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UN: Radiation to Hit U.S. By Friday

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     A United Nations forecast of the potential path of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

     However, the weather (more importantly the wind) has been just as volatile and inconsistent as the markets themselves.  Over the next few days wind will be one of the most important variables being factored into the markets.                 

**  CLICK TO SEE VIDEO OF FORECASTED RADIATION PATH   **

     According to the New York Times, A forecast by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows how weather patterns this

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5 Stocks with Substantial Insider Buying

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By Insider Monkey

Insider trading is most profitable when several insiders buy around the same time. Academic studies have shown that insider purchases beat index funds by more than 7 % per year  when there are several insiders purchasing. Insider Monkey, your source for free insider trading data, compiled the list of stocks where at least two insiders made recent purchases. Here are the stocks with substantial insider purchases:

General Motors (GM): As GM’s stock price fell below its IPO price, several insiders stepped in and purchased modest amounts of shares. Daniel F. Akerson, CEO, purchased 5,000 shares at $31.81. Hedge funds snatched 6% of GM’s outstanding shares and amassed a $3.4 Billion position during the last three months of 2010. There were 112 hedge funds with GM positions at the end of December. John Griffin’s Blue Rigde, William Ackman’s Pershing Square, George Soros, David Tepper’s Appaloosa, Roberto Mignone’s Bridger Management,  Richard Perry’s Perry Capital, and Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors are among the several high profile hedge funds with GM positions.

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Japan…The new Black Swan.

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Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.   — Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

 The earthquake, tsunami and current nuclear crisis in Japan, as well as the current geopolitical unrest in the Middle East challenge the concept of market stability. Black Swan events have tested the limits of the financial markets and banking systems for decades (some might recall the “Tulip Mania” bubble in the early 1600’s).  Reflect on the following list, via Doug Kass of those once in a lifetime events that have occured over the past decade:

  • the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon;
  • a 75% decline in the Nasdaq;

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GM and the Japan earthquake disaster present a compelling opportunity

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GM reawakened from the dead and bankrupt went public again at the end of 2010.  It was a heavily subscribed gigantic IPO and the stock did well peaking at around $39 during the first of the year 2011.  It began its descent and recently plunged below 32 on the news of its CFO, Chris Liddell would be leaing the company.  Barron’s reported, ”

Fourteen months after becoming CFO of General Motors (GM), Chris Liddell is leaving the company. He will be replaced on April 1 by Dan Ammann, the company’s senior vice president for finance and treasurer. The company gave no reason for the transition. Shares fell 3.3% in early trading.

Liddell joined GM in January 2010. He had previously been the CFO at Microsoft (MSFT). At GM, he was instrumental in engineering its IPO. He was also praised for strengthening the company’s accounting methods — when it was emerging from bankruptcy, GM acknowledged “material weakness” in some of its statements, but the company’s audit committee said this year that weakness had been fixed, CNNMoney noted.

The company’s statement indicated Ammann had been groomed for this position. Ammann, who is 38, helped Liddell prepare the company’s IPO and has helped set the company’s financial strategy. Prior to joining GM, Ammann was managing director and head of industrials investment banking at Morgan Stanley (MS).

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The Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy

The Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy provides market macro-analytics and public-file aggregation models for data-tracking purposes. Content should not be treated as individualized investment advice or a professional financial-planning directive. Past performance does not guarantee future performance cycles.

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