Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "There have been rumors that the government is readying a much larger fund for direct stock purchases. 'The Chinese government doesn’t care about losing a few billion dollars here or there,' Mr. Whitelaw said. 'They’re trying to protect investors and maintain stability. Who wouldn’t want that?'"

Excerpt from Psychology Today -- "Researchers David Waguespack and Robert Salomon examined whether 'reputationally-privileged' athletes (that is, athletes who had been successful in previous competitions, or those from countries with a track record of athletic excellence) were more likely to succeed at the Olympic Games than lesser-known athletes. What they found is fascinating, and has implications inside and out of the sports world."

Excerpt from Barron's -- "Blame a ‘70s-era accounting rule that says companies must expense 'knowledge investments' (intangible investments like research and development) as they occur. That depresses earnings and results in shares trading at discounts. The effect was first discovered in the ‘90s by NYU’s Baruch Lev, then became the subject of greater study by Gavekal, which oversees combined assets of $1.7 billion-plus."

Excerpt from MBA Schooled -- "Things will vary especially early on, so you’ll need to get used to throttling. Embrace each day, each week for what it’s going to bring. No two days are the same, especially that first semester, so you really need to take each day, each week, each month for what it is."

Excerpt from Kitco -- "I have looked into silver at the London Silver Fixing as I did for gold and the results were fairly similar, but I have also more recently started to look into the CME futures settlement prices for silver and I found several unusual patterns. I find that prices move in opposite directions from the rest of the market returns very often, particularly while silver prices were moving upwards. I also find very drastic increases in volume traded in the space of one minute, very often the largest of the day by far, and very sharp price movements."

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Greece is trying a 'tyranny of the weak' strategy: if you won’t give us better terms, we will die on your doorstep. It is unlikely to work in the long run. Despite its referendum, Greece is broke and will have to restructure. In time, Greece will have to devalue its currency to survive, most likely by leaving the euro. China, on the other hand is pursuing a 'tyranny of the strong' approach: we are powerful enough to be able to make things the way we want them. It has no more likelihood of success, however, than the Greek strategy."

Excerpt from Al Jazeera -- "The 'no' vote will be a complete disaster for Greece. It will seal - in a very negative way - the future and the fortunes of the country for a generation and that will be a total disaster."

Excerpt from CNBC -- “Historically, China's stock market has been significantly more volatile than the U.S. or other developed markets. This level of volatility is to be expected given the high-growth, high-stakes economic environment in China. … All is not yet lost. But the authorities should step back and take a deep breath. Short-term market gyrations can be frightening, but China should be playing a long-term game. There has to be an understanding that giving up some control is the only way to foster the economic future that the country deserves and the world needs.”

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "In China last week, two things I heard... First, it was the notion that the run-up in Chinese stocks was completely disconnected with general sentiment in the Chinese economy, which has been very stable, decreased in growth, but nothing that people are overtly concerned about in the near term. There's actually an enormous amount of confidence in China about the leadership and about the structural developments happening in the economy, and I saw that across the board. I saw that from elites, I saw that from party officials, I saw that from rank and file. But people in the Chinese market, the typical investors, they're not there for years or even months; they're there for weeks."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "There are very significant hurdles to an agreement: it has to be done very quickly between parties that do not trust each other; it has to be ratified by all 19 countries; and its ratification by the 19 parliaments of the eurozone countries can take weeks. ... If there is no agreement, Greece will be the first country to leave the 'club with no doors,' the eurozone. Greece may also leave the European Union, and its geopolitical position may become uncertain."

Excerpt from Inc. -- "What’s really needed, Kickul says, is a program that addresses the funding issues companies experience in their early days. 'Eighty percent of businesses fail within their first two years of existence,' Kickul says. 'It would be interesting to get Goldman to develop curriculum and address the capital gap between the startup phase and a company’s tenth or eleventh year.'"

Excerpt from Poets & Quants -- "'I loved our Statistics professor, Rohit Deo. He actually made learning about Statistics fun. He did a great job of bringing in real-life examples of how statistics are used in the sources you encounter often as a business professional, such as analysis of the numbers and statements in financial publications and dissecting the data behind survey results to better understand the validity of the conclusions. We learned the methodologies but also how to apply them. It was very practical.' – Shanise R. Anderson / New York University, Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Middle-market companies rebounded from a lackluster first quarter and grew revenues and earnings between April and June this year, according to a new report from middle-market lender Golub Capital. ... Golub helped compile the results with Edward Altman, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who noted that the results for the smaller companies portend continuing slow growth for larger public companies in the S&P 500 when they report second-quarter earnings."

