It’s Friday 13th!!!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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There is a lot of nonsense surrounding Friday 13th.

Many superstitious people consider it to be unlucky. So much so in fact that they spend most, if not all, of that day in their homes, afraid to venture out into the great world beyond in case something bad happens to them.

In fact it has been estimated that around a billion dollars are lost every Friday the 13th because people are scared to work and travel on this date.

The really unfortunate thing is that sometimes circumstances play right into their hands, which only serves to reinforce their superstitions.

You can find some of them below along with other facts about Friday 13th that I hope you enjoy reading.

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Every month has a 13th but no single year

has more than three Friday the 13th’s

and on average there are two.

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Months with a Friday the 13th

always begin on a Sunday.

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Folklore remedies for triskaidekaphobia

include climbing to the top of a mountain

or skyscraper and burning all the socks you own

that have holes in them.

Another is to stand on your head

and eat a piece of gristle.

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It is from the Norse goddess Frigg, or Freyja,

that we get Frigg’s Day, or Freyja’s Day

which became the English Friday.

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On Friday 13 2006,

36 inches of snow fell on upstate New York.

The ensuing chaos claimed three lives

and caused $130 million worth of damage.

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On a Friday 13th in 1307.

thousands of soldier monks of the powerful

Knights Templar were massacred

by French king Louis IV.

Many people believe this is where

our fear of the date springs from.

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Friday 13 January, 1939

in Australia is known as Black Friday

because on that date bushfires

decimated 20,000 km² of land,

killing 71 people and

destroying several towns entirely.

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Retired bus conductor Bob Renphrey of North Wales

decided to spend every Friday 13 in bed

after a run of bad luck on the

fateful day during the early 1990s.

Among other misfortunes

he wrote off four cars,

got made redundant,

fell into a river,

crashed a motorcycle

and walked through a plate glass door.

When Bob died of cancer in 1998,

his widow Betty, who on previous Friday 13ths

had fallen downstairs,

been hit by falling guttering

and been hospitalized

after Bob hit her in the face

with a stick he was throwing to a dog,

decided to book his funeral for

Friday 13 March as a final tribute.

Alas, all Rhyl’s undertakers were too busy.

“Bob would have seen the funny side,”

said Mrs Renphrey.

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On Friday 13 July, 1951

in Kansas ‘The Great Flood’

left 2 million acres of land underwater,

causing $760 million and killing 24 people.

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Friday 13 August, 1976

was particularly unlucky

for New York man Daz Baxter.

Having elected to stay in bed

to ward off bad luck,

the floor of his apartment block collapsed

and he fell six storeys to his death.

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Black Sabbath’s self-titled first album

was released in the UK on

Friday, February 13, 1970.

It wasn’t unlucky for them.

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Michelle and Gary Docherty had a

memorable wedding on Friday 13 August 2004.

First, a swarm of wasps attacked guests

at East Kilbride Registry Office, Lanarkshire,

as they waited for Michelle’s arrival.

Her aunt Mary Strachan

smashed an expensive digital camera

trying to swat one of the pests,

and when Michelle finally did turn up,

an insect flew up her dress,

triggering a panic attack.

After the ceremony,

two minibuses booked to transport guests

to the reception failed to turn up

and the couple lost their wedding video.

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On Friday November 13, 1970

a monster South Asian storm hit Bangladesh

killing 300,000 people in Chittagong

and creating floods that killed one million people

living on the Ganges Delta.

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Women drivers have a 64% increased chance

of death when driving on Friday the 13th.

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Friday 13 February, 1998

was simply business as usual for Manchester man,

John Sheridan, dubbed Britain’s unluckiest man

after once having his car stolen five times in one day,

making 16 trips to casualty in two years,

seeing eight TVs explode in six months

and losing out on a £4000 lottery win when he

put the ticket in the washing machine with his jeans.

John’s big day began when his Saab ran out of petrol.

He hitched a lift with a sympathetic policeman,

whose car broke down at the garage.

John returned to his car with a can of petrol,

got it started but lost a wheel as he turned a corner.

He returned home on a bus, which broke down.

Completing his journey on foot,

he realized he’d left his keys inside the car

and had to return in case in was stolen.

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Friday, October 13th, 1989,

the stock exchange suffered a serious crash,

the second most damaging in market history at the time

(this was in the pre-recession era). 

Brokers were in a state of shock,

as the Dow Jones Industrial Average

was down 190.58 points.

In Britain a deadly virus crashed IBM computers,

terrifying people and deleting lots of data

that could not be recovered.

