Did you strike a pose for one of our photographers recently? Well then make sure to find your photo and tag it and anyone else you know! Find a Party, Browse it’s Gallery the next day, and Get your Own Directory Page! It’s a great way to procrastinate your work day away! Read the full story

Go HERE for more photos by Trevor Penna and tag yourself and your friends!

Have you managed to make your way on over to Animal (not the restaurant) yet? I know, I know! Don’t worry if you’re experiencing some minor confusion, we’re about to make things crystal clear for you. Every Tuesday night, MyStudio plays dress up and disguises itself as Animal, making it socially acceptable to admit you’re venturing out to what the rest of the world and city of Los Angeles recognizes as MyStudio but technically isn’t, make sense? Read the full story

The Street offers up a couple different directions on Motorola Mobility (MMI), in the wake of a lot of back-and-forth lately about the prospects for the company’s “Xoom” tablet computer vis-a-vis Apple’s (AAPL) iPad 2.

Moto shares today are down $1.50, or 6%, at $23.19.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Ittai Kidron today cut his estimates for Motorola for the year’s revenue and EPS, as he thinks the Xoom will have more modest sales than he’d expected. He also cut his price target to $32 from $36, though he maintained his Outperform rating.

“We believe Motorola has missed an opportunity to make its mark in the market by initially targeting value vs. volume,” writes Kidron, by which he means Moto’s got more work to do, he thinks, to match the iPad 2′s ease of use, but also that they should have introduced multiple versions of the tablet at the start, with lower prices for some models, to drive sales. Kidron bases that impression on his own use of the Xoom over a few days.

Kidron sees Moto having another shot at it if they unveil multiple tablets in the October time frame.

On smartphones, the picture is rosier, with the Droid X and Droid 2 Global still selling well at Verizon Communications‘s (VZ) Verizon Wireless, and the “Atrix” smartphone getting “good interest” at AT&T (T).

Kidron is keeping his estimate for the March quarter at $2.53 billion in sales and a 19-cent net loss, but his estimate for Q2 goes to $2.75 billion and a net loss of 4 cents from $2.82 billion and a net loss of a penny before.Those estimates are well below the Street consensus, I’d note.

Wells Fargo’s Jennifer Fritzsche, on the other hand, writes that “momentum” at both Moto and at Research in Motion (RIMM) “has been better than feared in the wake of the CDMA iPhone.” She prefers Moto out of the two, given that Moto trades at 2.3 times cash and 5.6 times her 2012 EPS estimate, compared to RIM’s 9.1 times P/E.

As far as the Xoom, Fritzsche is more upbeat, writing that, “At Verizon, the reps were positive on the Motorola Xoom tablet and cited the 4G upgrade as a major differentiation versus either iPad option.” The Xoom has seen “somewhat light” demand, but “expectations are not high and it seems to have the marketing support of VZ behind it.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Wireless broadband provider Clearwire (CLWR) this afternoon said its CEO, Bill Morrow, will step down “for personal reasons,” and will be replaced by John Stanton, the company’s chairman, and a veteran of wireless outfits Western Wireless and VoiceStream Wireless, on an interim basis, effective immediately.

A search is being commenced for Morrow’s permanent replacement. Morrow will continue as an advisor to the company.

Clearwire said CFO Erik Prusch will become chief operating officer, a new position for the company, and that Hope Cochran, treasurer, will become CFO.

Further, Mike Sievert, chief commercial officer, and Kevin Hart, CIO, are leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, Clearwire said, but both gentlemen will stay for a transitional period.

Stanton thanked Morrow for his years of leadership.

Clearwire shares are quoted as being up a penny at $5.76 in late trading, but that may be a halt, as the quote is now several minutes old.

Update: Analyst Jamie Townsend with Town Hall Research this afternoon points out that the rumor mills had been running overtime this week regarding speculation about what Sprint Nextel (S) might do in the way of a deal with Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) T-Mobile USA unit. Townsend thinks tonight’s management shuffle may be fall-out from Sprint’s having realized that Clearwire is not the solution to its 4G needs. Though, of course, all the speculation about Sprint and T-Mobile is just that, and tonight’s action may have nothing at all to do with any of that.

