Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

Even though there is a global credit crunch and many businesses are feeling the heat, a lot of us in the paid search arbitrage world are still growing our businesses and growing our credit needs.  One of the best ways to improve margin and float is to constantly reassess the revolving credit facilities that power our spend…for most of us, that’s a travel rewards or cash back credit card. 

If you, paid search affiliate or not, have any insights or recommendations on cash back cards, please weigh in on the Focus.com discussion, “What Is the Best Cash Back Credit Card For A Small Business“, I started on this topic.  Thanks in advance.

As I sit here writing this, millions of idiot CNBC viewers (and Rahm Emanuel) think the economy has turned a corner.  The market is up huge this week, mostly because Joe Arbitrary Citizen can’t read financial statements and the big institutional investors are all too happy to unload equities upon them. 

Whacking away payroll overhead back to profitability is not Seismic economic news.  9-15% of the population with no income, deflating prices, tons of debt, and little savings is not rebuilding the house of cards with a more formidable foundation.  It’s casting off the dead weight from the private sector onto the .gov’s books.

So, ranting aside, I’m up at this Godforsaken hour researching some put options and I see this Reuters news.  Somebody…allegedly an unknown high-frequency trading outfit named Goldman Sachs…agrees with me that the economy is still situated somewhere between the “in the fetal position listening to Sarah McLachlan” stage and  the “we’re all gonna die!” stage. 

The similarity stops there, though.  I’m just a lil’ Internet Marketing guy.  I do ah-ight, but apparently I need to create some sort of options or derivative product based on keywords or something.

Over at Zerohedge, a commenter took the time to explain what seems like a fairly mundane Reuters release, but really gets to the core of why Goldman Sachs continues to thrive when others are sitting on their thumbs:

“An institutional buyer bought 120,000 puts at $95 strike and sold twice (240,000) puts at $82 strike, both for december. This is a bear put spread, that the investor thinks that the SPY will be below $95, but hopefully above $82 by december.

I think he paid $5.3 for the $95 puts and received $4 ($2 times twice the volume) for the $82 put sold. His cost is $1.3 (5.3-4) X 120,000 puts X 100 (1 option = 100 shares) = $15.6 Million

If SPY is higher than $82 by 3rd week of December he than starts turning a profit at anything below $93.7 (95 - 1.3). If say SPY @ $85 in December profit would be $8.7 per option (93.7 - 85) X 12,000,000 shares (what 120,000 options represent) = $104.4 Million (not bad hehe) And then Goldman has best 3Q earnings, again, after stealing $104.4 Million from John and Bob who watch CNBC and want to get in this nice stock market rally.”

Their financial engineering makes my Paid Search > CPA Arbitrage look pretty f’ing rinky-dink.  Goldman’s willingness and ability to take risks while all the other financial houses are panicking is something we should appreciate, not demonize.  This trade is probably only one of a few dozen spreads hedged into what the single most profitable entity in this environment thinks is going to happen for the rest of the year.  If betting alongside Halliburton or Fannie Mae worked during the last bubble, it’s probably worth emulating Goldman as much as you can in this environment.

Anyways…not a search or internet marketing post, but I figured a few of you readers would appreciate a look into arbitrage and market intelligence of another sort.  I know things may be tough, but now is not the time to stop thinking BIG!

Saw this on my Facebook wall a few minutes ago:

Soon you will be able to have a username. Starting on Friday, June 12th, at 11:01pm, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/.

Check out the Facebook Blog for more information or send yourself an email with the details.

Better hurry up and change your name to Buy Viagra, Bad Credit Mortgage, Free Government Grants, or Super Acai Berry. For those of you wearing hats of a slightly whiter shade, add this to your things to bill your Reputation Management clients for this month.

I’m a huge Formula One guy and a big fan of most motorsports that don’t involve rednecks, a stadium, and turning left for four hours at a time.  I was half asleep last night by the end of the F1 Bahrain race and wanted to remind myself of the results again when I was more coherent this moring.  So I Googled [formula 1] to go to all the usual F1 news sites. 

But I also got this at the top of the SERP:

Must be nice for Formula1.com to have the top 3 first page results. Also very cool that there is a reminder with the time for the next race.

As much as we all bang on Google as search practitioners or adversaries in information retrieval, as a consumer, we should give them a little credit when they do build things that make our lives easier or better.

Conde Nast has decided to shutter Portfolio magazine.  Any of my readers have visibility into Conde Nast’s plans for that domain? I probably have a buyer for it they need to shore up their balance sheet.