This was before backup systems were used.

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A full moon on Friday February 13 1987

drove troubled Robert Bullard, 21,

to attempt suicide by putting his head in a gas oven.

Not only was his methodology flawed,

suicide by natural gassing is virtually impossible

since Britain moved from lethal coke gas

to less dangerous natural gas,

but a flicked light switch caused an explosion

which injured his mother and a policeman

and caused £35,000 of damage.

Robert was unharmed.

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On Friday the 13th, 2012,

the cruise ship Costa Concordia partially sank

killing more than 30 people.

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Friday 13 October 1972 was the date

a plane carrying Uruguayan rugby team

Montevideo Old Christians crashed

on its way from Montevideo to Santiago, Chile.

When rescuers finally found the fourteen 

survivors two months later,

it emerged that they had survived

by eating human flesh from some of the

thirty-one crew and passengers

who had perished in the crash.

In 1992, the story was filmed as

Alive, starring Ethan Hawke.

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On the same day, Friday October 13, 1972,

an Aeroflot Il-62 airplane carrying 176 people

took off from Paris on a commuter flight

bound for Leningrad and Moscow.

The plane landed at Leningrad

and then took off for Sheremetyevo airport,

located just outside Moscow.

The weather was bad with rain and poor visibility.

The pilots were told to descend on approach to

the airport, but for unknown reasons,

they attempted and failed to land twice.

On the third attempt to land,

the plane crashed into a large pond

about 4 miles short of the airport.

There were no survivors.

No cause of the accident was ever established.

At the time, the crash resulted in one of the worst

loss of life incidents for a single plane crash, in history.

It remains the 44th worse loss of life in

an airplane crash in aviation history.

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On Friday the 13th August, 2010

at 13 minutes after the 13th hour (1 PM),

a 13 year old boy was struck by lightning

as he was watching an air show

at Lowestoft, England.

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The Hollywood sign above Los Angeles, California,

was first unveiled by the owner

of the Los Angeles Times newspaper,

Harry Chandler,

on Friday the 13th of July, 1923.

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According to at least one interpretation

of the Mayan calendar the world will end

on 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0

or in the Gregorian calendar,

Friday, October 13, 4772.

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But before then,

on Friday the 13th in 2029,

Asteroid 99942 Apophis

is forecast to pass earth at a

closer distance than any of our satellites.

Crikey!

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number One Hundred 100

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Today the number is 100, very popular, much used by almost everyone.  Here are some things about 100 that you may know and some you probably don’t.

Enjoy.

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100 One Hundred

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In Religion

• Shem was an hundred years old when he became a father (Genesis 11:10);
• Abraham was also one hundred years of age when his son Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5);
• Obadiah saved one hundred prophets by hiding them in a cave and feeding them. (I Kings 18.4);
• Jesus’ parable of the 100th lost sheep (Matthew 18.12);
• Nicodemus brought one hundred pounds of myrrh & aloes to embalm Jesus after his crucifixion (John 19.39);
• Paul’s 14 Epistles in the New Testament total one hundred chapters;
• There are 100 blasts of the Shofar heard in the service of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year;
• A religious Jew is expected to utter at least one hundred blessings daily.

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In politics

• The United States Senate has 100 Senators, two from each of the 50 States;
• “The First Hundred Days” is an arbitrary benchmark of a President of the United States’ performance at the beginning of his or her term.

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In mathematics

• A Centillion 10303 has 100 groups of three zeros after 1000;
• A Googol is the figure 1 followed by 100 zeroes, written 10100. It was invented by Milton Sirotta, the 9-year nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner;
• A 10×10 Magic Square has 100 squares with numbers 1-100, each row, column & diagonal adding to 505 with the total sum being 5050;
• There are exactly 100 prime numbers whose digits are in strictly ascending order. (e.g. 239, 2357 etc.);
• Pythagoreans considered 100 as divinely divine because it is the square (10 x 10) of the divine decad;
• The standard SI prefix for a hundred is “hecto-“;
• 100 is the basis of percentages (per cent meaning “per hundred” in Latin), with 100% being a full amount and representing wholeness, purity, or perfection.

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In science

• One hundred is the Atomic Number of Fermium, a radioactive rare earth metal;
• One hundred is the molecular weight of Calcium Carbonate;
• The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius.

