Traders Expected A Wild Ride In The Market Today, Here's What They Got

Traders expected a volatile post-Sandy trading day before the Bell rang this morning, and they were totally right.

Sources told Business Insider that the waters are way too choppy for the casual swimmer. An equities trader in Texas spent about an hour in trading to back test a new trading algorithm, and then called it quits.

"The general consensus from all my guys is that it sucks right now," he said.

Swing traders are getting hit the hardest, and day traders, who usually love earnings season, are feeling the burn as well. Some companies have delayed reporting their numbers until tomorrow or Friday.

Meanwhile, on the high frequency trading front, Eric Hunsader, an executive at market data firm Nanex LLC, reported strange avidity in Altera stock right before the Opening Bell. He said that over 100,000 meaningless quotes went through the NASDAQ exchange.

Check out the chart of Altera quotes below from Nanex:

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The 5 Worst-Paying College Majors

MintLife has covered�the best-paying college majors, but what about the majors that pay the least? Looking at the data below, it seems the jobs that tend to help people and make the world a better place don?t always seem to come with the heftiest paychecks. For example, it would take 35 elementary school teachers one [...]

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Cosigning for a Student Loan ? Risks to Consider

In the United States, it may seem impossible to be a student without student loans. Even state college tuition can costs tens of thousands of dollars, while private college tuition at some top schools has reached $50,000 a year or more. With college costing so much, it should come as no surprise that research indicates [...]

Cosigning for a Student Loan – Risks to Consider is a post from the Money Crashers personal finance blog.

Source: http://www.moneycrashers.com/cosigning-student-loan-risks/

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Looks Like The iPad Mini Will Cannibalize Regular iPad Sales...

The reviews for Apple's new "iPad Mini" are out, and they're generally very good.

Most reviewers like the form factor (light and small) and are bummed about the screen resolution--because they've gotten used to the super-precise "retina" screens on Apple's latest iPhones and high-end iPads. Normal people who haven't gotten used to the retina screens will likely be perfectly happy with the Mini's screen. And, for many people, the size and weight may actually be an improvement over the bigger iPads.

One of the smartest and most influential Apple analysts, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, predicts that the iPad Mini will become the best-selling iPad.

Gruber prefers the smaller size and weight of the Mini because he uses his iPad primarily for reading. He also observes that the size is much better for traveling and for kids, for whom the full-size iPad is particularly heavy. Gruber says his "ideal" iPad would be a Mini with a retina screen, and it seems reasonable to think that Apple will release one of those next year.

So, how is the Mini likely to impact Apple's financial performance?

A few thoughts:

• The Mini will cannibalize some sales of the full-size iPads. Although some Apple fanatics will no doubt buy a Mini to go with the Mac, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and iPod they already have, most will choose either the Mini OR the full-size iPad.
• The "Average Selling Price" (ASP) of Apple's iPads will decline. Because the Mini costs considerably less than the full-size iPad, this will lead to more declines in ASPs for the iPad product line as a whole.
• The Mini will increase the total number of iPads sold, perhaps significantly.  A $329 price point is easier to stomach than a $499+ price point, especially when you're buying a tablet for kids. It's not nearly as easy to stomach as a $199 price point (Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7), but it's still easier. The lower price will therefore likely increase the number of iPads sold.
• Apple's profit margin on iPads will likely decline even further. The full-size iPad is already a considerably less-profitable product than the iPhone, according to numbers Apple released in the Samsung trial. The iPad Mini will likely have an even lower margin than the full-size iPad. (The screen apparently costs almost as much as the screen for the full-size iPad, and the components inside aren't likely to be so much cheaper that they completely offset the difference in price. We'll have a better sense of this after a tear-down analysis).
• The iPad product line will continue to put pressure on Apple's overall profit margin. One of the biggest risks to Apple's stock, in my opinion, is the risk that the company's extraordinarily high profit margin has hit a peak and will now begin to decline. The bigger iPads become as a percent of overall sales at the company, the more Apple's margin is likely to decline. This doesn't mean Apple will be any less healthy a company--it will be in great shape. But stock traders generally don't like declining profit margins, which is likely one big reasons Apple's stock price has recently declined.

Overall, Apple was still very smart to release the iPad Mini. The smaller, lower-price-point tablets released by Amazon and Google clearly struck a chord with consumers, and Apple would have been crazy not to play there.

The Mini will almost certainly cannibalize some sales of the full-size iPads, but if Apple weren't cannibalizing these sales itself, Amazon or Google would have.  And because tablets and smartphones have become a development platform, this game is now about much more than near-term "profit." It's about grabbing and holding enough market share that developers are eager to develop apps for your platform.

It remains to be seen how much new market share Apple can grab with the Mini--for many people, $329 will still be too big a ticket to, say, rush out and buy everyone in the house their own iPad--but Apple's "ecosystem" gives it a big advantage over both Google and Amazon, so it will likely always be able to command a modestly higher price point.

