breadshitters
tyb pic not for you obviously
U.S. judge says Qualcomm violated antitrust law; appeal planned, shares plunge
(Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc illegally suppressed competition in the market for smartphone chips by threatening to cut off supplies and extracting excessive licensing fees, a U.S. judge ruled, a decision that could force the company to overhaul its business practices.
The decision issued late Tuesday night by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, caused Qualcomm shares to plunge 9.5 percent in early trading on Wednesday.
“Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition” in parts of the chip market for years, harming rivals, smartphone makers, and consumers, Koh wrote in a 233-page decision.
She ordered the San Diego-based company to renegotiate licensing agreements at reasonable prices, without threatening to cut off supplies, and ordered that it be monitored for seven years to ensure its compliance.
Qualcomm said it will immediately ask Koh to put her decision on hold, and also seek a quick appeal to the federal appeals court in California.
“We strongly disagree with the judge’s conclusions, her interpretation of the facts and her application of the law,” general counsel Don Rosenberg said in a statement.
Koh’s decision followed a 10-day non-jury trial in January, and is a victory for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has accused Qualcomm in 2017 of violating antitrust law.
The decision followed Qualcomm’s April 16 settlement of a long-running legal battle with Apple Inc, where Apple agreed once again to use Qualcomm chips in its iPhones, displacing Intel Corp.
It is unclear whether the sanctions will be challenged by the U.S. Department of Justice, which had asked Koh on May 2 to hold a hearing on that matter if Qualcomm were found liable.
“The possibility certainly exists for Qualcomm to prevail upon appeal” given the government’s “somewhat schizophrenic” approach to the case, with the FTC and Justice Department appearing at odds, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote.
The Justice Department was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
UNDERMINING RIVALS
Koh said Qualcomm engaged in “extensive” anticompetitive conduct targeting more than one dozen original equipment manufacturers including Apple, BlackBerry, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony, often by cutting off or threatening to cut off chip supplies or withholding technical support.
She also said Qualcomm’s monopoly power in modem chips enabled the company to sustain “unreasonably high” royalty rates not justified by its contributions to the marketplace.
“With practices that result in exclusivity and eliminate opportunities to compete for OEM business, Qualcomm undermines rivals in every facet,” she wrote.
She also found Qualcomm know its licensing practices harmed competition “yet continued anyway” despite government investigations in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the European Union and the United States.
“This evidence of Qualcomm’s intent confirms the court’s conclusion that Qualcomm’s practices cause anticompetitive harm because no monopolist monopolizes unconscious of what he is doing,” she wrote.
Koh also said testimony from some Qualcomm witnesses “lacked credibility,” faulting Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf and others for giving “long, fast, and practiced narratives” and saying company emails and notes contradicted his testimony.
“It will be difficult for an appellate court to disturb the court’s findings regarding the truthfulness of the Qualcomm witnesses and conclusions reached based on those findings,” said Barbara Sicalides, a partner at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia, specializing in antitrust law.
Qualcomm makes cellphone processors and modem chips,but generates most profits by licensing its technology to mobile phone makers.
Rasgon, the Bernstein analyst, said Koh had indicated at trial she was leaning against Qualcomm, but some investors had hoped her views would be “softened” by the Apple settlement.
“Apparently not,” Rasgon wrote.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-antitrust/u-s-judge-says-qualcomm-violated-antitrust-law-appeal-planned-shares-plunge-idUSKCN1SS134?il=0
QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM)
-7.95 (-10.23%)
not even 45min in and looky here:
Volume 26,889,485
Avg. Volume 20,272,377
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/QCOM?p=QCOM&.tsrc=fin-srch
he had better be, not like the competition is hard though.
Steve Cohen Unmasked As Mystery Buyer Of $91 Million Bunny
The mystery buyer who paid $91 million for Jeff Koons' now-infamous rabbit sculpture - a purchase that prompted WSJ to speculate about the art market entering a "frothy period" - has been unmasked: According to ArtNet, it's Steve Cohen.
Cohen's motives in buying the piece are unclear. Did Cohen feel like treating himself after making it through 2018 without attracting more legal scrutiny from the SEC? Or did he simply want to remind the world that, although the name on the door has changed, he's still the Steve Cohen.
n any case, the match makes sense: Though Cohen had previously denied making the purchase, he is one of the world's foremost collectors of art, and his personal collection has amassed dozens of invaluable works.
Robert Mnuchin, art dealer and father of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, placed the winning bid on behalf of his client (now believed to be Cohen). But he has refused to comment on reports of Cohen's identity, and had previously refused to discuss the identity of the buyer.
The 3-foot-tall stainless steel inflatable rabbit statue was part of a group of works consigned by the Newhouse family. Cohen's winning bid was part of $2 billion in sales made during Christie's postwar and contemporary art evening auction last week.
Though the disclosure of his identity was likely inevitable, it makes sense why Cohen might want to conceal his involvement in the sale. After a year where Point72 beat its benchmarks (and most other funds) but nevertheless failed to achieve the stunning double-digit returns for which Cohen's previous firm, SAC Capital, had once been known, investors probably want to see Cohen focused more on their portfolios than his art collection, especially as his fund seeks out another $1 billion in outside money.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-21/steve-cohen-unmasked-mystery-buyer-91-million-bunny
it is and if you were here earlier this year and late last there was a big problem with the ktwats coming in here and pushing OTC crap-for weeks.
This is why one must be careful about what you say in here. Not in disagreement at all fren fully support that attitude about making it back from them. left out the actual share price on the article on purpose as not relevant-just % drop and volume are in a public forum.
wouldn't be doing the panels on all the sales if I disagreed with ya.