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In space

• Messier 100 is a perfect example of a grand design spiral galaxy, a type of galaxy with prominent and very well-defined spiral arms.
• These dusty structures swirl around the galaxy’s nucleus, and are marked by a flurry of star formation activity that dots Messier 100 with bright blue, high-mass stars.
• This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

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In Finance

• Most of the world’s currencies are divided into 100 sub-units; for example, one dollar or one euro is made up of one hundred cents, and one pound sterling is one hundred pence;
• The U.S. hundred-dollar bill (the largest US bill in print) has Benjamin Franklin’s portrait;

• American savings bonds of $100 have Thomas Jefferson’s portrait;
• American $100 treasury bonds have Andrew Jackson’s portrait;
• The FTSE 100, NASDAQ 100, etc., are financial tables of the top companies on the various stock exchanges.

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In sport

• 100 is the number of yards in an American football field (not including the end zones);
• 100 is the minimum distance in yards for a Par 3 on a golf course;
• The 100 meters sprint is the race that brings with it the title of the fastest man in the world. Current holder is Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt;

• 100 points scored by Wilt Chamberlain is the record number of points scored in one NBA game by a single player in basketball game, achieved when Philadelphia Warrior defeated New York Knicks 169-147 on March 2, 1962 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The 316 points by both teams surpassed the record of 312 when Boston defeated Minneapolis 173-139 on Feb. 27, 1959 in Boston.

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In militaria

• The Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between France & England lasted 116 years.

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• Ultimax 100
• The Ultimax 100 is a squad automatic weapon / light machine gun. It was created by the small arms design team at Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS; now Singapore Technologies Kinetics) Inc, that included American small arms designer James Sullivan, who previously worked for Armalite and participated in design of the AR-18 assault rifle. In 1982 it was adopted by the Singaporean army. The current production version is Ultimax 100 Mark 3.

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• Type 100 Submachine Gun
• Designed and built by the Nambu Arms Manufacturing Company in Japan, the Type 100 Submachine gun was used during World War II, and the only submachine gun produced by Japan in any quantity. It was modeled on the famous Bergmann MP18 submachine gun.  First samples were delivered to the Imperial Army in 1942 and in total some 30,000 were manufactured.

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• F-100
• The North American F-100 Super Sabre was a supersonic jet fighter aircraft that served with the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1954 to 1971 and with the Air National Guard (ANG) until 1979.
• The first of the Century Series collection of USAF jet fighters, it was the first USAF fighter capable of supersonic speed in level flight.
• The F-100 was originally designed by North American Aviation as a higher performance follow-on to the F-86 Sabre air superiority fighter.
• Adapted as a fighter bomber, the F-100 would be supplanted by the Mach 2 class F-105 Thunderchief for strike missions over North Vietnam. The F-100 flew extensively over South Vietnam as the Air Force’s primary close air support jet until replaced by the more efficient subsonic LTV A-7 Corsair II.
• The F-100 also served in other NATO air forces and with other U.S. allies. In its later life, it was often referred to as “the Hun,” a shortened version of “one hundred.
• This aircraft is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

 

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• JF-100
• NASA’s JF-100 Variable Stability Aircraft is a research aircraft about which very little information is readily available. Only scattered references of it remain in bits of documents and reports.
• The JF-100 was built from an Air Force F-100C by NASA’s Ames Research Center, and transferred to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in 1960. The “J” designation refers to it being modified for special test missions, but not so extensively that it could not be returned to being a standard F-100. The aircraft obviously was acquired from the Air Force and carried the registration number 53-1709, but no information about its earlier career was available.
• The JF-100 was removed from service as a variable stability aircraft at NASA Dryden in 1964, but its final disposition could not be determined. The information is most likely buried in various reports somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered by a future researcher.

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• F100 class frigates
• The Álvaro de Bazán class (also known as the F100 class of frigates) are a new class of Aegis combat system-equipped air defence frigates entering service with the Spanish Navy. They are being built in the Spanish factory of Navantia in Ferrol and are named after Admiral Álvaro de Bazán.
• The ships are fitted with American Aegis weapons technology allowing them to track hundreds of airborne targets simultaneously as part of its air defence network. The F100 Alvaro de Bazan class multi-role frigate is one of the few non-US warships to carry the Aegis Combat System and its associated AN/SPY-1 radar. Japan’s Kongo class, South Korea’s King Sejong the Great class, the F100-derived Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen class of frigates also use the Aegis system. Lockheed Martin, Navantia and the U.S. Navy are conducting final systems integration.

