Morgan Stanley: Systemic Mistrust or Bad Financials after the Financial Crisis?

"Morgan Stanley by any measure is a safe and solid investment bank. Except for one: The amount of trust people have in the whole financial and political system. It's just about zero,” according to Jesse Eisinger of The New York Times in October 2011. Even as there is undoubtedly an element of hyperbole in his conclusion—for zero trust in the financial system and governments would occasion far greater problems than the world faced at the time of Eisinger’s report—his broader point that bankers would be held accountable one way or the other for not having learned their lesson on derivatives (and risk more generally) is valid. The subtext is that even though banks like Morgan Stanley were in actuality in solid financial shape, they deserved the negative repercussions from the systemic skepticism that the banks themselves brought about by virtually ignoring risk analysis in preference to a run of profits and (not coincidentally) bonuses.

Eisinger points out that, at least as of October 2011, Morgan Stanley “has almost $60 billion in common equity, compared with $36 billion before September 2008, and its ratios are stronger. Its trading book - which is volatile and where any bank can take sudden, large losses - is smaller than it was. Morgan Stanley has more long-term debt and higher deposits, both of which stabilize its finances. The bank has more cash available in case there's a crunch and a smaller amount of Level III assets, which don't have an independently verifiable value and so must be estimated by the bank. Hedge funds have parked a smaller amount of assets at Morgan Stanley. That's good because in the financial crisis, they pulled them from the bank.” But because all of this could be easily wiped out by a run on the bank occasioned or fueled by a wider mistrust of the financial sector, Eisinger brings up the topic of derivatives as a way of showing that the bankers did not in fact learn their lesson (i.e., all the improved stats may be for naught). Accordingly, the bankers deserved the systemic mistrust even at the expense of any effort having resulted in added financial strength.  

According to the reporter, Morgan Stanley had a face value of $56 trillion in derivatives in October 2011. He notes that JP Morgan Chase had more: a face value of $79 trillion. This is the GNP of some countries. Even though the bankers insisted at the time that they had adequately hedged their long positions, the hedges themselves could fail, especially if the derivatives are positively correlated, as in September 2008 when AIG was completely overwhelmed due to the housing-based derivatives caving in virtually all at once.

In other words, those of us capable of learning lessons know that we should not trust hedges in so far as systemic risk is concerned; the system itself can be overwhelmed by the sheer momentum of a really big wave. So we are back to the issue of trust in the entire financial system, which is and ought to be a drag on even stellar financials until the broader lesson is learned. Unfortunately, that lesson may not be in the immediate financial interest of particular banks due to externalities occasioned by moral hazard (e.g., the possibility of being rescued while another bank, such as Lehman, fails).

Even though governments can step in to protect the broader system (unless captured by the regulated), legislators and regulators cannot force bankers to learn their lesson. A mentality to safeguard even one’s own bank as a going concern cannot be imposed; it must be felt and valued from the inside. All too often, bankers are engaged in “managing” regulations as impediments to be minimized rather than stepping back to ask why the regulations exist in the first place. They might exist for the banks’ own good. If so, the banking lobby trying to water down the Volcker Rule might have been working at odds with those institutions that the lobby ostensibly represents. Be careful what you wish for, Wall Street bankers. You might just get it, especially if you have the gold and therefore can make the rules. It would be ironic if the protesters rather than yourselves had your back, even as you ridicule the masses marching below your towering be-windowed edifices of greed.

Source:

Jesse Eisinger, “Between the Lines, Wall St. Banks Face a Deficit of Trust,” The New York Times, October 12, 2011. 

Investor Assessments of Political Events

Although the various investors in the financial markets doubtlessly pay great attention to important political events, such as were a state in the E.U. to default on its bonds, I suspect that market analysts overstate the importance of more commonplace political events. For example, the New York Times reported in late September 2012 that investors were shifting their portfolios to reduce risk out of uncertainty regarding the upcoming American elections and the ongoing negotiations in Congress to avoid the huge budget cuts and tax increases set to begin automatically at the beginning of 2013 and run for a decade. Additionally, fears that E.U. leaders might hesitate on moving forward with the bailout program oriented to indebted states were prompting investors to be more risk-averse. Generally speaking, analysts were “anticipating that politicians may not act until forced,” both in the U.S. and E.U., “setting the markets up for weeks of angst.” In my view, this account is overstated.

