When the top skippers lag behind, you know the seas are really choppy. Top skippers and the rest have one thing in common: the weather and waves are pretty much the same for all of them. There's not too much inside knowledge as to the chop. Hulls and sails are within common limits per class. Why are some skippers winners more frequently than the losers?
GOK.
God only knows.
In the article below, kindly sent by JFD, thank you, we see some of the top skippers lagging.
Where the rest of the fleet is, GOK.
Meanwhile, we have an election coming up today. Tomorrow we should know who the next president will be, barring only another Florida type experience as in 2000.
We don't bar anything around here, however, God-made truth being way stranger than man-made fiction.
I'm convinced that "God" is human code for anything we don't know the cause of.
The Great Unknown Cause is God, or Guc, if you prefer.
Thank Guc.
I think I'll stick to God.
Or Ralph, his devoted servant.
CEOs, investors hit: Even Warren Buffett's boat finding waters of market rough
They are still plenty rich, but their losses — some on paper and others actually realized — illustrate how few have been spared in today’s punishing market when even big-name investors, corporate executives and hedge-fund titans are all watching their wealth evaporate.
The portfolio damage for some of these highflyers has soared to billions of dollars in recent months. And they can’t just blame the market’s downdraft — some did themselves in with badly timed stock purchases or margin calls on shares bought with loans.
"It’s always hard to beat the market, no matter who you are," said Robert Hansen, senior associate dean at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. "But when the ocean waters get that rough, it is hard for any boat to avoid getting swamped."
It has been a painful year for anyone exposed to the stock market. The Standard & Poor’s 500, considered a barometer for the broad market, has lost about 36 percent since January, with every single sector — including once-thriving energy and utilities — seeing declines of about 20 percent or more.
Such losses in the last year have wiped out an estimated $2 trillion in equity value from 401(k) and individual retirement accounts, nearly half the holdings in those plans, according to new findings by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Similar losses are seen in the portfolios of private and public pension plans, which have lost $1.9 trillion, the researchers found.
As stocks have plunged, so have the value of chief executives’ equity stakes in their own companies. The average year-to-date decline is 49 percent for the corporate stock holdings of CEOs at 175 large U.S. companies, according to new research by compensation consulting firm Steven Hall & Partners.
Topping that list is Buffett, who has seen the value of equity in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, fall by about $13.6 billion, or 22 percent, so far this year, to leave his holdings valued at $48.1 billion. Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison has seen his equity stake fall by $6.2 billion, or about 24 percent, to $20.1 billion, according to the research from the start of the year through the close of trading Oct. 29.
Rounding out the top five in that study were Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, whose company equity fell by $5.1 billion to $9.4 billion; Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, whose equity fell by $3.6 billion to $5.7 billion; and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, with a $4 billion contraction to $3 billion.
Those results included the value of the CEOs’ stock, exercisable and nonexercisable stock options and shares that haven’t yet vested. They are drawn from each company’s most recent proxy statement, which means they might not include subsequent stock purchases or sales.
But there have been recent instances in which executives’ large equity positions have blown up — not only damaging a particular CEO’s portfolio but the company’s shareholders, too.
A growing number of executives at companies including Boston Scientific, XTO Energy and Williams Sonoma have been forced to sell stakes in their companies to cover stock loans to banks and brokers. The company stock was used as collateral for those loans. The falling prices triggered what is known as a margin call.
"A decrease in insider ownership is bad for corporate governance," said Ben Silverman, director of research at the research firm InsiderScore.com. "Then executives’ interests are less aligned with their shareholders."
Investors in Chesapeake Energy were recently faced with the surprising news that CEO Aubrey McClendon was forced to sell almost 95 percent of his holdings — representing more than a 5 percent stake in the natural gas giant — to meet a margin call. His fire sale of more than 31 million shares, valued at nearly $570 million, put downward pressure on Chesapeake’s stock in the days surrounding the mid-October transaction.
McClendon has called this a personal matter and said he will rebuild the ownership position, according to Chesapeake spokesman Tom Price.
Redstone, the famed 85-year-old chairman and controlling shareholder of CBS and Viacom, was forced to sell $233 million worth of nonvoting shares in those companies.
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