Update 2: The early read on this from The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Jarzemsky paints the picture as one of some turmoil, referring to a “broad management shakeup,” at the “cash-stressed communications company” and discussing how Clearwire has “continued to burn through cash, demonstrating the sky-high costs associated with building a brand-new network.”

Update 3: There continue to be some questionable quotes on Clearwire shares. The stock is either unchanged at $5.75, or up a penny at $5.76 at this time.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

This morning’s keynote session involves not just one but three speakers: Cisco Systems’s (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, GE (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt, and Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns.
Given that none of these folks compete, the session was one of those Big Picture sessions where important topics are wrestled with: education, [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Stranded Airport Travelers Face ‘Long’ Wait After Storm (Bloomberg)
Get comfortable because no one’s going anywhere! “The time needed to accommodate affected passengers will depend on the length of the shutdowns, Ed Martelle said. “It’s a moving target. I don’t know how fast we can get them on planes.”

Out of Lehman’s Ashes Wall Street Gets Most of What It Wants (Bloomberg)
“We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem,” said John Reed, 71, a former co-chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc., who estimated only 25 percent of needed changes have been enacted. “I’m astounded because we basically dropped the world’s biggest economy because of an error in bank management.”

This Is A Picture Of 50 Cent Shoveling Snow (TwitPic)
He’ll do the neighbors’ driveways for $100 a pop.

M&A King Is…Not Yet Decided (WSJ)
Which is another way of saying Citi still has a shot.

BSE Hopes to Score With Shariah Index (IRT)
Get it while it’s hot: “The Bombay Stock Exchange, Asia’s oldest trading floor, along with the Mumbai-based Taqwaa Advisory and Shariah Investment Solutions on Monday launched an index comprising shares, of India’s top 50 companies that meet the legal code of Islam. The BSE TASIS Shariah 50 index was formed using the guidelines of an Indian Shariah advisory board. The barometer consists of the 50 largest and most liquid Shariah-compliant stocks within the BSE 500 Index. The new index was last trading up 0.5% at 1,233.49 outpacing the benchmark Sensex’s 0.4% rise this morning. Islamic law doesn’t permit Muslims to invest in companies that derive significant benefits from interest, since usury is considered sinful in the Islamic faith, or from the sale of goods and services that are deemed sinful within the Islamic faith, like alcohol, tobacco and weapons. The index can be used for the construction of Shariah-compliant financial products, such as mutual funds.”

Dog Rescued After Getting Head Stuck in Wall (KLTA)
An 8-month old German shepherd puppy learned a hard lesson Monday about sticking his nose where it didn’t belong when he got his head stuck in a hole in a wall. A friend of the dog’s owner discovered the pup in distress Monday morning and when she was unable to free the dog herself, she called animal control officers for help. “My initial reaction was, ‘Wow, how’d he get in there?’” Riverside County Animal Services Sgt. James Huffman said. “And why is there a hole that big in the wall?”

Amid Inquiries, Expert Networks Get a Cold Shoulder (Dealbook)
A few people get arrested in connection with the government’s massive insider trading probe and all of a sudden no one wants to sit with you.

Lives Of Energy Traders: High Stakes, High Cholesterol (WaPo)
McMeel worked for 13 years in the energy markets, and he revels in juicy descriptions and office anecdotes, which have the unmistakable feel of insider lore. He colorfully describes the denizens of this all-male world (one has “a skull the size of a pony keg”) and their meals (“a haiku of fat.”). But as on-point as these descriptions might be, the men and their meals begin to blur; when everyone is larger than life, no one is.

Chris Christie: Fat Chance (NYP)
Chris Christie admitted yesterday that he doesn’t make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight anymore because he never sticks to them…Christie said that he has resolved to shed the extra baggage about 35 times in his life but has only had “varying degrees of success.” Christie, who was nicknamed “Big Boy” by former President George W. Bush when he was the US attorney in Newark, tries to work out three times a week, a friend told The Post.

Holiday Sales Return To Pre-Recession Level (NYT)
High-fives all around.

GM Shares Rise After High Marks From Wall Street (Reuters)
Everyone wants a piece of this: “Barclays said GM is ‘relatively attractive’ for three reasons — strong positions in emerging markets China and Brazil; strong earnings in North America due to price discipline; and even a conservative estimate of its financial position suggest $42 per share price target. JPMorgan sees the ‘potential for significant additional appreciations beyond year-end 2011.’”