“Right now, we’re much more defensive than we were a few weeks ago,” Martin Leclerk of Barrack Yard Advisors said at the time. He had shifted 20 percent of his company’s assets to the safety of cash. More broadly, investors were cashing in their gains, according to the Times, “on riskier stocks and moving into bonds and safer stocks, like consumer discretionary companies that are not as susceptible to a downturn in the economy.” Rather than presume that all this stemmed from uncertainty regarding the American elections or even the anticipated budget sequestration of the U.S. Government and the E.U. bailout program, I submit that the investors were taking a general reading of the global economy to assess how much economic growth would be likely in 2013. In this regard, the announcement by the Chinese government of stimulus spending is more significant than who wins what offices in the U.S. or whether the E.U. officials are really hesitating on Greece and Spain. The minor presidential election drama fueled by an all-too-innocent media and even the manipulatory threats by E.U. leaders as if jockeys bending the whip to get Greece to pony up rather than lax off are both dwarfed in financial importance by assessments of how the world economy as a whole is likely to do. Specifically, the question is whether the lower growth in China will be tolerated by government officials, and if so, whether that growth would be enough to offset the sluggishness in the E.U. and U.S. The U.S. economy in 2013 would not likely hinge on which party wins the White House because the other party typically has a veto in the U.S. Senate thanks to the ubiquitous filibuster. In the E.U., hesitations should be read more as efforts to manipulate certain recalcitrant state governments than as serious attempts to scuttle the bailout program. Elections do matter and programs do change, but the trajectory based on the status quo has such tremendous gravitational pull that even mandates tend to get watered down by the time they get implemented.

 Does expertise on these make one an expert on politics?  

Therefore, I suspect that the market discounts political “news” that you and I are presented with as “important” and “vital.” Often times, the importance is magnified in order to sell ads. The world economy is remarkably steady-state, and wise investors undoubtedly take a long-term perspective rather than allowing themselves to become ensnared by the titillating excesses fomented by the media. To be sure, jolts such as the effect the financial credit-freeze in September 2008 had on world trade do matter in terms of contractions in the world economy, and investors are smart to become more risk-averse in anticipation of such periods. Even so, a near collapse of the global financial system can be distinguished from which corporate party wins the White House in a certain election cycle or how an internal tiff among E.U. leaders (or states) gets resolved. My point is simply that elections are not usually the beginning of major course changes (and I am not even sure those have such a bearing on the economy as a whole), and that squabbles in the E.U. do tend to get resolved somehow or other. Neither "event,"  therefore, is earth-shattering even if it makes for good television. I suspect that investors know this and discount the white noise accordingly.

Source:

Nathaniel Popper, “Fearing Fiscal Cliff, InvestorsCash In and Seek Safety,” The New York Times, September 28, 2012. 

“Fiscal Cliff” in U.S.: Real or Hyped?

As the U.S. economy slogged through a recession following the credit crisis in 2008 and the E.U. was weighed down by the ballast of austerity in the most indebted states, developing economies, including those of China and India, kept the world economy afloat. As a group, those economies grew 7.4% in 2010, 6.2% in 2011, and 5.5% in 2012. In keeping with this trend, the Global Economic Outlook of the Conference Board predicted 4.7% for 2013. Fortunately, the Board also predicted a pick-up in consumer demand in the U.S. to pick up the slack. “The only really short-term positive impact that we can have is that we can see a faster return of demand, particularly in the U.S.,” the Board’s chief economist said. As of 2012, such a return was not necessarily “in the cards.” The pessimism can be seen in the projected world economic growth of 3 percent, which is lower than the 3.2% expected in 2012 and the 3.8% achieved in 2011. That the projected growth rate of only 1.8% for the U.S. in 2013 is less than the projected 2.1% for 2012 indicates that increased demand in the U.S. was not expected to fully pick up the slack for the slowing-down of the developing economies. Here I want to point to a major factor in the U.S.: the possibly impending “fiscal cliff” of cuts in the federal budget and the end of the Bush tax breaks  that were scheduled to begin on January 1, 2013 unless Congress and the White House could come to a legislative agreement beforehand on an alternative way of holding down the deficits. Presumably that way would have a less recessionary effect.

