Dear Pandit’s Bandits Players and Personnel,
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce my absence for the majority of the upcoming Spring Training season to you, my favorite mini-employees of Citigroup. Our sponsorship of the Pandit’s Bandits little league team has brought all of us here at Citi much joy in these dark times of accountability and prudence.
CEO Richard Robinson, sold over $12 million worth of Scholastic stock last October alone (ya know, for estate planning purposes). The stock is down roughly 80% from where he liquidated just 3 months ago and surprisingly, he hasn’t bought back a single share. The name of the game seems to be award yourself stock options, exercise them and then dump your discounted shares at an instant profit, either through non-open market dispositions, automatic sale plans or outright market sell orders. Don’t worry shareholders, unless he is awarded more stock, he only has 4.7 million shares left to sell.
Hot Links for Weekend Reading Shedlock vs Schiff The big hullabaloo in Wall Street Blogland this week was the unsolicited Peter Schiff beatdown issued by Michael “Mish” Shedlock (Sitka Advisors) on his Global Economic Trend Analysis site. Mish was sick of all the “Peter Schiff Was Right” promotional videos floating around and decided to call…
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The greatest stand-up comedian of all time*, George Carlin, had a bit in the late 80’s called “People I Can Do Without“. While his version included people like “a dentist who has blood in his hair”, I will keep mine strictly investment-related. The Reformed Broker’s “People I Can Do Without” Magazine editors and advertising executives…
Today’s going to be a doozy… Art Nadel just surrendered to authorities in Tampa, Florida according to CNBC. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed ex-Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain and one of his henchmen regarding the bonus snafu according to Dealbreaker. Kind of like the final scene of The Godfather when the family takes…
There’s a bull market in thieves and dirtbags…quick – create an ETF! They just unearthed yet another Ponzi scheme, this time it’s a construction bridge loan scam called Agape World in Hauppauge, New York. Nicholas Cosmo, an ex-broker with a boiler room past and a conviction for securities fraud, has spent the last 8 years…
In late December, ex-CEO John Thain snuck in $15 billion worth of Merrill Lynch bonus payments to executives and employees a month earlier than usual. He did this while his merger partner to-be Bank of America was in Washington telling officials that a $20 billion rescue package was essential for survival. The fact that anyone…
One of the first slang terms I came across when I started in the business was “Piker”, as in “so-and-so is a total piker”.
Amongst the brokers, that was the worst name we could call one another, but it could also be used to describe anyone who is involved in or invests in the markets.
Essentially, by calling someone a piker, you were ridiculing them for the fact that they were either a small-time player or too afraid to bet big.
This got me curious enough to start asking about where the term “Piker” came from. Interestingly, those who seemed to use it most often had the least idea of what it truly meant.
Hot Links for Weekend Reading: The country is made up of two types of people right now, those who care about the Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch saga and those who truly don’t mind being robbed and pillaged in broad daylight. When the news came out that Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain requested a $10…