Spanish Navy F 100 Class Frigate, Almirante Juan de Borbon

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• SU-100
• Designed on the chasis of the T-34-85 tank, the tank hunter SU-100 was produced until March 1946 with a total number of 3037 units made.
• It was one of the most effective anti-tank units up to 1948. In 1960, the SU-100 was upgraded with the installation of a new enhanced B2-34M engine, fuel pump NK-10, air cleaners VTI-3, commander observation equipment TPKU-2B and driver’s night sight BVN, as well as radio sets 10RT-26E and TPU-47.
• The SU-100 was produced in Czechoslovakia and was in the inventory of several African and Middle East countries. The Arabs actively used it in military conflicts with Israel.

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• Other stuff
• Cities located at 100 degree longitude: Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Monterrey, Mexico;
• Hecatonchires were giants with 100 arms and 50 heads each. They were born of Gaia & Uranus, and were stronger than even the Cyclopes. Their names were Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges;
• Gene McDaniels’ song A Hundred Pounds of Clay had highest hit #3 in 1961 Pop Charts;
• Joseph Haydn’s Symphony #100 in G Major is called “Military” (composed 1793-94);
• Room 100 is a 4-member male melodic rock band formed in 1982;
• Gathering of the 100 Gods occurs on the 19th day of the first lunar month;
• The first Chinese dictionary was written in 100 A.D.;
• The 100th day of the year (non-leap year) is April 10;
• On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, and hit the iceberg on 4-15-1912;
• The Century Plant is a Mexican agave (Agave americana) that blooms only once every “100 years” (folklore). In reality, it takes 10 years to bloom in warm regions and up to 60 years in colder climates;
• Centipedes are insects with “100 legs”;
• A Centenarian is someone over 100 years old. The number of Centenarians in the US  increased from 37,306 (1990) to 50,454 (2000) according to the U.S. Census;  the 180,000 centenarians worldwide (2000) is projected to reach 3.2 million by 2050;
• Polish Draughts is a 100-square board game played with 40 pieces. It is similar to the 64-square board game of Checkers;
• Roman numeral for 100 is C; 
• Centennial is a 100th anniversary or its celebration;
• A Century is a period of 100 years;
• When a TV series reaches 100 episodes, it is generally considered viable for syndication; 
• There are100 tiles in a standard Scrabble set;
• In Greece, India, Israel and Nepal, 100 is the police telephone number;
• In Belgium, 100 is the ambulance and firefighter telephone number;
• In United Kingdom, 100 is the operator telephone number;
• There are 100 pounds in an American short hundredweight.

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Friday’s Facebook Flop Status Quo? Down Down Deeper And Down

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Way back towards the end of May I wrote a post with a big ‘F’-ing title about the greed-inspired stupidity and madness that preceded the Facebook IPO. Remember, “Furious Flabbergasted Facebook Fools Face Frightening Falls From Fanciful Flagging Financial Flotation Farce”? 

Launched at the ridiculous price of $38 a share, or about 100 times the company’s earnings, the price momentarily made it to $45, but then quickly plummeted to $34. 

In my post in May I suggested that the shares were worth more like $18 a share rather than $38. As of yesterday (August 16th) the price had fallen below $20.

Facebook stock has crashed

I’m not saying this by way of blowing my trumpet, because I now think that my $18 peg may have been rather optimistic too. Investors have by and large turned against Facebook.

Apart from the odd blip, the stock has been on a downward trend pressured by disappointing earnings and by the fact that from today the so-called “lockups” that have prevented some early Facebook backers from unloading their stakes begin to expire. This simply means they will be able to sell shares into the market and with around two billion shares eligible for a sell off between now and May 2013, with a big one coming in November, the signs for a price recovery are ominous.

In fact further falls are more than likely.

Those who can are shorting the stock like crazy. (Shorting is where your broker borrows shares which you sell immediately in the hope that you can buy them back later at a lower price.)

The number of Facebook shares on loan to short sellers has risen from 63 million a month ago to more than 93 million.

So is it a good buy now at $18? I think not. Not for a while anyhow, until these locked shares find their way into the market and the price stabilizes and that will probably be well into 2013.

In the short term the status quo is probably down down deeper and down.

Forget Facebook and enjoy some music from the 70s instead.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKe2OfXLxuc

 

The small print.

Fasab disclaimer: this blog post does not constitute professional advice as regards investments on the stock exchange, such advice would only be given and indicated thus if an outrageous fee were being charged and this blog is being given to you for free. Also any investor should always be aware that shares can fall as well as plummet and should act accordingly by not investing any money they can not afford to lose.