In doing political risk analysis, one might be tempted to weigh in on predictions of a grand deal. I submit that predicting whether one comes together, as well as its differential economic impact would be, is not merely difficult, but also nearly impossible—unless one has “inside information” from the key players in Washington. Political risk analysis is not a sort of crystal-ball operation. Predicting the future is notoriously difficult for us mere mortals. However, we can assess how the prospect of a possible event, such as the “fiscal cliff,” is being played out in real-time. In other words, it is possible to determine whether the “fear-mongers” are exaggerating the probably economic impact (and why!). Assessing the severity of the worst-case scenario can thus be recalibrated, with implications for strategic planning.

Should the automatic cuts in the U.S. federal budget and end of the Bush tax cuts begin on January 1, 2013—a combined hit of over $500 million in that year alone—a “recessionary toll” was generally held to be the result. That is to say, the domestic demand made possible by increasing discretionary spending would be reduced as government spending decreases and federal income taxes increase. The Global Economic Outlook pointed to the prospect of Congressional and White House negotiations potentially obviating the sequestration as bearing on the global economic growth. Even though Congressional leaders could be counted on to rise to the occasion in delivering on sufficient dramatics at the last minute, the general public could not be sure that the denouement would involve a quick swerve away from “fiscal cliff” as though in some 1940s film noir.

Just by the numbers—around $500 million in 2013—the Conference Board may have been overstating the recessionary impact of the sequestration in an economy whose GDP was over $16 trillion. For one thing, the momentum in 2012 was in the direction of increasing demand. Also, corporate planning may have already “hedged their bets” so “going over the cliff” would not actually involve much change, at least initially, on their part.

I must add here the caveat that I not an economist. Hence, I do not have the quantitative expertise necessary to "run the numbers" on how much GNP would decline from the sequestration. However, I have run economic regressions, so I have some sense that the actual variables in a political economy are not as formulaic as those in a regression equation. The inherrent uncertainty in the political dimension in particular renders suspect the “empirical social science” approach of modern economics as determinative in political economy. Put another way, the political-risk-analysis dimension of an economic growth projection introduces considerable uncertainty in an otherwise quantitative economic numbers game, which might itself be overly deterministic or "exact." Even if we could untangle the myriad political factors going into political negotiations beforehand, we would still have to accept the uncertainty that is inherent in predicting the future, especially where human decisions are in the mix. That is to say, the future cannot be known for certain, given the respective natures of time and human beings.

I suspect the differential economic impact between a possible deal and sequestration was being exaggerated, particularly by the media but also by officials in government and CEOs—all of whom had subterranean reasons for doing so.  The media’s “fiscal cliff” label alone illustrates the proclivity to exaggerate. It is not as though a deal would have absolutely no drag on the economy, even if significantly less than that of sequestration. However, in distinguishing between “some” and “more” in terms of a drag on consumer demand in the U.S., the impact on the overall global economic output may be less than the “fiscal cliff” rhetoric implies because the world is much more than the American union. In other words, if the “differential” in terms of economic impact between a deal to cut the deficit and sequestration turns out to be less than portrayed in 2012, the resulting impact on the larger global economy would also be less.

In terms of a prognosis for 2013 from the vantage-point of late 2012, my best guess was that it would be largely similar to 2012 globally—the U.S. and E.U. continuing to climb out of deep recessions while struggling to inflict austerity on themselves for their own good, and the developing economies continuing to cooling their heels from growth rates that were probably unsustainable anyway. In terms of international business prospects, “continued languid” rather than “fiscal cliff” would be my headline. 

Source:

Matthew Walter, “U.S. Seen Propelling Growth of Global Economy in 2013,” The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2012.

dit Downgrades in the E.U.: Blaming the Messenger?

On January 13, 2012, “S&P stripped France and Austria of their prized triple-A credit ratings and reduced the ratings of seven other [states in the euro-zone], including Italy, Spain and Portugal. Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were spared, along with Belgium, Estonia and Ireland.”[1] Italy was downgraded from single-A to triple-B-plus. "We think there are elements missing in their analysis … when it comes to the growth strategy … there is no space for maneuver for fiscal impetus but we believe that a growth strategy will have to rely mainly on structural reforms," Olivier Bailly, an E.U. Government spokesman, told reporters.[2] “Bailly also called the timing of the S&P decisions ‘very odd’ citing fiscal policies adopted to weather the crisis in the downgraded countries as well as the two successful debt auctions in Spain and Italy last week. ‘We think that there is a strange timing in this announcement considering the signals from the markets,’ Mr. Bailly said.”[3] The “very odd” and “strange timing” reference a tacit political motive behind S&P, which the European officials point out is an American company.

