This is interesting – a zero-cost brokerage:
How does Robinhood make money?
Robinhood will offer margin trading as well as API access, which will allow partnered developers to build applications in conjunction with Robinhood. Robinhood will also receive remuneration for providing trade volume in certain markets. In the future, we plan to offer premium services for active investors.
Robinhood is venture-funded by Google, Andreessen Horowitz and many others, which affords us the freedom to focus on building a wonderful brokerage experience rather than short-term profits.
So presumably they’re selling the order flow to an agglomerater, which will then fill the market orders just inside the market – most of the time – before routing the excess to the public markets – or even another agglomerater, for all I know. Cool.
TARP is showing the usual bureaucratic mission creep:
In Flint, once a thriving auto-industry hub, excavators with long metal arms and shovels have begun tearing down 1,500 dilapidated homes in an attempt to lift the housing market.
The demolitions in this Michigan city of about 100,000 people are part of the stepped up efforts by officials in several Midwestern states to rid their blighted neighborhoods of decayed housing that’s depressing prices. The funding for the excavator work comes from a surprising source — the Hardest Hit Fund of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, created in 2008 to stabilize to the financial system.
The $7.6 billion Hardest Hit Fund was intended to help troubled property owners avoid foreclosure and keep their homes. As foreclosures fall in most parts of the country, the fund is using the unspent $3.2 billion to remedy the crisis of abandoned homes. In Detroit alone, 70,000 dwellings, or about 19 percent of the total, may need to be torn down, according to the city.
The Globe had an interesting story on a DDoS attack:
Social networking website Meetup.com is fighting a sustained battle against cyberattackers who are demanding only $300 to call off a campaign that has kept the site offline for much of the past four days.
…
A Meetup blog said that the company was a victim of a distributed denial of service (DDOS) campaign, a type of attack that knocks websites offline by overwhelming them with incoming traffic. It said that no personal data, including credit card information, had been accessed.
A web search brought up news of the record-holding DDoS attack:
A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts Web sites said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world.
…
The attacks were first mentioned publicly last week by CloudFlare, an Internet security firm in Silicon Valley that was trying to defend against the attacks and as a result became a target.
…
The so-called distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks have reached previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second.
… and further interrogation of Mr. Google found a description of CloudFlare advanced DDoS protection with a description of how these attacks work:
Below you will find detailed information on these attacks and how the CloudFlare network protects against them:
- •Layer 3/4 attacks
- •DNS amplification attacks
- •SMURF attacks
- •ACK attacks
- •Layer 7 attacks
- •Making DoS a thing of the past
… which I found enthralling.
The Conference Board of Canada is having another kick at Milkfare:
Canada’s dairy industry faces a grim future of stagnant sales, dwindling farms and lost opportunity if the country remains a bystander to a global boom in milk products trade, the Conference Board of Canada argues in a new study.
But it doesn’t have to play out this way, the think tank concludes. Trade can both save the family farm and lift the overall economy, according to a chapter released Monday from a major new examination of the 1970s-era supply management regime.
The Canadian economy would gain $1.2-billion a year and as many as 8,000 new dairy jobs if the industry was freed to pursue rapidly expanding dairy markets in Asia and Africa, the report says.
It was another positive day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 1bp, FixedResets up 2bp and DeemedRetractibles winning 14bp. Volatility was low. Overall volume was average, despite some good sized blocks at the top of the charts.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.6407 % | 2,405.4 |
| FixedFloater | 4.70 % | 4.29 % | 27,972 | 17.78 | 1 | 0.0495 % | 3,610.3 |
| Floater | 3.01 % | 3.15 % | 56,624 | 19.29 | 4 | -0.6407 % | 2,597.2 |
| OpRet | 4.62 % | -0.55 % | 68,993 | 0.25 | 3 | -0.1026 % | 2,691.1 |
| SplitShare | 4.86 % | 4.73 % | 55,930 | 4.35 | 5 | 0.0080 % | 3,048.7 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.1026 % | 2,460.8 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.64 % | 0.11 % | 95,958 | 0.08 | 12 | 0.1317 % | 2,346.5 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.50 % | 5.60 % | 140,226 | 14.44 | 26 | 0.0118 % | 2,410.5 |
| FixedReset | 4.71 % | 3.55 % | 225,781 | 6.80 | 77 | 0.0200 % | 2,508.0 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.09 % | 3.53 % | 165,005 | 0.96 | 42 | 0.1416 % | 2,453.2 |
| FloatingReset | 2.59 % | 2.58 % | 202,229 | 7.13 | 5 | 0.0563 % | 2,440.9 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| BAM.PR.K | Floater | -1.07 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-03 Maturity Price : 16.70 Evaluated at bid price : 16.70 Bid-YTW : 3.17 % |
| GWO.PR.N | FixedReset | 1.15 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.00 Bid-YTW : 4.43 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| RY.PR.I | FixedReset | 156,575 | Scotia crossed 60,000 at 25.05; TD crossed 90,000 at 25.12. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2019-02-24 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.10 Bid-YTW : 3.46 % |
| PWF.PR.T | FixedReset | 156,200 | TD crossed blocks of 123,000 and 25,000, both at 25.85. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2019-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.81 Bid-YTW : 3.70 % |
| ENB.PR.J | FixedReset | 129,732 | RBC crossed 99,200 at 25.04; TD crossed 14,000 at 25.07. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-03 Maturity Price : 23.18 Evaluated at bid price : 25.05 Bid-YTW : 4.13 % |
| POW.PR.C | Perpetual-Premium | 125,170 | TD crossed 122,700 at 25.30. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-02 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.32 Bid-YTW : -0.69 % |
| BNS.PR.B | FloatingReset | 104,775 | Scotia crossed 50,000 at 24.80; Desjardins sold two blocks to anonymous, of 25,600 and 12,000, both at 24.80. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.83 Bid-YTW : 2.60 % |
| TD.PR.G | FixedReset | 104,671 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 25.30. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.28 Bid-YTW : 2.41 % |
| BNS.PR.T | FixedReset | 103,288 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 25.31. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.29 Bid-YTW : 1.78 % |
| TD.PR.E | FixedReset | 103,200 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 25.30. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.28 Bid-YTW : 2.41 % |
| BNS.PR.X | FixedReset | 102,318 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 25.31. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.30 Bid-YTW : 1.50 % |
| RY.PR.F | Deemed-Retractible | 100,215 | TD crossed 90,000 at 25.57. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-05-24 Maturity Price : 25.50 Evaluated at bid price : 25.60 Bid-YTW : 2.99 % |
| There were 26 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| PWF.PR.A | Floater | Quote: 19.51 – 19.95 Spot Rate : 0.4400 Average : 0.3131 YTW SCENARIO |
| IFC.PR.A | FixedReset | Quote: 24.58 – 24.98 Spot Rate : 0.4000 Average : 0.2905 YTW SCENARIO |
| TRP.PR.A | FixedReset | Quote: 23.21 – 23.50 Spot Rate : 0.2900 Average : 0.1959 YTW SCENARIO |
| PWF.PR.O | Perpetual-Premium | Quote: 25.40 – 25.69 Spot Rate : 0.2900 Average : 0.2101 YTW SCENARIO |
| CIU.PR.C | FixedReset | Quote: 21.10 – 21.68 Spot Rate : 0.5800 Average : 0.5009 YTW SCENARIO |
| IAG.PR.G | FixedReset | Quote: 25.80 – 26.00 Spot Rate : 0.2000 Average : 0.1264 YTW SCENARIO |