Journal september 28

Huang Guangyu was a Chinese tycoon whom brought up his electrical appliance chain to a national powerhouse. Huang, Once the countries wealthiest businessman is facing a 14 year sentence for trading bribery and other crimes. Huang lost his attempt at regaining control of Gome electrical appliances when he tried to replace his chairman chen Xiao, and another senior executive with his sister and lawyer. Huangs plan to oust Chen was revoked by a vote of 52 % to 48%. Though Huang did win the vote to revoke Gomes " general mandate " by a 55% to 45 % vote.

I think that by trying to oust Chen and the other senior exec probably put Huang is a difficult situation. Now he is basically on bad terms with the higher ups in the company. i think that if he just was on good matters with them things could have turned out differently. Its also unclear of why Chen and Huang are against each other. Possibly there is more to this than we really know, Huang could be trying to replace Chen with his sister because his sister would most likely be able to keep the company alive while Huang is facing his sentence. A lot of the information isn't out in the open.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jailed-Chinese-tycoon-loses-apf-2144769500.html?x=0

The equinox Gain

The term Equinox directly relates to the brief lengthening of a day to a full 12 hour day, 12 hour night. This happens by having the center of the sun be on the same plane as the earths equator. Thus marking the start of the new season. An equinox takes place at two specific moments a year, roughly around march 20 / 21 ( spring) and September 22 /23 (fall).
This generally creates a scare in the stock market world because in theory, the changing of the season influences financial cycles. Through observation is has been recorded that the stock markets gains have been more focused from november to april.
 This occurrence has been recorded in 3 different periods of time. from 1950 to 2004 all stock market  gains were most concentrated from November to April.  The average compound return from 55 Nov - April cycles was 7.62%. from 1900 to 2004, 86% of the stock market gains were in the Nov- April cycles, with an average compounded return of 4.27%.  Lastly from 2000-2004 the equinox had a very clear attribute. The average compounded return went up to 5.5% from the Nov - April cycle, 5% more then the Average compounded return of .5% in the Jan -December cycle.
Through observation is has been proven that the November through April cycle provides the highest compounded returns, which could really impact the way many people are handling there stocks.
by, josh feroleto. 

http://www.signaltrend.com/InvTips/SpringFallEqunoxPart1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

Journal Entry sept 14th. (article response)

I agree with the article that I brought to class in that i think that Lottery winners should not expect to be cleared of all debt after they win. Though i think it is much more probable that the winners could greatly change the lives if they safely invest there money and open up good opportunities to change there lives around. I also agree with the fact that many lottery winners are not used to having such large sums of cash so fast. I think that with a little guidance that can be very helpful. I remember I was watching an episode of Royal Pains where Lottery winners were incorrectly placing there funds and with a little guidance they were truly able to turn there lives around.

Journal Entry sept 14th.

The article I brought to class related to Lottery ticket winners either turning there lives around or going bankrupt after a while. It talks about how 5 years after winning 150,000 the winners are just as likely to go bankrupt at people whom won less than 10,000. The article talks about how the big jackpot winners money quickly evaporates where as the median jackpot winner ( 70,000) is more likely to clear all debt or be used in other investments. Basically the article talks about how winning a large amount is more likely to pause bankruptcy then to stop it. Also it relates the fact that people who prior to winning the money weren't used to dealing with large sums of money, thus spending it unwisely. To sum it all up hoekstra says,  " People in financial trouble shouldn't expect that winning $100,000 will cause a lasting impact in their finances."

Ethical?

http://www.ministry-of-information.co.uk/blog1/keiramanip.htm (picture here) 

It's hardly a secret that photos are often heavily retouched before publication, but it's relatively rare that a source image is available, allowing direct comparison with the final version. Here's a particularly blatant example.

The image on the left is a studio photograph of Keira Knightley, taken for use in material promoting her recent film, 'King Arthur'. On the right the same photo is incorporated into a poster. I've slightly blurred the backgrounds, for clarity.
I don't know who holds copyright, but I found these images at a fan site after seeing lower-res copies elsewhere.
Incidentally, a UK 'newspaper' claimed these images show the UK promotional material vs. the US version. Not true.

Some have expressed doubt that they really are the same image, or that only the head is the same, superimposed onto a different body. However, the reason I can quote precise angles of rotation in the following paragraphs; indeed, the main way I noticed some of the smaller details, is that I superimposed the source and end images in Photoshop and reproduced the transformations myself. There's absolutely no doubt that one image is derived directly from the other.

A few changes are uncontroversial: the image has been rotated through 4.3° to improve the overall composition. The colour balance has been reddened to provide a warmer, subliminally more exciting tone and to draw together the disparate elements of the collage. The photo itself has been neatened slightly: a stray lock of hair has been removed, as has her sword. Unflattering details (e.g. a shadow in her armpit) have been diminished, whilst flattering ones (e.g. eyes and mouth) have been accentuated. Warpaint, worn in the film but not for the studio photo, has been added subtly.

However, the main changes go beyond 'accentuating'. Someone has decided that the slim actress doesn't quite meet the Hollywood ideal physique, so her breasts have been enlarged whilst her waist has been narrowed; not to the point of caricature, but when the source and end images are seen together, the manipulation is very obvious.
There's a second, deceptively simple trick. The whole photo has been rotated 4.3°, but the vertical line of her modified abdomen alters the apparent angle of her hips (by 8.3°, if anyone's counting). On the left, she's leaning into the bow, with slightly rounded shoulders. On the right she's upright, with shoulders seemingly further back, changing the emphasis of the original pose.

