Saturday, March 26, 2011

"James Franco and Anne Hathaway to Replace Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News": Berkshire to $200,000/share (BRK.A)

From the HuffPo:
CBS just announced that actors James Franco and Anne Hathaway will be replacing Katie Couric as anchor of the CBS Evening News. "Franco and Hathaway will bring a new, fresh, young, bold, sexy, glamorous, vibrant, hip, edgy, totally in-your-face feeling to the anchor desk," said CBS Embarrassingly Waning News Division spokesperson Melanie Andells. "Because, as we all know, the news itself isn't nearly as important as the people telling it to us."...MORE
That bit was found on a page labled HuffPost Comedy.
Alrighty.
Personally I think this is funnier (it links to a post at "HuffPost Business"):

From the research puzzle:

anne berkshire hathaway

One of the oddest stories to hit the finance blogosphere in awhile is the one that began with a post by Dan Mirvish in the Huffington Post. Supposedly when the actress Anne Hathaway graces the news, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway goes up.

At a minimum it’s a clever story, connecting our love of celebrity (in Hollywood and on Wall Street) with the algorithmic culture that drives trendy websites (like Huffington) and news trading strategies alike.  Throw in an electronic movie poster of the Oracle and Miss Hathaway in the altogether and it was bound to gain attention.  The Atlantic picked up the story a few days ago, and it’s been on the twitter and blog circuit ever since, helped out by some quotes from John Bates, a computer scientist who helps hedge funds with their algorithmic strategies.

“We come across all sorts of strange things in our line of business, strange correlations,” Bates is quoted as saying.  “And I’ve had a lot of interest in this for a long time because it’s really often the secret source for certain hedge funds.”

The comments on the two stories point out the silliness of picking out a few dates that appear to make the case (although there were actually eight instances cited — way more than the six observations that some of the commenters were scoffing at).  Since the writers of the articles didn’t bother to look at how Berkshire did relative to the market on those days, I labored over that project and discovered that it was real alpha — the stock only underperformed on one of those days.  (I’m sure we will soon be treated to a treatise that explores the hypothesis in even greater depth.  It will probably note that the highest price paid for Berkshire in the last two and a half years was on the day after the Oscars.  Hmmm.)...MORE
I'm betting Ariana went long the "B" shares.