Bulls Rush Into Intel and SPY Call Options, Bears Pounce On Virgin
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Last year more than 18,000 projects were successfully funded on Kickstarter, the largest crowdfunding website.
A total of $320m was contributed by 2.2m people, making possible creative projects including a documentary on fracking, a home aquaponics kit and a community centre for circus arts.
Games, a category which includes video, board and card games, received the most support, with $83m pledged to more than 900 projects.
Given their high development costs and passionate fans, video games are a good match for crowdfunding, particularly as established publishers churn out ever more sequels, leaving a long tail of unmet demand (see article). In all, 44% of the projects launched last year managed to raise the money they requested, but the success rate ranged from a threadbare 26% in fashion to a sprightly 74% in dance.
Seventeen projects raised more than $1m apiece in 2012. Technology projects received the highest average pledge by category, at $107 per backer. The biggest Kickstarter project to date is Pebble, a watch that connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, which received almost $150 per backer to raise $10.3m in May.
(The first finished products are due to be delivered to backers next week.) According to Kickstarter, the total amount raised last year increased by more than 200% compared with 2011. Having opened itself to British-based projects in October, the site expects to see further growth in 2013.

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We're only half a month into 2013, but already, you may have started giving up on some of the resolutions you made for the new year. If you're a retiree living on a fixed income, we suggested one important resolution would be to make sure you're getting a decent interest rate on your savings so you don't have to dip into your principal to get by in 2013.Well, banks are not making it easy to follow through on that one.
In the face of pressure from the Federal Reserve, banks have been cutting their savings rates for years. Since early 2008, the average rate on an insured bank money market account has plunged from above 4 percent to just 0.5 percent.
The impact of falling rates has been devastating for many retirees, with monthly interest income plunging nearly 90 percent.
Moreover, even once you think you've found a relatively good deal, you can't count on it lasting for long. For instance, last year, TIAA Direct offered online savings accounts paying 1.25 percent. Earlier this month, though, TIAA cut that rate to 1 percent. It also imposed some tight new restrictions on managing your money, including imposing new $5,000 limits on ACH withdrawals.
TIAA Direct is hardly the only bank to make rate reductions lately. Capital One's (COF) ING Direct, HSBC Bank (HBC), and CIT Bank (CIT) were just a few of the many banks that cut their savings rates in 2012.
What Comes Down Must Go Up, Right?
For years, investors and savers have believed that falling interest rates would eventually have to hit bottom. But it's taken a lot longer than they expected, and the downward trend went far further than anyone had initially expected.
Still, some signs are emerging that low rates might finally come to an end. Some dissenting members of the Fed have argued that rates will need to rise sooner than other members want in order to prevent bad economic results like higher inflation. If the economy recovers more strongly, then that will be the time to look for rates to rise.
Until then, though, the key is to make the best of a bad situation. For instance, Sallie Mae Bank (SLM) offers 1.05 percent currently, and although there's no guarantee it won't be the next bank to cut its attractive rate, you should be able to find other banks that will take its place if it sends its rates down hard.
Even if you find your rate dropping on your savings account, it's still worth the effort to find above-average interest rates. The extra money can mean the difference between living off your income and having to tap into principal to make ends meet.
Motley Fool contributor Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.
Source: http://dailyfinance.com/2013/01/17/bank-savings-account-interest-low-rates/
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Oh hey, American Airlines you’re looking different these days. Did you do something to your fuselage? Is that a new logo you’re sporting? The airline is treating itself to a revamped look for its fleet of planes, the first makeover it’s done to its exteriors since 1968, including an updated logo as part of the paint job.
The planes’ new … [More]
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Algeria has gone guns blazing into the oil field raided by Al-Qaeda militants yesterday.
Earlier several Western hostages were killed by an Algerian helicopter strike.
A British security source told CBS News "that the Algerians were firing from helicopters at anything that moved."
A UK Government official tells BBC that a "proactive Algerian military operation to free the hostages is under way" after Algeria reportedly turned down UK assistance in the operation.
Algeria's official news agency reports that Algerian army has freed two British hostages from Scotland, a Kenyan and a French hostage.
A local source told Reuters six hostages and eight kidnappers were killed by the helicopter strike while Mauritania's ANI news agency and Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported that 34 of the captives and 15 of the captors had been killed.
One of the kidnappers told Mauritania's ANI news agency that seven hostages — two Americans, three Belgians, one Japanese and one British citizen — remained at the facility after the strike.
Some of the Western hostages escaped. An employee at the In Amenas oil field told CBS that four foreigners escaped while Reuters reported that 25 foreign hostages escaped. A spokesman for the Irish foreign ministry told Reuters that an Irishman who was kidnapped was now safe.
Other reports indicate that up to 600 Algerian workers had escaped, though they were being held under much less restrictive conditions. The number reportedly held yesterdya was 150.
The U.S. is largely in the dark. A senior U.S. official told Martha Raddatz of The Atlantic that "the situation remains unclear in Algeria. They are trying to get clarity but just don't know anything for sure."