China Property Market Limps Into New Year (Reuters)
“The first half of next year will be a hard time for the property sector,” said Chen Dongqi, deputy chief of the Macroeconomic Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s powerful economic planning agency. Property prices will fall in the first six months of 2011, though by less than 10 percent, said Liu Shiqing and Xu Shengli, analysts at Essence Securities in Beijing. “Under the impact of the macro policies, shares in developers face high risks in the next two quarters,” they said in a note to clients.

Hot Trade In Private Shares Of Facebook (WSJ)
Facebook has accounted for 48% of private-company transactions on SecondMarket this year and 40% of those on SharesPost, the exchanges say.

The 2010 Blizzard In 40 Seconds (WSJ)

Relive it like it was two days ago.

President Obama praises Michael Vick’s turnaround in call to Eagles owner (NYDN)
“He said, ‘So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance. He was … passionate about it,” Lurie told Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. “He said it’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail. And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.”

Programming Note: We’re on an abbreviated vacation-esque schedule ’til Monday (opening/closing wraps and limited updates whenever the urge to reach out and touch you moves us). We still want to hear from you, though, so if someone gets nailed for insider trading, Vikram announces he’s quitting to join Stomp in 2011, or anything else happens that you think might tickle our fancy, do not hesitate to let us know.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As most of you are probably aware, some more intimately than others, nobody actually calls in sick when they’re sick. You’re coughing up a lung, you go in; sick days are reserved for pretending to be sick so you can have a day off to dick around. Time was, this would fly with employers. Sure, the time spent writing that early morning email was a bit nerve-wracking– do you list your (fake) symptoms? or is that a give away?– but in more cases than not, it worked out. Even if your boss was suspect, it would be extremely rare for he or she to call you on the lie. Today brings troubling news that those days are OVER, if guys Rick Raymond have anything to say about it.

Raymond parked his black Kia SUV behind a row of trees and peered out at his target. It was 4 a.m. on a recent morning, and Raymond—a seasoned private detective who has worked roughly 300 cases, from thieves to philandering spouses—was closing in on a different sort of prey. Recently, Raymond has come to occupy a new and expanding niche in the surveillance universe. Corporations pay him to spy on workers who take “sick days” when they may not, in fact, be sick. Such suspicion has led Raymond to bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings, and even funerals. On this morning it has taken him to a field outside the home of an Orlando repairman whose employer is doubtful about his slow recovery from a car accident. Although Raymond tries to be impartial about his subjects, “80 to 85 percent of the time,” he says, “there’s definitely fraud happening.”

So cracking down on your lying, not sick at all ass is Raymond’s business and business? Is good. Apparently instances of employees “taking sick days when they’re not really sick” is up 20% due to a lack of job opportunities keeping people in gigs they hate. And if you thought you were too creative or stealthy to get caught, think again! Leslie Herneisey probably thought she was in the clear telling colleagues she had “an inoperable brain tumor” in order to take sick leave, until she was arrested and charged like a common criminal.

Another woman had a similar situation:

Earlier this year, Raymond investigated an employee at a Florida health organization who called in sick with the flu for three days. As Raymond discovered, she was actually visiting the Universal Studios theme park. “On some of those roller coasters, they take your picture at a really sharp turn, and then you can buy it at a kiosk,” Raymond recalls. “She went on three rides, and I bought all three of her pictures, which had the date at the bottom.” When confronted with the evidence by her employers, Raymond says her first response was, “That’s not me!” After they played Raymond’s video of her volunteering at the theme park’s animal show, her only defense was, “I don’t even remember that!” She was fired.

Obviously, assigning a dedicated private-eye to each and every employee is a policy the hedge fund community will soon be adopting (presumably many have already). And at the more ‘intense’ ones it won’t be enough to simply stay in your house screwing around all day, thinking as long as you’re not caught at Great Adventure, you’re good. The alleged fever better be over 100 and it will be doubly verified, via rectal thermometer. If that’s not deterrent enough for you, proceed.

