Oops: Fat fingers boost mobile ad numbers

Beware the Fat Finger. It’s not just for traders anymore.

Guess what. Click-thru rates on mobile are pretty uniformly superior to rates on your desktop. But it’s not because users love ads on their phones more. It’s the fat-finger phenomenon.

Sacha Xavier Reich, a partner at neo@Oglivy social media advertising, points out the obvious: Phone screens are so small that people are much more likely to click on an ad by accident. And isn’t that annoying? So anyone taking a look to see well a certain social media company is doing in mobile, should ask not only about the click-through rate but also how long is the user staying on the brand site and whether the user is actually buying anything.

I wrote about the outlook for mobile advertising on Facebook and other possible sources of revenue for time.com this morning. But that Fat Finger Fact is my favorite part of the story. Read it here.

Sorry, but Facebook is nothing like the Madoff scam

This Facebook thing is getting waaaaay out of hand.

Barry Ritholtz posted a video interview Thursday with the WSJ Hub crew in which he compares Facebook to Bernie Madoff, the ponzi king.  ”There’s greed and greed that gets you sent to prison,” Ritholtz says. And the reporters didn’t  challenge him.  Unimpeded, Ritholtz pivoted to a warning that investors must be wary of companies that invent their own system of metrics — like Groupon (arguably, a Ponzi scheme). Anyone who has ever touched a “like” button on any website counts as a Facebook user. This is no secret. It’s stated in the regulatory filing. Loads of people  believe that the Facebook system of counting users is ridiculous, so they look to Nielsen or other third-party firms for the data.

And what about all that trading of Facebook on private exchanges before the IPO? That was  totally opaque, Ritholtz says. I guess that’s supposed to be Bernie like.  By definition, those exchanges are not transparent. Anyone who treads there is stepping into treacherous waters. That’s why you need to be an accredited investor to swim in those waters.

Do all those things make Facebook a minor Madoff? When last I checked Facebook was a real business with earnings and revenues.

True, the underwriters and Facebook tried to raise as much money as possible. They overplayed their hand. Nasdaq made a mess of the opening. And there was some real ugliness: the media is reporting that Facebook and analysts at the major underwriting firms notified favored clients that second quarter earnings were likely to disappoint — just days before the IPO priced. All that is certifiably icky. But it appears to be legal.

Even before the Facebook IPO became a slo-mo train wreck,  people like me were saying don’t invest unless you are using money designated for high-risk ventures. Read my ebook, The Facebook IPO Primer. Read the Wall Street Journal. I personally know brokers even at Morgan Stanley were trying to steer away their clients. The media was filled with interviews with tons of bloggers and analysts saying that the company was probably worth about $70 billion, not $100 billion. In my ebook, I included one who said the company was worth only $30 billion — at the time an assertion so outlandish that I almost didn’t include it.

And what about our friend Bernie? He was the hail-fellow-well-met who lied through his teeth. The big man on campus was a putz. He fabricated monthly  statements.  The lone voices who questioned his returns were hushed by his admirers. Madoff deserves to be in jail for the rest of his cursed days.

But the execs at Facebook? I don’t think that should be their fate. Unless greed and stupidity are indictable offenses. In which case we’d really have a jail-crowding problem!

Memo to Wall Street: That shrinking violet is Carrie

Carrie, a teenager on the margins

Jamie, meet Carrie. She already knows who you are.

Sure, you’re the most popular guy in school. Dashing. With money.  Ha, ha. Too bad people like you never learn. Your biggest risk comes from the people skulking in the shadows.

So don’t be surprised if you wake up in the middle of the night and see me looking down at you, a bloodied knife in my hand.

The next person who calls me “an abstruse corner of the credit market” gets it. Understand?

No Big Whale can control me. Espece idiots!

Remember: Risk is on the margin, and so am I.

Goldman Sachs, Crazy Eddie and 'the kiss of death'

Image via Wikipedia

Any of you remember Crazy Eddie, the New York City discount chain that landed in bankruptcy after its original owners were sent to jail for all manner of  business fraud? Okay, it wasn’t as huge as Enron, but when Crazy Eddie went under many New Yorkers mourned not just the loss of a decent outlet for TVs but the awful commercials in which Eddie Antar bellowed that prices were INSAAAAANE!

Well, according to the former Crazy Eddie CFO — a convicted felon who now helps the good guys capture white-collar bad guys –  Goldman Sachs may have responded too hastily to the SEC charges relating to the deal it helped to construct with hedgie John Paulson. (If you haven’t read about the SEC fraud charges, WAKE UP! read the details here or click on any of my many numerous headline pulls in the right-hand column.)

In his post, Sam Antar explains both the psychological and legal tactics that the feds use to trap their prey.

Back in the day as the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I received a surprise subpoena from the SEC late Friday afternoon. I had to wait until Monday before my attorneys had time to advise me on a course of action.

The “kiss of death” message is deliberately sent on Fridays to chill the bones of criminals. Some criminals wait in anxiety during the weekend until Monday to consult with their attorneys about what to do next. Other criminals or SEC targets like Goldman Sachs don’t want to wait until Monday. So they make rash decisions and major errors in prematurely reacting to the “kiss of death” message to their own peril and find themselves in legal quicksand.

Goldman Sachs chose not to wait until Monday and fully digest the implications of the SEC complaint. After a relatively short consultation with its attorneys, the company hastily issued a detailed press release later Friday afternoon that I believe will land it into deeper potential trouble. …

via White Collar Fraud: Did a Clever SEC Bait Goldman Sachs into Compounding Its Legal Problems With the “Kiss of Death” Message?.

(h/t The Big Picture)

Indeed, Goldman appears to have been caught completely off guard by the Friday announcement — even though it had received a Wells notice in July 2009, indicating that it was a target of an active investigation. The WSJ reports tonight that Goldman responded to the Wells notice in September. In March, Goldman contacted the SEC to check on the status of the investigation but no one responded to the request for an update. And apparently, Goldman didn’t mind that the lawyers at the SEC weren’t returning its phone call.

In his blog post, Antar zeroes in on Goldman’s assertion that the suit has no basis in “law and fact.”  Big mistake if it turns out the suit really does have a basis in law and fact. After his surprise indictment, Antar says he tried to cover up his tracks and ended up in much worse trouble; indeed, covering his tracks proved to be more troublesome than the original misdeeds. Antar warns that if Goldman’s knee-jerk statements turn out to be untrue or misleading, their troubles would only deepen.

And that’s not all Antar has to share with readers. It seems Antar and Goldman have something else in common besides the kiss of death. And that is Richard E. Simpson the SEC lawyer handling the Goldman litigation. Simpson was the man Antar took to calling the “Pit bull” for his ferocious and unrelenting pursuit of justice. He’s a formidable adversary even for the likes of Goldman Sachs.

The market tumbles and the bear dances (video)

The folks at StockTwits wonder if the bear hasn’t begun its dance in the stock market, which fell sharply after weekly jobless claims surged by 22,000 to 496,000; analysts had expected a jump of just 13,000. In honor of the moment, the prognosticators at the Twitter spinoff put out a link to this black bear doing the funk:

[youtubevid id="6UeCRY1wciA"]

As for stocks  — it may be premature to call the start of a new bear market based on today’s jobless claims. Bondscoop warned that bad weather and President Day’s weekend would make a hash of the numbers. Still it bears needs watching: The four-week average has risen by 6,000.