More to come as information becomes available.
SEE ALSO: Hostages Killed in Algeria, Dozens More Escape
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(Reuters) - Top executives at Goldman Sachs <GS.N> have been considering deep cuts to staffing levels and pay for at least two years, but feared too many layoffs would leave the firm unprepared for an eventual pickup in business, people familiar with the bank said.
They instead chipped away at staff levels and focused on non-personnel expenses that are less painful to cut.
But investors pressured the bank to cut costs further, the sources said, and on Wednesday, Goldman gave in.
The largest standalone investment bank said in the fourth quarter it cut the percentage of revenues it pays to employees in half to 21 percent. That brings the ratio for the entire year to its second-lowest level since the bank went public in 1999.
With less money going to employees, more was available for shareholders. The bank's annualized return on equity - which measures how well the bank uses shareholder money to generate profit - jumped to 16.5 percent in the fourth quarter from 5.8 percent a year earlier.
"Arguably for the first time, Wall Street's shareholders are getting the lion's share of the profitability," said Brad Hintz, a former Morgan Stanley treasurer who is now an analyst at Bernstein Research.
The bank's quarterly profit tripled, helped by gains from investments and bond trading as well, and investors sent its shares up 4 percent to $141.09, their highest level since 2006.
Analysts said other banks are likely to feel pressure to keep their compensation expenses in check after Goldman's results. But for Morgan Stanley <MS.N>, the second-biggest stand-alone U.S. investment bank, paying out a lower percentage of its revenue to employees could be tough because analysts believe its revenue fell last year.
Goldman missed the worst pitfalls of the financial crisis but has suffered public relations embarrassments from trades it executed during the crisis and from executives' comments afterward. The bank, along with the rest of the industry, is struggling to figure out how to navigate the post-crisis world, in which clients trade less and regulations and capital rules crimp profits in many businesses.
Whether Goldman maintains its discipline on pay will be a test for Harvey Schwartz, who succeeds David Viniar as CFO at the end of this month.
On a conference call with investors, Schwartz declined to provide a target for compensation levels, but emphasized that shareholder returns would be one crucial factor in deciding how much revenue goes to employee pay.
"We don't look to overpay anybody," Schwartz said.
YEARS OF COST-CUTTING
Goldman first publicly signaled its intent to get serious about cost-cutting in July 2011, when Viniar outlined a plan to reduce costs by $1.2 billion a year, partly by laying off employees. Since then, Goldman expanded that cost-cutting plan by $500 million and has winnowed staff almost every quarter.
Staff reductions have targeted big earners, including dozens of partners, who have left since the start of 2011. Sources inside the bank expect that exodus to continue this year as Goldman makes way for younger employees to move up the ladder.
Analysts say that strategy is common.
"The polite way to characterize it is a ‘generational change' - where you promote the young guys and you don't pay them," said Hintz.
In 2008, as the bank's revenue dropped, average pay per employee fell as well. While the average Goldman worker brought home nearly $622,000 in pay in 2006, that figure dropped to $367,057 per person in 2011, with the biggest decline happening between 2007 and 2008. But the percentage of revenue that the bank paid to employees did not stop falling until now.
The fourth-quarter drop meant that for all of 2012, Goldman paid employees 37.9 percent of the bank's revenue, down from 42 percent in the previous year.
"Management appears to be doing a superb job at keeping all expenses down and, in particular, retaining quality people without giving all the revenue away in the form of compensation," said Joe Terril, president of St. Louis-based investment firm Terril & Co, who invests in bank stocks.
WALL STREET WOES
Many banks are facing the same long-term revenue pressure as Goldman, and analysts expect layoffs across Wall Street. Morgan Stanley plans 1,600 job cuts in 2013, while Goldman cut 900 jobs in 2012, equal to about 3 percent of its workforce.
But laying off staff may not be enough, and employee pay may have to fall too. Hintz, the Bernstein Research analyst, estimates that across Wall Street average pay in trading businesses could fall 20 percent.
"There's only one way to get returns up on Wall Street, and that's to cut the compensation of the employees," Hintz said.
Investors have been pressuring banks to pay less of their revenue to employees. In 2011, investors pressed Morgan Stanley executives to pay somewhere closer to 30 percent of the bank's revenue to employees, instead of around 50 percent, according to one person at those meetings.
(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Dan Wilchins, Paritosh Bansal and Ryan Woo)
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Having the ability to sell items in the Amazon Marketplace is a great opportunity for individuals with just a few items to get rid of. That’s the case for Allan: he’s sold a total of three items, ever. Amazon arbitrarily put a hold on his account before he sold the third one, meaning that he can’t get money from his … [More]
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So there’s this donkey, on a road in Botswana, right? And like, it seemed as if he was just going along on his little donkey way when along comes Google’s Street View car and what’s this? Suddenly he’s lying on the ground. That is the sequence of events some are citing while accusing Google’s car of hitting ? and gulp, … [More]
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