The Sick Day Bounty Hunters [BW]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

RBS Faces `Long, Hard Slog’ as Hester Forecasts Reduced Loss (Bloomberg)
The loss for the year will be “nominal,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester, 49, said on a conference call with journalists today, following a 3.6 billion-pound ($5.8 billion) loss in 2009. The third quarter net loss narrowed by 36 percent to 1.15 billion pounds from 1.8 billion pounds in the year- earlier period as impairments fell, RBS said in a statement…“There are inevitably clouds still out there on the horizon,” Hester said. “We still have our raincoats on.”

HSBC Profit Growth Slows, Sees ‘Bumps in the Road‘ (Bloomberg)
“Our latest data from emerging markets points to a slowdown in the rate of recovery and the likelihood of some bumps in the road ahead,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Geoghegan said in the statement. “We believe the long-term fundamentals for emerging economies are as compelling as ever.”

German Finance Minister: US Policy ‘Clueless’ (Reuters)
“With all due respect, U.S. policy is clueless,” Wolfgang Schaeuble said at a conference.

AIG Posts $2.4 Billion Loss (AP)
AIG lost $2.4 billion, or $17.62 per share, compared with earnings of $92 million, or 68 cents per share, a year ago.

Representative Bachus Warns Geithner On Volcker Rule (Reuters)
“If the Volcker Rule’s prohibitions are expansively interpreted and rigidly implemented against U.S. institutions while other nations refuse to adopt them, the damage to U.S. competitiveness and job creation could be substantial,” Bachus wrote in the November 3 letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other top regulators.

GM Touts Its Profit Potential In IPO Pitch (WSJ)
GM tells investors the company can generate $11 billion to $13 billion in annual pretax profit and profit margins of 7% to 8% as the North American auto market recovers, according to a video in the presentation by Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell that was available Thursday on a website used by underwriters to distribute IPO information. Mr. Liddell says GM should be able to hit those targets as the industry moves up from the trough of 2009. When the car market is at its strongest, he says, GM will be capable of delivering pretax annual profit of $17 billion to $19 billion, with profit margins of 9% to 10%.

Octogenarian Finds Copper With China as Biggest Customer (Bloomberg)
In the snake-infested jungle of southeastern Ecuador, the American explorer David Lowell found himself sliding over a waterfall and heard his head bounce off a rock “like a melon being hit by a hammer,” he says. Lowell was 72 and prospecting for copper that day in May 2000. He stepped into the slippery streambed for a vantage point free of vipers and vines. A broken rib and throbbing head diverted him to a nearby hamlet in search of help. “There was one man in the village who was a combination chiropractor and mortician,” Lowell says. “We decided to just buy a little tin of liniment with the picture of a dragon on it.” The expedition carried on. In the clear water of the stream, Lowell saw enough to help him find one of South America’s richest copper deposits. This May, a joint venture of Chinese state-owned companies paid $652 million to buy Lowell’s partner in the exploration, Vancouver- based Corriente Resources Inc. Lowell kept a stake there for himself, though local opposition has prevented mining. In a career spanning six decades and 44 countries, Lowell has made 14 major discoveries, including the world’s largest copper deposit in Chile. He found treasures where others detected nothing worth mining. Lowell revolutionized exploration and unearthed metals that helped the U.S. build the world’s largest economy. He also made investors billions.

BlackRock Fund To Finance, Securitize US Mortgages (Reuters)
The $1 billion BlackRock Mortgage Investors Fund will provide capital for prime “jumbo” loans through lenders under strict underwriting guidelines, said Randy Robertson, a managing director and co-head of securitized products.

FrontPoint Cautioned Manager On Trades (WSJ)
FrontPoint Partners manager Joseph F. “Chip” Skowron, who has been put on leave pending the outcome of an insider-trading investigation concerning a biotechnology stock, was warned by supervisors about trading other securities he or others on his team discussed with a network of health-care advisers, said people familiar with the matter.

Spoonachos Are The Holy Grail Of Chips (Gizmodo)
Dare to dream.

Volcker: Future Inflation Risk Limits Easing Effect (Reuters)
Volcker told reporters after a lecture in Seoul that short-term U.S. interest rates had almost no room to go down further, while long-term bond prices were under pressure from increasing concern about future inflation.

