REO down 18% from a year ago.
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Hedge Funds taking over bond trading from Banks →
A newly released study by Greenwich Associates of Stamford, Connecticut, confirms anecdotal reports that hedge funds are filling the gap left by banks that regulators have forced out of proprietary trading.
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“Developer Douglas Durst has a new idea to save Greenwich Village’s Pier 40 that...”
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U.S. Office property investors moving to suburban... →
Unlike in the recent past, suburban office buildings have gained popularity. The sales volume of suburban office properties in July was $3 billion, greater than the volume for CBD properties, which was $2.4 billion. While CBD property sale volume was down 40% year-over-year, the sales volume for suburban properties was up 51% year-over-year, according to Real Capital Analytics.
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State Supreme Court rules that payroll tax to help... →
For years, opponents of a payroll tax to help finance theMetropolitan Transportation Authority argued that it unfairly made people in the suburbs underwrite a service that mostly benefited people in New York City. Last week, those foes had reason to rejoice: a State Supreme Court judge in Nassau County declared the tariff unconstitutional, putting at risk more than $1.2 billion a year in financing...
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IBM creating pocket-sized Watson →
Bernie Meyerson, IBM’s vice president of innovation, envisions a voice-activated Watson that answers questions, like a supercharged version of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s Siri personal assistant. Replies would be derived from location data, historical trends and scientific studies and other data points.
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Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard... →
The arguments presented in the paper logically imply that monetary policy should be tightened, regardless of the current state of the economy, because the near term expected benefits of ultra easy monetary policies are outweighed by the longer term expected costs.
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SEC reviewing 'Quiet Period' rules that limit what... →
Possible investor victory thanks to the FB IPO: U.S. securities regulators are reviewing whether to ease limits on what companies can say ahead of initial public offerings, after lawmakers complained small investors were kept in the dark during this year’s botched stock sale by Facebook Inc.
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NYC: A city of extremes →
New York City doesn’t waste much time on the middle ground. Its greenhouse-gas emissions per capita are the lowest of any large American city. The state’s tax collections are the highest. Just 14% of New Yorkers still smoke cigarettes and outliving other Americans, but they grapple with soaring health premiums and rents… NYC 2012 Stats and the City paint a complex picture of life in...
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Related Cos. hammers out worker pact that should... →
Nearly all unions climb aboard Hudson Yards labor-cost deal.
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California based Carmel Partners pay $95M for 354... →
Carmel Partners purchased the 163-unit residential rental building, The Electra, on the Upper East Side from the property’s developer, Forkosh Development Group, for $95M or approximately $582,822 per residential unit. The building has about 144,000 square feet of residential space and 8,902 square feet of retail space which is occupied by Duane Reade.
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625 Broadway to hit the auction block →
A troubled 12-story commercial loft building in Noho is scheduled for auction next month, after CW Capital foreclosed on the mortgage and sold the debt to Lincoln Property Co. who is scheduled to auction off the $71.3M loan on Sept. 21.
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CFPB seeks increased transparency on housing... →
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants buyers to see the full appraisal report on the house they’re buying or refinancing as early in the mortgage process as possible, and without your having to ask the lender for it. This means all the “comparable” properties the appraiser selected (adjustments for property condition or location), plus all additional data, especially computer-generated...
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Nicholas Carlson's choice words about Peter Thiel
As Facebook spends another day below $20, Nicholas Carlson has some choice words about Peter Thiel and his unloading of most of his Facebook stake. Carlson speaking to Business Insider says Thiel, a billionaire genius in the realm of startups, is not a good signal maker for other stock market investors. If he (Thiel) were a lighthouse, he’d have you breaching your hull on rocks....
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Uncle Sam makes $62.4M on sale of stock in 4 small... →
The government sold its shares for $5.1 million less than its original investment in the four banks of $67.5M. But overall the Treasury says the investment was profitable after counting $12.1M in dividends it received from the banks, for total income of $74.5M.
The profits will help offset losses in the broader financial bailout, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The government loaned...
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Freddie delinquency rate down to 3.42%; lowest... →
The delinquency rate on Freddie Mac guaranteed mortgages fell to 3.42% in July, the lowest level since August 2009. The rate dropped 3 basis points from the month before and fell from the 3.59% rate measured at the beginning of the year.
USDA Leaves 2013 Food-Price Forecast Unchanged,... →
The Department of Agriculture: U.S. consumers may pay 3 percent to 4 percent more for food next year, and less for meat in 2012 than previously forecast, as the country’s worst drought since the 1950s works its way onto store shelves.