>PROFIT IS GOOD, just like WINNING!
stay away from index stuff you'll do fine.
just be aware that in 2007-8 the system actively busted trades on the short side on several occasions-I know as it habbened to me. I wasn't the "right" person to make money so they decided a certain % of trades just did not occur. Not saying that will habben here.
Stopped doing any of this shortly after MF global but have stayed in touch-like riding a bike, you never forget how.
Walmart family sells $576.6m in shares-May 17
For the day crew-filed last night.
Wal-Mart Stores is the world's leading distribution group. Net sales break down by activity as follows:
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distribution in the United States and Porto Rico (76.2%): this activity is performed, at the end of January 2017, through the following names: Wal-Mart (84.3% of net sales; reduced-price retail distribution; 4,761 outlets, of which 3,561 supermarkets, 400 discount outlets, and 800 convenience stores), and Sam's Club (15.7%; 597 warehouses accessible to members only in the United States);
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international distribution (23.8%): 6,360 points of sales located in Mexico (2,358), Central America (778), the United Kingdom (642), Brazil (465), China (443), Africa (424), Canada (410), Chile (378), Japan (336), Argentina (106) and India (20).
Number of employees : 2 300 000 people.
https://www.marketscreener.com/WAL-MART-STORES-4841/company/
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/104169.htm
The Silver Rush at MF Global
It's one thing for $1.2 billion to vanish into thin air through a series of complex trades, the well-publicized phenomenon at bankrupt MF Global. It's something else for a bar of silver stashed in a vault to instantly shrink in size by more than 25%.
That, in essence, is what's happening to investors whose bars of silver and gold were held through accounts with MF Global.
The trustee overseeing the liquidation of the failed brokerage has proposed dumping all remaining customer assets—gold, silver, cash, options, futures and commodities—into a single pool that would pay customers only 72% of the value of their holdings. In other words, while traders already may have paid the full price for delivery of specific bars of gold or silver—and hold "warehouse receipts" to prove it—they'll have to forfeit 28% of the value.
That has investors fuming. "Warehouse receipts, like gold bars, are our property, 100%," contends John Roe, a partner in BTR Trading, a Chicago futures-trading firm. He personally lost several hundred thousand dollars in investments via MF Global; his clients lost even more. "We are a unique class, and instead, the trustee is doing a radical redistribution of property," he says.
Roe and others point out that, unlike other MF Global customers, who held paper assets, those with warehouse receipts have claims on assets that still exist and can be readily identified.
The tussle has been obscured by former CEO Jon Corzine's appearances on Capitol Hill. But it's a burning issue for the Commodity Customer Coalition, a group that says it represents some 8,000 investors—many of them hedge funds—with exposure to MF Global. "I've issued a declaration of war," says James Koutoulas, lead attorney for the group, and CEO of Typhon Capital Management.
At stake is an unspecified, but apparently large, volume of gold and silver bars slated for delivery to traders through accounts at MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31. Adding insult to the injury: Of the 28% haircut, attorney and liquidation trustee James Giddens has frozen all asset classes, meaning that traders have sat helplessly as silver prices have dropped 31% since late August, and gold has fallen 16%. To boot, the traders are still being assessed fees for storage of the commodities.
Other kinds of problems are also surfacing. Investor Gerald Celente says he was hit with a big margin call when the gold contracts in his MF Global account were transferred to another brokerage. "I refused to put up more money," he explains, "so they closed out a number of my open positions at the current market price." The trustee, Giddens, couldn't be reached for comment for this story.
A substantial portion of MF Global's commodity clients cleared their transactions through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Comex, owned by CME Group (ticker: CME). The question now looming over CME's stock is whether the company will be liable for customer losses. CME, which also owns the Chicago Board of Trade, runs markets for futures contracts and options on futures, interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and actual commodities.
CME's stock, which had been as high as $327 over the past year, has slid to a recent $242 as a result of low trading volumes and uncertainty about the MF Global scandal.
The Customer Coalition may eventually press its case with the exchange operator. "If it turns out the only way we get customer money back is [to] go after the CME, then we'll go after the CME," says Koutoulas.
Trader John Cassimatis of Philadelphia, who was a large client of MF Global, is furious at CME, now that his contracts for silver bars are stuck under the control of the trustee. "Ultimately," he says, "they have failed to be the backstop, anywhere, anytime."
IT'S STILL UNCLEAR WHETHER CME will put its commodity-futures customers first—or its shareholders. The company has set aside a $550 million reserve for MF Global customers, and it has cash balances of more than $1.1 billion that it could tap, if needed. But CME Group's chief operating officer, Bryan Durkin, said last week that CME wouldn't guarantee the funds that remain missing from customer accounts at MF Global after they are reimbursed by the bankruptcy trustee. Such a move would be "unwise" and the CME has a "fiduciary responsibility" to its shareholders, Reuters quoted him as saying.
In congressional testimony last week, CME Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy pinned the blame squarely on MF Global, asserting that Corzine knew that untouchable, segregated customer funds had been used as collateral for loans. Corzine later denied Duffy's charge.
At a minimum, it all makes for an intriguing, although risky, play on CME stock.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052748703856804577098740322633760
>The Swine Corzine at MF Global.
>Teneo was also lying to clients at Davos
Doug Band too
and then we got the OBL 'story' on May 6th that smacked the COMEX mkts from it's decades high of almost $50/oz. To the fucking second that "news" was released.
trips confirm I 'member
Pisani couldn't even make it believable imo.
"randomly" picked up a bar- yea ok Bob-randomly fucked up moar like it
the serial numbers were from a different place altogether.
yes a little. Have many instances of booms and noises. Was outside. heard it faintly