‘Pay To Play’ Guilty Plea Expected (WSJ)
Henry “Hank” Morris, who was an adviser to former New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi, was accused by the state’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, in March 2009 of taking kickbacks disguised as “placement” fees in exchange for arranging business for investment firms from New York’s $125 billion Common Retirement Fund, one of country’s largest public pension funds. [He] has agreed to plead guilty to a felony in the long-running corruption investigation, people familiar with the situation said.

Banks Face $31 Billion Loss on Mortgage Buybacks (NYT)
So sayeth Standard & Poor’s.

HSBC Says British Remuneration Rules Hurt Hiring (Dealbook)
HSBC finds it increasingly difficult to compete for talent with banks from the United States and local rivals in Asia, Stuart T. Gulliver, chief executive of HSBC’s investment banking business, said Friday. “We’re competing against the local banks and against the American banks, which are not subject to the same remuneration rules, which means we simply can’t pay what these guys are paying,” Mr. Gulliver, who is set to take over as chief executive of HSBC this year, said on a media call about the banks’ third-quarter earnings.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Our friends at Bridgewater Associates have long loved Halloween and a good Halloween soiree.  In addition to an annual party paid for by the firm, its staff is known to host bunches of get-togethers in the week leading up to the big night, where everyone gets into the spirit. It wasn’t until very recently, however, that they felt comfortable speaking frankly about candy corn and costumes with the outside world. 

For example, one year, let’s call it 2008, a bunch of the ladies of Bridgewater dressed up as “Mortgage Ratings Gone Bad.” Everyone was represented: triple-A, double-D and so on and so forth. People were so excited about the costumes that an innocent photograph of the naughty ratings made their way to a site that chronicles Wall Street. Despite the fact that the picture appeared without naming the firm at which the girls worked, that it was snapped at one of the unofficial gatherings (i.e. not B-Water sanctioned), and that there was no negative commentary, this website’s approval of the general cleverness of the costumes was unappreciated by the firm.

How dare you show our employees dressed up for our most favorite holiday in the world, someone protested. That same someone spent the weekend threatening to sue if the photo was not removed, and once informed that they had no legal right to get it taken down, as there was no defamation but more importantly, they did not own the picture, demanded that the photographer turn over the rights so they could declare copyright infringement. It was upsetting, to say the least. But this story has a happy ending.

That anecdote illustrated Bridgewater’s old attitude about Halloween, for which they should not be faulted. They weren’t ready for non-Bridgewaters to know about their costumes and you can’t push people, like I did, until they’re ready. You have to let them come to things in their own time. Happily, they did just that. Bridgewater’s new attitude, of which we VERY much approve, is to speak openly and honestly about how much their Halloween parties kick ass. In fact, they’re now being used to attract new talent. Business Insider took a looksee at the company’s website and in a new section, several employees have offered testimonials re: how B-Water does H-Ween (among other things) right:

* Nick, on the “best” event at Bridgewater: “The Halloween party. Dressing up in the most offensive costume I could think of won me tickets to anywhere in North America.”

* Joe, on the “best” event at Bridgewater: “My favorite was the first Halloween party three months after I started working here. The costumes were outrageous. The competitive spirit really kicks in when it comes to dressing up. People are really creative every year, and winning a prize for dressing up as the Heisman Trophy a few years ago was a highlight of my Bridgewater experience.”

* Fred, on the “best” event at Bridgewater: “The parties at Bridgewater (holiday, Mardi Gras, summer picnic, and Halloween) are great because they are not stuffy corporate parties, but parties where letting loose is encouraged instead of discouraged.”

* Hassan, on the “best” event at Bridgewater: “The Halloween party, although I don’t remember all of it…”

It goes without saying that we love and support this new policy. Now that we’re all the same page, if anyone would like to share some visuals from this year’s fête, we would be happy to receive them.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

You can stop giving yourselves a hernia.

After being stalked at his Darien house and Greenwich, office; after the Herald Tribune published a yearbook picture of him sporting a mullet at the age of 16, with threats to do worse (their version of a hostage situation); the heir to the Berkshire Hathaway fortune finally relented on Friday night, where he agreed to have his picture taken at a hockey game in Stamford, and possibly called in the tip as to his whereabouts himself (or Bloomberg has been cozying up to the towel boys). [Bloomberg via BI]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker