InformedTrades

Apple is quietly denying requests for employee vacations during the second week of October, hinting that the company currently anticipates an influx of customers to its stores around that time related to availability of its new iOS 5 and fifth-generation iPhone products. More specifically, the iPhone maker has in some locations blacked out vacation time for employees from October 9th through 12th and October 14th through 15th, according to people familiar with the matter.

Faber explains how gold is overbought and US dollar strength could continue until greater easing from the Fed is announced.

Get ready, America-net neutrality finally comes to the Internet on November 20, 2011. That's the plan, at least. The FCC has just filed its final "open Internet" rules (PDF) with the Federal Register, which will publish them tomorrow and make them official. The rules go into effect on November 20, nearly a year after they were passed over Republican opposition on a 3-2 vote. (One of the FCC Commissioners who voted against the rules now works for Comcast.) But the plan will likely be derailed by lawsuits. Two, by Verizon and MetroPCS, were filed earlier this year but tossed because the rules had yet to be finalized. With tomorrow's printing in the Federal Register, the litigation floodgates will be thrown open and and complaints about the government overstepping its authority can start pouring in.

The Commerce Department would begin treating currency undervaluation as a subsidy according to US trade law. The Treasury would start calling out countries for having "fundamentally misaligned" currencies (one step before manipulated), and trigger actions to address them. The US would oppose any rules about IMF structural changes that "misaligned" currency countries support.

An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than light -- a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

According to Lee Younghee, "We'll be pursuing our rights for this in a more aggressive way from now on." She also added that Apple has been "freeriding" on Samsung's wireless communication technology patents. That aligns rather nicely with comments made by an unnamed Samsung executive to the Korea Times, promising to come after the iPhone 5 in Korea as soon as its debuted. That exec mentioned that the only way to avoid such litigation would be if Apple removed "mobile telecommunications functions" from the iPhone.

The euro surged on Friday after Japanese news agency Jiji reported that Group of 20 officials would confirm their intent to cooperate internationally to prevent a worsening of the euro zone's debt crisis and were working on an emergency statement.

Google Employees in Spain are getting a surprise SIM card with their Nexus S phones these days.  What you see above and below is Google's own SIM card which allows the 'sorta search monopolist' to become a MVNO in Spain.  While Google doesn't own its own towers or infrastructure (it buys bulk data from the local telecoms - in this case Telefonica, Vodafone, etc.), the move allows Google to control more of the phone experience.  For instance, it can pay one price for bulk data rather than on a per phone basis.  It can also dictate which carriers the phones pull in data from based on quality of service or price.  Roaming internationally can also be controlled and owned as well.

And weekly changes in the Dow - this last week is almost a 4 standard deviation move and third largest ever (with 9/11/01 and 10/03/08 the only two larger in absolute size!).

Just like Bank of America a few minutes ago, now Wells Fargo has been downgraded by Moody's. You know the drill by now. For all big banks, future government support is less likely.

It is our understanding that the Board Members of the Federal Reserve will meet later this week to consider additional monetary stimulus proposals. We write to express our reservations about any such measures. Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday unveiled proposed rules to ban hedge funds and banks from assembling risky securities, marketing them to investors and then immediately betting against their own creations, reaping profits when they fail. The rule would also ban firms from setting up risky securities for the benefit of an undisclosed third party.

The Iranian government has recently approved a revaluation operation that is expected to mark the end of a hyper-inflation period. This plan will remove four zeros from the local old bank notes and replace them with new notes. The U.S. dollar is already worth more than 10,000 Iranian rials (IRR), while the euro is worth more than IRR 15,000. The plan to change the currency has been on the government's agenda for years, but only recently was it approved. Similar steps have been taken by other countries after hyperinflation episodes, for example, Turkey dropped six zeroes from its currency in 2005.

This summer, emerging market currencies seemed something of a safe haven in the latest global financial storm. While EM equities plunged, currencies held firm. Now, the latest blasts of bad news from the eurozone appear to have blown away EM currency confidence - and sent investors running for the traditional fastnesses of the US dollar, the Swiss franc and gold. On Tuesday, Asian currencies were mostly down against the US dollar, with the South Korean won falling by as much as 1.7 per cent, India's rupee by over 1 per cent and the Indonesian rupiah by more than 2 per cent.  Though the three currencies later clawed back some losses, there was no mistaken the nervous mood.

On September 15, 2011, beginning at 12:48:54.600, there was a time warp in the trading of Yahoo! (YHOO) stock. HFT has reached speeds faster than time itself. Up to 190 milliseconds into the future, or 0.19 fantaseconds is the record so far. It all happened in just over one second of trading, the evidence buried under an avalanche of about 19,000 quotations and 3,000 individual trade executions. The facts of the matter are indisputable. Based on official exchange timestamps, there is unmistakable proof that YHOO trades were executed on quotes that didn't exist until 190 milliseconds later!

Slovenia's government will probably fall at a confidence vote today, plunging the first former communist euro-region member into turmoil as it struggles to control public spending amid Europe's sovereign-debt crisis. Lawmakers in Ljubljana began debate on the confidence motion and are expected to vote later in the day as Prime Minister Borut Pahor presents five ministers to replace officials from two parties that left the government over disagreements on pensions and early elections. The Cabinet's ouster is likely to lead to a general vote as early as December.

Brazil called on the World Trade Organization to allow its members to protect their industries from trade imbalances prompted by currency fluctuations. The Foreign Ministry said global rules protecting against unfair trade practices date from when most exchange rates were fixed. Mechanisms including anti-dumping and safeguard mechanisms, as well as retaliation rights, need to be updated to deal with "steep fluctuations in exchange rates," the ministry said in a statement yesterday.

Yet China has since 2005 increased the value of the yuan by rougly 30%, from 12.1 U.S. cents to 15.7 U.S. cents (In inverted terms, this means that the dollar has dropped from 8.28 yuan to 6.38 yuan). So according to the estimates of the China bashers themselves, China has already ended the undervaluayion of the yuan and has in fact raised the yuan slightly above fair value.

Standard and Poor's downgraded its unsolicited ratings on Italy by one notch to A/A-1 and kept its outlook on negative, a major surprise that threatens to add to concerns of contagion in the debt-stressed euro zone. The single currency skidded over half a cent to $1.3606 after S&P said the cut reflected its view of Italy's weakening economic growth prospects.

US and European negotiators have urged Israel to refrain from taking punitive measures against the Palestinians if they press ahead with their bid to win recognition of a home state at the United Nations. The Israeli government is considering a range of retaliatory steps, including withholding customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority under the terms of the Oslo accords. The amount, around 400m shekels (£69m), is forwarded to the PA each month.