I'll let others decide on the aesthetics, ethics or even necessity of this manipulation.

Jackpot

Jackpot Winners Just as Likely to Go Bust

by Laura Rowley
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

In the new movie "Lottery Ticket," the rapper Bow Wow plays a sneaker salesman from a poor part of town who has to survive a three-day weekend after his neighbors find out he's holding the winning numbers.
But for financially troubled consumers, the size of the jackpot may not matter: Five years out, people who win $150,000 are just as likely to declare bankruptcy as those who win less than $10,000.
That's according to a new study by researchers at the University of Kentucky, the University of Pittsburgh and the Vanderbilt University Law School. The paper appears in a forthcoming issue of the Review of Economics and Statistics.
"I've always been interested in whether you could solve people's problems to some extent by giving them additional cash," says Mark Hoekstra, assistant economics professor at Pittsburgh, who co-authored the paper with Kentucky's Scott Hankins and Vanderbilt's Paige Marta Skiba. "And anecdotally you always hear these things about lottery winners -- someone wins a bunch of money and the story doesn't end very well. But we weren't aware of any real empirical evidence on whether this was true."
The researchers identified 35,000 people who won between $600 and $150,000 in Florida's Fantasy 5 lottery game from April 1993 through November 2002. (They eliminated the 153 people who won more than $150,000). They cross-referenced that list with people who filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 petitions in Florida five years prior to winning the lottery and five years afterward. Then they compared people who received $50,000 to $150,000 to those who won less than $10,000.
They found 1,943 winners -- or 5.5 percent -- declared bankruptcy within five years of taking home the jackpot. While the bigger winners were 50 percent less likely than small winners to file for bankruptcy within 24 months, they were more likely to file for bankruptcy three to five years after winning. The net result is that within five years, large winners were just as likely to file for bankruptcy as small winners.
'Found Money'
Moreover, when people who won $25,000 to $150,000 did file for bankruptcy, their net assets were just $8,000 higher than those who had won less than $1,500. Bottom line: The median big winner took home $65,000 in cash. That would be enough, on average, to pay off all unsecured debt or to boost the equity in new or existing assets. Instead, the big jackpots simply evaporated.
"The fact that winning a large sum of money only postponed bankruptcy rather than prevented it didn't surprise me too much," says Hoekstra. "But I was struck by the fact that when the recipients of large sums did file for bankruptcy, they didn't have much of anything to show for the winnings they had received. It didn't go toward a house, paying down debts or buying assets that were worth something a few years later. We couldn't find any evidence that five years earlier, these people had received what would be, for many people, a life-changing amount of money."
What happened? Hoekstra says he can only speculate. "We know quite a lot about lottery winners' finances once they file for bankruptcy, but we certainly don't know what they were thinking when they won the money," he says. "It's possible that people in our sample weren't used to dealing with large sums of money, and thus they may not have used it wisely."
Mental accounting may also play a role. "We treat 'found money' differently than money we earn. So if you find $20 on the sidewalk, you may decide to blow it on a nice dinner, whereas if you earned it you wouldn't have done that," Hoekstra says. (And lottery winnings are the ultimate "found money.") Other possible suspects: A lack of financial literacy or a surplus of impatience -- some people would rather have fun today than be financially secure five years in the future.
The researchers also found that while large winners lived in somewhat more expensive houses than small winners, they were no more likely to own a home outright, and had no more equity in their homes than small winners. This suggests that larger winners were not strategically planning their bankruptcies and gaming the homestead exemption in Florida bankruptcy law, which allows filers to keep their primary residence. If this were the case, winners would have bought a home for cash or paid off their existing mortgage prior to filing, in order to keep some of their assets out of bankruptcy.
What Policy Makers Can Learn
The study has policy implications for governments deciding how to help heavily indebted people who are struggling during economic downturns, Hoekstra says. It appears the simplest solution -- giving them cash -- doesn't enhance longer-term financial stability, and only postpones, rather than avoids, bankruptcy. The lottery findings are consistent with a 2007 research paper that showed consumers initially used their 2001 federal rebate checks to reduce debt, but eventually debt returned to its pre-rebate level.
"Our research suggests that perhaps there is something more systematic about the types of people who get themselves into financial trouble -- and the appropriate policy prescription for helping them out is going to be considerably more complex than giving them additional resources," says Hoekstra.
In addition, the findings challenge the assumption that bankruptcy is caused primarily by major financial shocks.
"Winning the lottery undid any negative shock (that previously occurred) for the large winners, and they still ended up filing for bankruptcy," Hoekstra says. "That is inconsistent with the idea that the only people who file for bankruptcy are those with negative shocks such as divorce, job loss or health issues."
Finally, if you're one of those people who fantasizes that winning the lottery will fix your financial woes, it's time to stop dreaming and get a real handle on your money. "Our results suggest that people in financial trouble shouldn't expect that winning $100,000 will cause a lasting impact in their finances," Hoekstra says. "On average, that doesn't appear to happen."