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If you are a fan of watching financial markets as a sport then the past 4 days have been action packed with all sorts of hail marys. As of now 3 of the 5 investment banks are gone – Bear, Merrill and Lehman.  That leaves only Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as the last of the true independent broker/dealer/investment banks.  I’m guessing in short order they will be folded into a bank, although I bet Goldman buys a bank. What we are seeing in the financial markets is the equivalent of the dot com implosion.  Stock prices almost going to zero, back in March 2007 Lehman (LEH) traded as high as USD 85 with a market cap of USD 46 billion, today it’s trading at 21 cents with a market cap of USD 145 million – DOWN 99.75%.

Locally in India, Lehman who recently moved into arguably the most expensive office building in India, Ceejay House, has already shut down part of their operations. The broker/dealer arm is still going, but most people will not trade with them and that’s the death knell for a broker.

One of Merrill’s top guys Andrew Holland has jumped ship to Ambit Capital to head institutional equities and run their prop book. DSP Merrill Lynch Mutual Fund will now be renamed DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund.

The biggest winner from all this carnage is probably Hemendra Kothari who sold out a major chunk to Merrill back in December 2005 for USD 500 million.

For some retarded reason my new internet service provider (MTNL) requires me to reboot my router at midnight and 8am to qualify for free unmetered service. Sadly, it makes sense to comply since you can easily download 2-3GB of content a night.  However, there has to be a better way then physically turning off the router and rebooting it every damn night. There had to be a technology angle to getting this going automatically every night. There are a couple utilities for the Mac, however I didn’t want to rely on 3rd party hacks but wanted to use the native tools via OS X. My solution is a bit convoluted but once you implement it, it takes only a couple clicks a night. The apps I used were AppleScript, iCal and the Energy Saver preferences on the Mac.

1. Create 2 scripts: app_start.scpt and router_reboot.scpt (you can download mine: app_start.scpt and router_reboot.scpt).
app_start.scpt
will start Terminal and telnet to your router
enters a username/pass
issues a reboot command (this assumes a D-Link router)
Starts my favorite BitTorrent client Transmission
Issues a command to update all my podcasts in iTunes

router_reboot.scpt
will start Terminal and telnet to your router
enters a username/pass
issues a reboot command 

2. Use iCal to execute the scripts at the time you want them to occur, to do this create an appointment with an alarm and select “run script.” I have the app_start script kickoff at 12:05am and the router_reboot script starts at 7:55am (image below). You can further automate this by creating a repeating event every day.

3. In the System Preference Pane for Energy Saver. I have my Mac awake at 12:05am. (image below)

Finally, before you goto bed put your Mac to sleep. And at 12:05am your Mac will awake and execute the app_start script.  Then at 7:55am, the router_reboot script is executed.

Back in October 2003 a report from Goldman Sachs highlighted the four countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China termed the BRICs would be a hugh force in the world economy.  5 years later the term has stuck and the 4 countries have made some big progress as predicted in the report which can be downloaded here.

However, the equity markets in all 4 countries are getting slammed.  You talk to people in India and they are wondering how it could happen to them.  The reality is EVERY equity investor worldwide is getting killed and India ain’t so bad when compared to most other countries, as I call it “the cream of the crap.” Let’s take a look at each BRIC:

Brazil (Bovespa)
52 week high – 73,920
52 week low – 47,606
Sept 12, 2008 – 52,392.86
DOWN 29.1%

Russia (Traded Index)
52 week high – 3717.03
52 week low - 1858.89
Sept 12, 2008 - 1991.10
DOWN 46.4%

India (Sensex)
52 week high – 21206.80
52 week low - 12515
Sept 12, 2008 - 14000.81
DOWN 33.9%

China (Shanghai SE Composite)
52 week high - 6,124.04
52 week low - 2,199.36
Sept 12, 2008 - 2,079.67
DOWN 66%

After having switched ISP’s, I’m finally back on the grid and it feels damn good!! I went from a 512k connection to a 2MB connection…welcome to the third world of internet connectivity. My connection was down for 10 days and during that time Om Malik was complaining about Comcast introducing metered internet service and the death of the internet.  Well, it’s already happened in India…Comcast is talking about a cap of around 250GB a month, my current internet provider is going to provide me with 1.25GB (yes, 1250MB) a month and the great luxury of unmetered service from midnight to 8am every day as long as I turn my router on/off every day at midnight and 8am…man where is FIOS!!