Continue reading Memo to SEC: Cuban beat you, give it up!

Memo to SEC: Cuban beat you, give it up! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Score another point for Mark Cuban in SEC battle

Score another point for Mark Cuban in SEC battle originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When the SEC sued Mark Cuban for insider trading in shares of Mamma.com, the case was unique from the beginning. First of all, Cuban didn't settle instantly and paid a small fine without admitting or denying guilt -- something that seems to be a rarity these days. He even blogged about the charges.

Now, the feisty Mavericks owner has taken the unusual step of suing the SEC for denying him proper access to documents that detail the SEC's allegations and evidence against him.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, accuses the commission of improperly rejecting requests to access some evidence, being too slow to respond to some requests, and not trying hard enough to find all the documentation Cuban's attorneys requested.

Continue reading Mark Cuban sues SEC over insider trading probe

Mark Cuban sues SEC over insider trading probe originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 29 May 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mark Cuban to Sam Zell: Sell me the Chicago Cubs at a discount originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mark Cuban discloses stake in Carmike Cinemas originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Say it ain't so, Mark Cuban.

Yesterday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the billionaire with insider trading. The regulatory agency claims that Cuban sold shares of mamma.com, a Canada-based Internet search company, with the advance knowledge of a yet-to-be-disclosed private equity offering of company shares.

Cuban allegedly sold his shares under the assumption that the private offering would greatly dilute his holdings. Selling as he did prevented the loss of some $750,000, the SEC claims in its charges.

He denies the charges and vows to fight.

Mamma.com changed its name to Copernic Inc. (NASDAQ: CNIC) in 2007. As a result of the highly publicized charges against Cuban, I expected to see trading volume in CNIC increase from its current average volume of 45,000 shares.

Sure enough, volume yesterday was at more than 350,000 shares. The lemmings are so predictable. They see something on the news and they place a trade.

No matter that the reasons for the company being in the news have little to do with the business, its current state or its future potential. The company is in the news because of insider trading, period.

Now, is that a reason for a stock to go up in value?

Continue reading Oh, Mamma Mia Dot Com -- Copernic (CNIC) shares move on Cuban story

Oh, Mamma Mia Dot Com -- Copernic (CNIC) shares move on Cuban story originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mark Cuban charged with insider trading originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CEOs have been doing the old soft shoe at quarterly report time since the market first form, but dancing now seems to have become a favored pastime of CEOs include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Jerry Yang of Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and (surprise? hardly) Mark Cuban (also a yahoo).

Yang busted some moves recently dancing with the star of Where the Hell is Matt?, the outstanding internet feature following adventurer and dancer (I use the term loosely) Matt Harding. Don't miss the video at the end of this post, if you're not familiar with Matt. - it's perhaps the most charming, uplifting video I've seen in years.

Of course, who can forget Steve Ballmer's dance at the podium during a Microsoft presentation? And, of course, Mark, 'Gimme the Cubs" Cuban performing on Dancing with the Stars?

Come to think of it, many CEOs are already quite accomplished at performing the fan dance with their balance sheets. Ex-Gov. Spitzer has shown his fondness for the hustle and the shag, while Donald Rumsfeld is still waiting for the cakewalk to begin. Senator Craig seems to favor the swing, while President Bush appears dead-set on taking on the Persian Dance before he waltzes out of the White House.

And me? Having lived through the Vietnam Era, I'm doing the Time Warp again.

Thanks to Portfolio.com

CEOs practice the old soft shoe originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mark Cuban's Sharesleuth attacks China Fire & Security Group Inc. originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mark Cuban & Om Malik on broadband originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's been nearly 25 years since Donald Trump since Donald Trump bought the New Jersey Generals off the ill-fated USFL. Now another obnoxious mogul, Mark Cuban, is trying to start a new football league.

According to CNNMoney's Chris Isidore, "there are as many as three different groups looking at trying to start yet another league in the coming years. Two of the efforts would try to start leagues in the spring, when the NFL is in hibernation and some of the former leagues, like the USFL, briefly succeeded."

Bill Hambrecht and Cuban are looking at starting the UFL, and Cuban has argued on his blog that the league's collective bargaining agreement structure is :not designed for a competitive environment. Competition for top players, even if the UFL gets just a few, increases prices at the top end for all teams. Every star will get paid more, but still have to fit under the cap. That forces teams to use more low cost players, at the expense of signing the middle of the roster. That gives us access to quite a few very, very good NFL players ..."

Hambrecht has suggested that each team would be able to sell 1/3rd of its shares to the public through IPOs. So not only would the USFL provide opportunities for billionaires to own teams, but also average Joe's: Cool!