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

1. Christopher Emsden, Matina Stevis, and Bernd Radowitz, “E.U. Leaders Focuson ‘Progress’,” The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2012.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

Voluntary Greek-Debt Maturity Extensions: A Rush for the Exits?

As the E.U. was working out more loans for Greece in summer 2011, rating agencies looking at the state’s debt indicated that default would be pronounced should the decision of bond-holders to continue to hold Greek bonds be anything less than voluntary. Germany had been pushing for something less than voluntary so taxpayers would not have to bear so much of the risk and cost. France, doing the bidding of its banks, effectively used the rating agencies’ default-guidelines to insist that additional E.U. loans do not require then-current bond-holders to agree to later maturities. Given the extent of Greece’s debt-load relative to the state’s GDP, a private sector bond-holder, such as a bank, would naturally loose little time in getting out of holding Greek debt, even given the high interest rates (which reflect the risk).  

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

Leadership at Lehman: On the Failure of Richard Fuld

The failure of Lehman Brother suggests that too much power may go with formal position while non-positional leadership in organizations is not given enough of a chance to check the excesses of office. Richard Fuld could take advantage of much having to do with his formal position so he would not have to lead. In contrast, a competent subordinate, Mike Gelband, faced a considerable headwind in trying to lead through persuasion without the benefit of a position trumping Fuld’s own.

The full essay is in Essays on the Financial Crisis, which is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Related Essays:

 "Fuld's Arrogance at Lehmen: Systemic Risk"

"Lehman's Dick Fuld as the Antagonist in the film, 'Too Big to Fail'"

"Fraud as Fair: Lehman as Beneficiary of Society's Pro-Business Cultural Values"

"Executive Stature: Glimpses of the Man Behind the Curtain"

"Lehman Bros: Insufficient Accountability in Corporate Governance"

On the Irrational Exuberance of a Market's Bubble: The Tech Industry

I contend that the degree of uncertainty related to the expectation of future profits in the social media companies means that that industry ought to be treated by investors as if it were in a bubble, even if it turns out that the expectations were spot on. That is to say, investors should buy in lightly, and supported by a diversified portfolio. So perhaps the question of whether the industry is in a bubble is not as vital as the media may suppose; the extent of uncertainty, which was clearly evident for instance in LinkedIn's trading at 540 times its prior year's profit, is itself a factor not to take lightly. So call it bubble or not, the difference between known and expected revenues is itself worthy of consideration, and when that difference is significant, the wise and prudent investor naturally treads lightly, even if it seems that others may make out like bandits.

On March 17, 2011, USA Today observed, “Tech and Internet stocks turned into bad words after the dot-com bust in 2000. But the get-rich-quick feelings toward tech are back. . . . Given the near-hysteria about promising but largely unproven companies, investment [practitioners] warn that things could start getting out of hand.” So why did the government not step in and stop it from going so far and then crashing?  This is easier said than done. Beyond the difficulties in having regulators intercede to stop transactions that may be necessary to avert a party from bankruptcy, the sheer ambiguity in ascertaining whether a bubble does in fact exist can have a paralyzing effect. "It's a boom, not a bubble, when you hear the sound of dynamite profits," according to Bing Gordon, a partner at a venture-capital firm and a board member of social-gaming company Zynga, which was valued at $9 billion in March of 2011.

However, a big boom can explode in a giant bust; Gordon’s distinction doesn’t carry much water. Neither does that of Geoff Yang, a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. "There is effervescence, but no bubble." Effervescence can manifest, however, as an attribute of the sort of irrational exuberance that characterizes bubbles. That the market mechanism not only does not temper, but may even magnify the volatility from, this all-too-human psychology, whether in pushing a “boom” or “bubble,” is the real problem. Government regulation will not be able to effectively pull up this root until its nature is uncovered. In the meantime, we are left with the problem of discerning whether a bubble can even be identified as it is expanding. Consider, for example, Facebook in 2010.