SEE ALSO: Finally, Here's One Unabashedly Positive iPad Mini Review

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Fortumo Brings Its Mobile Payments To Windows 8 ? Carrier Billing FTW!

The Estonian/U.S. mobile payments company, Fortumo, has a pretty good track record of moving quickly. It was one of the first -- if not the first -- to give Android developers a way to offer in-app purchasing outside of Google's own payments system, with the added bonus of carrier billing, sans credit card. An offer that Rovio took up with its 'Bad Piggy Bank' Angry Birds upgrade. Today, Fortumo is gunning for first-mover advantage again with news that its mobile payments solution is Windows 8-ready.

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The US Stock Markets WILL Reopen Tomorrow

Just reported by Bloomberg: US markets WILL reopen tomorrow.

US markets have been closed Monday and today due to Hurricane Sandy.

Getting the market reopened for tomorrow has always been an important priority since it's the last day of the month and portfolio managers wanted the ability to trade before end-of-month statements go out.

Here's the statement from the NYSE: 

NYSE Euronext (NYX) will open for normal trading operations in coordination with all U.S. equities, bonds, options and derivatives markets on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012.  Trading will commence on the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30am under normal opening procedures, and the NYSE Euronext building and trading floor are fully operational.

Duncan Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext said:  “We are pleased to be able to return to normal trading tomorrow.  Our building and systems were not damaged and our people have been working diligently to ensure that we have a smooth opening tomorrow.   Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families and communities suffering in the wake of this terrible natural disaster.”

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How to Prevent Heart Disease ? Risk Factors

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), heart disease is the number one cause of death in America. We lose almost 600,000 people to heart disease each year, and 58.8 million Americans currently have some form of this disease. But that’s just heart disease – if you look at�cardiovascular diseases as a whole (including [...]

How to Prevent Heart Disease – Risk Factors is a post from the Money Crashers personal finance blog.

Source: http://www.moneycrashers.com/prevent-heart-disease-risk-factors/

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WAPO/ABC POLL: Mitt Romney Gains Back The Lead Over Obama

Republican nominee Mitt Romney gained a one-point lead on President Barack Obama in the latest Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll. It is the fifth consecutive day that the race has been within a single point or less, and it's a one-point change from Monday's results.

Romney gets 49 percent of the vote, while Obama gets 48 percent.

Obama continued to remain close to Romney on the crucial question of which candidate would best handle the economy — he now trails by 3 points. Meanwhile, he holds slim leads on the "economic empathy" questions — which candidate best understands your problems, and which candidate shares your values.

Also notable in the poll: Romney's lead with Independents — which had soared to as much as 16 points last week — now stands at just 7 points. Both candidates have solid support among their respective bases.

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SOROS: We Can Help Suffering Greeks The Same Way One WWII Hero Saved Many Jews

Greece's debt crisis is a human crisis.

The economy's demise has come with the rise of the extremist Golden Dawn party, which is seen as a modern day Nazi party.  Even their symbol (see right) resembles the swastika.

Reports have proliferated of immigrants being harassed and beaten by Golden Dawn members as police turn a blind eye.

In a new piece for Project Syndicate, George Soros proposes a way to help not just migrants, but all struggling Greeks  He was reminded of one World War II hero:

To that end, I recently established an Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE). In doing so, I recognized that the best place to start would be where current policies have created the greatest human suffering: Greece. The people who are suffering are not those who abused the system and caused the crisis. The fate of the many migrant and asylum seekers caught in Greece is particularly heart-rending. But their plight cannot be separated from that of the Greeks themselves. An initiative confined to migrants would merely reinforce the growing xenophobia and extremism in Greece.

I could not figure out how to approach this seemingly intractable problem until I recently visited Stockholm to commemorate the centenary of Raoul Wallenberg’s birth. This reawakened my memories of World War II – the calamity that eventually gave birth to the EU.

Wallenberg was a hero who saved the lives of many Jews in my home city of Budapest by establishing Swedish safe houses. During the German occupation, my father was also a heroic figure. He helped to save his family and friends and many others. He taught me to confront harsh reality rather than to submit to it passively. That is what gave me the idea.

We could set up solidarity houses in Greece, which would serve as community centers for the local population and also provide food and shelter to migrants. There are already many soup kitchens and civil-society efforts to help the migrants, but these initiatives cannot cope with the scale of the problem. What I have in mind is to reinforce these efforts.

Soros writes about how the EU's existing policy is a failure, and many Greek migrants are left to "live on the street are attacked by the hooligans of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party."

"As soon as possible, I will dispatch an OSIFE needs-assessment team to Greece to contact the authorities – and the people and organizations already helping the needy – to work out a plan for which we can generate public support," wrote Soros.  "My goal is to revive the idea of the EU as an instrument of solidarity, not only of discipline."

Read more at Project Syndicate >

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