Mark Cuban starting his own football league? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The always interesting, if not always sane, Mark Cuban has a fascinating idea for how to shore up the housing market on a long-term basis: Let people take them their houses public:

The rules could be very simple
1. The house is appraised by a company approved by the exchange that lists the houses.
2. "Shares" are set with a Par Value of 10pct of the appraised value. For a 100k dollar house, there are 10 shares potentially available. However at no point in time can more than 40pct of the "shares" in a home be sold. We dont want the opportunity for "hostile takeovers"
3. The price of the shares will of course be set by the market. In a hot market it will be set above par, in a tough market like today, it will sell below Par.
4. All Proceeds from the sale of shares MUST be used to pay down any debt on the home.

At first glance, this idea makes a ton of sense to me. It would be appeal to investors because it allows them an opportunity to profit from potential upside in the real estate market. I can certainly see REITs jumping into this kind of security if it ever comes to fruition. It would also provide a nice alternative to foreclosure for people who are close to losing their homes. It would also create a real-time market for homes that aren't for sale -- It would help people interested in the industry get an idea of what homes are worth.

Hopefully this novel idea will get the attention it deserves. I don't even like Mark Cuban, and I'm intrigued.

Should we be able to take our houses public? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ShareSleuth, Mark Cuban's pet project (He calls it journalism) that seeks to uncover fraudulent companies has a new target: Orthopedic Development Corporation.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ShareSleuth, the basic idea is this: Cuban hired a guy named Christopher Carey to do investigative research into companies that may be engaging in deception and then write about them on the website. The way that Cuban pays for it is where it gets a little controversial: Before the "picks" are posted on the website, Cuban is told about them and he shorts them. This is all disclosed on the website, and Cuban bills it as a new type of financial journalism.

While I don't have any problem with what Cuban and Carey are doing, I'm not so sure it should be called journalism: Journalism is paid for through the sale of publications and advertising. ShareSleuth is more reminiscent of the work of Manuel Asensio, an investor who put out research reports slamming stocks he was short.

The site received a fair amount of negative publicity, and its latest pick differs from its first two picks, Xethanol (AMEX: XNL) and Utek (AMEX: UTK). Orthopedic Development isn't public and, as such, Cuban has no financial stake in the company. The choice of a non-public company may be an effort to appease those who complained about the supposed conflict of interest in the earlier picks, but I'm not impressed.

The problem with exposing a non-public company is this: Who cares? There's no way that we can seek to profit from the expose, and it's just not very interesting. Public fiascoes are much more fun to follow.

Meanwhile, Mark Cuban is writing about his colonoscopy on his blog. That could possibly be less interesting than the piece on Orthopedic Development.

Mark Cuban's ShareSleuth has a new target -- Does anyone care? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2006. Check out the other nominees for Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006. Be sure to cast your vote.

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is best known as the eccentric owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team. But he got his start as an entrepreneur at the age of twelve, selling garbage bags. His other early money-making efforts included providing disco dancing lessons and a chain letter that earned him more than $1,000. The foundation of his fortune, though, came about through starting and selling technology companies. Unlike so many others in that field, Cuban managed to avoid the dot-com bust by diversifying his portfolio. He's now one of the world's 500 richest people, according to Forbes.

Cuban is a confessed admirer of Ayn Rand, particularly a fan of her novel, The Fountainhead, and also of objectivist philosophy; he leans toward the libertarian end of the political spectrum, though he doesn't get much involved in politics. A casual man, Cuban rarely wears a suit and never wears a watch. He purchased his stake in the Dallas Mavericks from H. Ross Perot in 2000, and has since been a very visible and outspoken supporter of the team, often appearing at games in a Mavericks jersey. He's been fined a number of times by the NBA for criticism of referees and league officials, though he matches his fines with donations to charity. In one notable incident, Cuban's complaint that a league manager wasn't smart enough to run a Dairy Queen eventually resulted in Cuban working the counter at a Dairy Queen in Texas, where delighted fans lined up around the block to be served by him.

Other widely reported incidents include a 2003 scuffle with professional wrestlers Eric Bischoff and Randy Orton, which turned out to be a scripted stunt. In 2006, when film director M. Night Shyamalan expressed concern over the marketing experiment of simultaneously releasing Steven Soderbergh's film Bubble in theaters and on DVD, Cuban called Shyamalan an "idiot."

Makes one wonder who Mr. Shyamalan might vote for as the Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006.

Best & Worst: Mark Cuban annoys us, from selling trash bags to trashing refs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 04 Dec 2006 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Mark Cuban cans Sirius radio show

Mark Cuban cans Sirius radio show originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 02 Nov 2006 08:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google after the bell for 10-12-06: Google shares just barely budge from Wednesday originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt vs. media pundit Mark Cuban originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Weekly wrap-up for Google, October 2 to 6 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 07 Oct 2006 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.