By Duff McDonald 11/13/12 7:37pm

Up & Down the Street

Icahn.

Home Theater of the Absurd: What’s Behind Carl Icahn’s Netflix Play?

Sometimes, sheer absurdity can be a beautiful thing to watch. Like Karl Rove on Fox News on election night. Or Will Arnett in pretty much any role he’s ever played. Or the behavior of Netflix stock over the past few weeks. After a year in which NFLX has Ping-Ponged between $53 and $133, it was suddenly—and absurdly—a safe haven in the midst of a post-Obama-re-election market meltdown. Apple may be taking over the world, but Netflix stock rose 2.5 percent to $78 last week while that of the Cupertino juggernaut fell by more than 5 percent. In hopes of getting by email spam filters and pesky copy editors, I will pose the resultant question as simply and cleanly as I can: WTF?

It’s been quite a month for shareholders of the DVD rental and online video streaming service. Read More

By Patrick Clark 7/17/12 7:23pm

Icahn Worship

carlicahn_4

Carl Icahn Still Knows How to Write a Letter

Not that we doubted, or ever forgot, only that we’d like to stop and admire the stylings of a master of the form. Carl Icahn, of course, is the activist investor who has been waging an increasingly public proxy battle with Forest Laboratories, a war of words that’s touched on everything from the succession plan Read More

By Patrick Clark 7/16/12 6:35am

Morning Read

DOJ Builds Criminal Cases Around Libor; Couple Sues Goldman Seeking Damages That May Top $1 Billion: Roundup

Libor-ated: The U.S. Department of Justice is building criminal cases against financial institutions and individuals involved in the manipulation of interbank lending rates, according to The New York Times. Deutsche Bank agreed to cooperate with the European Commission’s Libor investigation, reports Der Spiegel. Prosecutors in New York, Connecticut, Florida and Massachusetts are Read More

By Patrick Clark 5/28/12 8:30am

Morning Read

NASDAQ

Nasdaq’s Silence Unleashed Facebook IPO Chaos; Is Morgan Stanley Banker’s Star Falling? Wall Street Roundup

Muted response: As the clock ticked past Facebook’s scheduled open, Nasdaq stayed mum on the technical glitches that delayed trading in the social media company’s stock by 28 minutes. The resulting chaos lasted hours, causing confusion over who had bought and sold how many shares at what prices—and leading to about $115 million in losses Read More