Excerpt from NPR -- "In the beginning of the program, people thought, OK, we're going to get into this program. After a year, we'll be fine. We will have a one-year recession, and after a year, we will be growing. ... According to the targets, Greece would recover almost immediately in 2011, and that didn't happen. Greece did not recover in 2011, did not recover in 2012, did not recover in 2013."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "On March 17, [Jules] Kroll reeled in the city of Chicago as a client for its general obligation bonds, assigning a rating of A- and a stable outlook. Less than two months later, Moody’s slashed Chicago’s rating two notches to junk level (Ba1) after the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a plan to overhaul the state’s pension system. Fitch and Standard & Poor’s cut their ratings within three days, and each member of the Big Three set the future outlook as negative. Only Kroll had left its rating untouched, at A- and stable, as of July 2... Are those higher ratings justified? 'Kroll will say, ‘We’re better,’' says Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'That may be so, or they may be giving in to make the issuer happy. We won’t know until five years from now.'"

Excerpt from CBS MoneyWatch -- "'The deal looked imminent,' said Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business in an interview with CBS MoneyWatch. 'That's why nobody expected that there would be a referendum. Now as a result of the referendum, the prime minister feels emboldened.'"

Excerpt from Chicago Tribune -- "Steven Blader, an associate professor who studies fairness at New York University's business school, said: 'While there is nothing inherently wrong with someone wanting to make money off a commodity that others want, maybe some tickets do change the equation. Maybe some require an assumption that a moral obligation is attached? It's tricky, but the overall implications should give pause. You may not be forcing anyone to buy a ticket, but at what point are shows being played just for wealthy people? I think it's legal, I can probably convince myself a large profit on a ticket is even moral, but I have a harder time convincing myself that this kind of thing is good for the broader goal of music being accessible to all walks of society.'"

Excerpt from CCTV -- "... Austerity is not a good thing and it's not what's best for Greece. But if the only other option is for Greece to leave the Euro and issue its new currency, the new drachma, then austerity has to be the best solution, the lesser of two evils. Under austerity, Greece is going to lose something like 5% of its income in the next year. If they go to a new currency, it's going to lose 50% of its income very quickly. So austerity and a deal with the Europeans is definitely a good thing. It's the lesser of two evils."

Excerpt from Inc. -- "'There is demand on the buy side and the sell side, and I don’t think there is a problem with that,' Whitelaw says. The problem is the lack of transparency in the market for private shares, which the SEC has rightly identified, although it’s perhaps incorrectly using the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform law to attack the problems, Whitelaw adds."

Excerpt from Forbes -- "Choosing the right claims, the right number of claims, and the optimal size and placement of each is a moving target that has to be constantly reassessed among all potential target consumer segments.  It’s not always intuitively obviously.  The good news is that digitally testing a range of options has never been easier."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "Greeks have been ill served by their European allies, the IMF, and their government. By failing to acknowledge the inevitable in 2010 and assuming that Greece could reform itself and begin growing again and service its existing debt, the European allies and the government simply extended the pain and increased the damage to the Greek economy. They compounded the error in 2012 with further lending. Two centuries of history tell us what the inevitable outcome must be. Only after a default/restructuring occurs can Greece begin the long slow process of recovery."

Excerpt from The New Yorker -- "Arun Sundararajan, a business-school professor at N.Y.U. and an expert on the sharing economy, told me, 'It’s very unlikely drivers’ take-home pay would rise. There also would be fewer drivers. They would be able to drive more hours, but they’d have less flexibility in how they worked.'"

Excerpt from Charlie Rose -- "Europe doesn't really play very significantly in China right now... With the Chinese this week, it's much more about their own stock market and what they're trying to do domestically to balance both [a] more open economy with the needs to appease and placate Chinese short-term investors. ... What the Chinese intend to do internationally is overwhelmingly focused on economics right now because that's where their power is."

Excerpt from CNN -- "'Yes' is hope and a future for Greece in Europe. 'No' would mean Greece goes out of the Eurozone, possibly out of the EU. It's a very uncertain future for Greece, a very sad one, and in fact a very poor one...the vast majority of the Greek economists, not only in Greece but also abroad, have declared that it's best to go with a 'Yes.'"

Excerpt from NPR -- "And without functioning banks Greece's economy will grind to a halt. Economides says so far there has been some panicked buying of essentials like fuel and medicine. But if the banks stay closed, things will get much worse. 'As the banks are closed and people have a hard time importing stuff from abroad, very soon in a week, two weeks, three weeks, there will be shortages because merchants are not going to be able to import,' Economides says."