Furious Flabbergasted Facebook Fools Face Frightening Falls From Fanciful Flagging Financial Flotation Farce

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

 

First of all, well done if you were one of the people who tried out the quiz. I hope you enjoyed it.

Today’s blog, if the alliterated title full of “f” words hasn’t given it away already, is regarding financial matters. No, hang on, stick with it. It’s not that bad really.

Were you one of the “zuckers” who bought shares in Facebook? I hope the answer is no, because it is another example of the stupidity and madness that greed can provoke in people who should know better, but frequently don’t.

Zuckerberg Pre-IPO

I can’t predict the future, but I knew that the Facebook IPO would cost a lot of idiots a lot of money.

The IPO launch price was tagged at $38 per share or something like 100 times the company’s earnings. It is easy to know why they priced it so. They set the price that high because they thought they could get away with it. Because the herd, unknowing and unthinking, would swallow the crazy hype about the company and buy, buy, buy!

Does that show more than a little contempt for the people you want to invest in your company?  Sadly I think that it does. Not that it is all down to the greed of Zuckerberg. The advising and underwriting banks had a lot to do with it and we know for a fact that they have nothing but contempt for ordinary mortals like ourselves. We are the marks, they are the conmen!

Usually they take the time to milk us dry before abandoning the market and leaving the ordinary investor to lick their wounds. But this time it happened fast. Within hours in fact!

Those who were not in the “loop” and couldn’t buy pre-launch, waded in on launch day and bought, bought, bought from $38 right up to $45 which the shares reached for a couple of minutes.

zucker

The poor fools got whacked almost straight away.

The market very quickly began to realize it had been conned, that this was not a LinkedIn IPO and the issue price had been set far, far too high to ever double on launch. An element of sanity crept in. Facebook  promptly started to fall, by about 11%.

In other words if you’d invested $1000 in the morning you would have turned it into $868 in the space of a few hours. If you were unfortunate to buy at the peak price, your $1000 would now be worth just a little over $700. OUCH!

Zuckerberg Post-IPO

But it wasn’t just individual investors that got caught. Almost every large mutual fund etc., most of which are run by, let’s be kind and say, poorer quality managers, felt compelled to purchase Facebook shares, not because they though they were a good buy but because they saw other idiots doing the same and they were frightened about the possibility of missing out “the next Big Thing”.

Little do most investors realize, but the situation could have been even worse had the price not been artificially propped up for a while by the investment bank underwriters.

For the benefit of those who aren’t investors and/or who don’t know how the market works in things like this, here is a quick summary. IPOs are underwritten by investment banks like Morgan Stanley. The investment banks therefore have their reputations on the line. If the IPO goes really badly so does their reputation and their chances of being asked to underwrite future IPOs (and they get huge gigantic enormous fees for this work so they don’t want to lose it.)

Trust Me I’m A Banker

Thus, in the case of Facebook, when the share price stopped climbing and quickly fell back to the $38 launch price, the investment bank underwriters stepped in and bought heavily. Without their intervention Facebook could have fallen catastrophically on its first day of trading.

Facebook does generate cash, mainly from advertising revenue. It has a vast following and that advertising revenue should rise substantially over time, so the company may one day be worth the $38 and even more. Google launched at $85 and is now worth $600, but it is a proven quantity revenue-wise and the price rise took time.

But, and it’s a big BUT, Facebook would need to be a hell of a lot better managed than at its market launch.

Thumbs DOWN Facebook stock IPO crash

But for now, I’m with my other “mad” friend Jim Cramer of Mad Money fame who rightly and sensibly advised a pass on the Facebook IPO. There may be a time to buy into Facebook, but the writing on my wall says “not today thanks”. Booyah Jim!

Jim Cramer “Booyah!”

There’s an obvious question that I haven’t addressed. It is, “So what do I think Facebook is worth?” Well for what my opinion on these matters is worth (i.e. probably not much) I would peg the value at a lot closer to $18 than $38. I may be right, or I may be wrong, but I really don’t care because I haven’t bought any. I might reconsider if it the price comes a bit closer to my valuation, but it’s only a might.

The small print. (I know it’s just the same size, WordPress didn’t tell me how to change it.)

Fasab disclaimer: this blog post does not constitute professional advice as regards investments on the stock exchange, such advice would only be given and indicated thus if an outrageous fee were being charged and this blog is being given to you for free. Also any investor should always be aware that shares can fall as well as plummet and should act accordingly by not investing any money they can not afford to lose.