In 2010, Facebook had about $2 billion in revenue according to USA Today. MSNBC puts the company’s profit for that year at $600 million. Facebook was being valued at $75 billion, based on private transactions from the SharesPost market. If an accurate valuation, USA Today claimed that “this would make the social-media upstart more valuable than Disney.” It would also mean that Facebook had a price-earnings ratio (P/E) of 125.  This essentially means that higher future profits were expected.  The average P/E ratio for the technology sector was about 25, making 125 extraordinarily high.  This could be taken as being indicative of irrational exuberance,  as one typically compares a company’s number with the average of its sector.

However, the technology sector was quite broad at the time, and one would expect companies on the forefront like Google, Yahoo and Facebook to have much higher numbers than other companies in the sector. Even a very high P/E ratio for such companies relative to a sector’s average does not necessary point to there being a bubble. However, even lesser-known companies, such as Color (a photo-sharing and social-networking start-up) was being valued at around $100 million by venture firms even though the company had an untested product in a crowded market. According to The Economist, competition among angel investors has helped drive up valuations of social-media start-ups by more than 50% from May 2010 to May 2011.

Furthermore, in March of 2011 USA Today claimed, “Even big companies are said to be drinking the Internet Kool-Aid. There is speculation that Google and Facebook have considered bidding as much as $10 billion for online microblogging service Twitter.”  In December of 2010 according to USA Today, “The New York Times reported that Twitter was valued at $3.7 billion after a funding round. In March of the following year, it was pegged at about $7.2 billion, according to SharesPost.” The sheer variance between these figures indicates high risk, but this did not seem to bother those drinking the kool-aid. Such psychology is a red-flag that a bubble is likely in the works. It is like a tornado watch: conditions are right for one to form.

The risk can be seen by uncovering fallacies in the way the private tech companies are valued. According to USA Today, “Until companies finally go public and the stocks actively trade on major exchanges, the small and relatively thin trading on private markets sets the price. . . .  Private marketplaces, including SecondMarket and SharesPost, allow owners of shares of private companies such as Digg, Facebook, Zynga and Twitter to sell to high-net-worth individuals and institutions. Typically, the sellers are employees at these firms looking to cash in on shares they've received. And the buyers are sophisticated investors who understand they could lose their entire investment. These online services provide a way for employees to sell their shares now rather than waiting for an IPO that may never occur. However, with the great power that such marketplaces offer comes confusion. Many of the valuations put on companies are overinflated based on limited sales of shares occurring on the relatively small markets. . . . Before long, estimates for the value of popular Internet companies can soar.” In short, one should not generalize from a highly particularized market to project a total market value because there are unique dynamics going on in that market that would not apply were the firm listed on the NYSE.

Crucially, the generalization is in the direction of overstating; hence, it can camouflage irrational exuberance while feeding it. Therefore, risk is increased by how private companies are restrictively “traded” even as the risk is cloaked—making it even more dangerous. “Given such huge risks, the level of the public's infatuation with shares of privately held Internet companies is again taking on a feel of a mania, Gary Freedman, securities lawyer, said, according to USA Today. He noted that several ingredients that inflate bubbles were all present, including a broad acceptance of the companies' products.  Intensifying the distortion, according to him, was the fact that there was very little financial information on these private companies. "It's the same mania," he claimed. "Markets are cyclical. It's really no different than looking at the Internet bust and the housing market." Lest one conclude from this a slam-dunk case, USA Today pointed out that the not all of the practitioners were on board.  That is to say, there was serious difference on whether there was any bubble at all.

USA Today represented the other side as follows: “proponents of the next breed of Internet companies say the valuations aren't absurd this time because the companies have fundamentals behind them. ‘We're talking about real companies with real revenue and real profit,’ says Jeremy Smith of SecondMarket. A major shift in technology is bound to create companies with massive market values, the proponents say. The emergence of social media (more than 500 million accounts on Facebook alone), combined with mobile phone use (4.5 billion), is disrupting all of technology, so giant winners are to be expected, say venture-capitalists such as Cohler and Yang. ‘I think this boom is going to last awhile,’ Ted Schlein, a managing partner at KPCB, averred. ‘The trend lines are unlike anything we've seen in history,’ He says the enormous size of the social and mobile Internet market — tens of billions of people — dwarfs the markets for the fledgling Internet (billions) and personal computers (hundreds of millions), putting companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Zynga in prime position to strike it rich in IPOs. ‘This is just the beginning of a big market run,’ says Tim Draper, founder of a venture-capital firm.” John O'Farrell, a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that owns stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and Groupon agreed. “These are serious businesses with huge global market opportunities ahead of them. To an uninformed person, the valuations may look like a bubble, but we believe they will in fact prove to be very low valuations.”

Indeed, LinkedIn’s IPO on May 19, 2011 shot up immediately, more than doubling from the company’s initial pricing at $45. The IPO began at $83 and was over $100 (up around 140%) at noon. That's 540 times the company's 2010 net income! That valuation of an internet company was the largest since Google’s IPO in 2004. According to the Associated Press on the day of the IPO, “Renaissance Capital, an IPO research and investment firm, said LinkedIn's 84 percent increase at the market opening Thursday was the biggest for a U.S. IPO since the 2009 debut of OpenTable Inc., a restaurant reservations website. IPO analyst Scott Sweet, the founder of IPO Boutique, credits the increase to LinkedIn selling a relatively small number of shares, 7.8 million. [However,] (t)he demand reflects investors' belief that Internet services that connect people with common interests will be able to make more money as the Web's audience steadily expands.” This seems to be the question regarding any social media bubble; namely, will the internet audience continue to expand such that anticipated revenue increases from advertising and premium packages will beBusiness Insider

To be sure, the emergence of social media had been a huge phenomenon in defining or characterizing daily life in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Anything so big would tend to attract a lot of money. Even so, the P/E ratios were at nosebleed territory.  Facebook’s ratio of 125, for example, harkened back to the dot.coms in the 1990s. Like a jet that steeply climbs after take-off and then eventually levels off, the social media companies could not be expected to continue their climb forever; they were bound to level off at some point, and then the extended boom would be truncated or even turned to a bust if the market gets stung by the high P/E ratios.

The question seems to be whether too much stock is placed on the expectation of future profit. For example, in June 2011, Groupon filed to go public in an IPO that could value the company at as much as $20 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company was only two and a half years old at the time, with a loss of $413.4 million in 2010 and another $113.9 million in the first quarter of 2011. With revenues during the quarter of $644.7 million, the company's management could make the argument that it was investing for future expansion and profitability. Even so, it could be argued that it is the extent of expectation that renders the company's valuation part of a bubble.

In fact, a bubble can be defined as an expectation of an “extended boom.” The “bubble” lies in the difference between the expectation and the reality that even such a boom is apt to end. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The next bubble is always said to be something different—something new—even as it is easy to relate it back to the last one. Identifying a bubble in progress with some degree of consensus does not seem to be likely. Were such identification even probable, what would government regulators do to let the air out of the balloon? Limit how high LinkedIn’s price could soar on the morning of its IPO? Prohibit LBOs if the price seems too high?

If Facebook, itself iffy with a P/E ratio of 125, wants to buy Twitter for $10 billion even though the latter had been valued at just over $3 billion a few months before, would blocking the purchase lessen the bubble? Were Twitter in trouble in spite of its growing presumed market value, would its bankruptcy take the air out of the bubble only to provoke a recession?  The aim of the regulators would have to be to release air from the balloon without triggering a recession (which is the downside of a bubble anyway). If anything is clear, it is that much more knowledge is needed for the market to be managed, let alone designed, so bubbles are identified and depressed before doing so could do harm to an economy as a whole. In the meantime, we can expect bubbles to top up because markets are susceptible to the human psychology of irrational exuberance. Such a condition is not surprising; what is astonishing is the human propensity to engage in denial while being completely blind to it even as it is in progress.

Sources:

Jon Swartz and Matt Krantz, "Is a New Tech Bubble Starting to Grow?" USA Today, March 16, 2011.
Nicholas Carlson, "Facebook 2010 Profit? Try $600 Million," MSNBC.com,
Michael Liedtke, "LinkedIn IPO Price Jumps Up Value to Over $4 Billion," The Huffington Post, May 17, 2011.
The Associated Press, "LinkedIn Shares More Than Double in NYSE Debut," CNBC.com, May 19, 2011.
The Economist, "Another Digital Gold Rush," May 14, 2011, pp. 85-87.
Anupreeta Das and Geoffrey A. Fowler, "Groupon to Gauge Limits of IPO Mania," The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2011, p. A1.