Boston suspect is moved; FBI searches landfill

BOSTON (AP) ? Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from a hospital to a federal prison medical center while FBI agents searched for evidence Friday in a landfill near the college he was attending.

Tsarnaev, 19, was taken from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a throat wound and other injuries suffered during an attempt to elude police last week, and was transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The facility, at a former Army base, treats federal prisoners.

"It's where he should be; he doesn't need to be here anymore," said Beth Israel patient Linda Zamansky, who thought his absence could reduce stress on bombing victims who have been recovering at the hospital under tight security.

Also, FBI agents picked through a landfill near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a sophomore. FBI spokesman Jim Martin would not say what investigators were looking for.

An aerial photo in Friday's Boston Globe showed a line of more than 20 investigators, all dressed in white overalls and yellow boots, picking over the garbage with shovels or rakes.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said that the bombing suspects' mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the deadly April 15 attack ? a disclosure that deepens the mystery around the Tsarnaev family and marks the first time American authorities have acknowledged that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was under investigation before the tragedy.

The news is certain to fuel questions about whether President Barack Obama's administration missed opportunities to thwart the marathon bombing, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Tsarnaev is charged with joining with his older brother, now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. Investigators have said it appears that the brothers were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva's name added to the terror database along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants.

About six months earlier, the FBI investigated mother and son, also at Russia's request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism. Previously U.S. officials had said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

In an interview from Russia, Tsarnaeva said Friday that she has never been linked to terrorism.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she said from Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Tsarnaeva faces shoplifting charges in the U.S. over the theft of more than $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor department store in Natick in 2012.

Earlier this week, she said she has been assured by lawyers that she would not be arrested if she traveled to the U.S., but she said she was still deciding whether to go. The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he would leave Russia soon for the United States to visit one son and lay the other to rest.

A team of investigators from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has questioned both parents in Russia this week, spending many hours with the mother in particular over two days.

Meanwhile, New York's police commissioner said the FBI was too slow to inform the city that the Boston Marathon suspects had been planning to bomb Times Square days after the attack at the race.

Federal investigators learned about the short-lived scheme from a hospitalized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev during a bedside interrogation that began Sunday night and extended into Monday morning, officials said. The information didn't reach the New York Police Department until Wednesday night.

"We did express our concerns over the lag," said police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who with Mayor Michael Bloomberg had announced the findings on Thursday.

The FBI had no comment Friday.

___

Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Rodrique Ngowi in Boston, Colleen Long in New York and Julie Pace in Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-suspect-moved-fbi-searches-landfill-191408451.html

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PFT: Clock ticking on potential Albert-to-Fins trade

Getty Images

The Rams currently hold the Redskins? first-round pick in the 2013 draft, thanks to the RGIII trade.? The Rams may not actually be using that pick.

Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the selection ?clearly is for sale.?

That Rams, who also have the 16th overall pick, would surely like to trade down and get more picks.? Last year, the combination of coach Jeff Fisher and G.M. Les Snead put together a great draft, thanks to having extra picks.? The more picks, the better the chances of emerging with good players.

Pick No. 22 comes one spot before the Vikings? first of two first-round selections.?? A team that wants a cornerback, receiver, or inside linebacker the Vikings may be targeting could be tempted to jump the line.? Which is precisely why every team creates smokescreens about who they do and don?t want.

Like most round-one trades, don?t expect anything to happen before the Rams are on the clock.? Teams that trade up want a specific player; trading up too early creates the risk that the player won?t be there.

Of course, doing the trade when the team is on the clock entails risk, since there?s a chance one of the two teams won?t be able to call the trade in to the league office.? Unless each team calls the trade in separately, the trade doesn?t happen.? And with only 10 total minutes to get it all done, there?s a chance that cutting it too close could keep the trade from happening at all.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/25/report-dolphins-dont-think-alberts-worth-a-second-rounder/related/

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Kristen Wiig and Ben Affleck to Host Saturday Night Live, Kanye to Perform

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/kristen-wiig-and-ben-affleck-to-host-saturday-night-live-kanye-t/

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Investing in Housing Market REITs Instead of Property: Our Pick ...

Housing-Market / US Housing Apr 26, 2013 - 01:56 AM GMT

By: Don_Miller

I get a lot of questions from readers about holding real estate as an investment. Indeed, many are in response to another newsletter editor who was recently advocating that the only way for retirees to make decent income was to own property.

Personally, I wouldn?t hold physical property in our portfolio for three reasons.

First, it?s very illiquid; that makes it an instant failure on our Five-Point Balancing Test.

Second, you won?t get yield from a property for three to five years, but will instead pay to own it.

And third, depending on the size of your portfolio, an investment in physical real estate could throw off your balance. Allocating too much of a portfolio to a single industry is never a good idea. With a piece of property worth $100K, $200K, or more, you can suddenly find your retirement very dependent on the outcome of a single asset class.

However, at the same time, it?s hard to ignore that something is happening in real estate. The post-crash taboo around it is starting to disappear as prices increase. Are we so bullish on real estate that we would buy properties in Las Vegas? No, we?re not there; but at the same time, we wouldn?t mind dipping our toe into the shallow end of the pool with some more conservative opportunities.

Furthermore, rather than invest in physical properties directly, we?d rather invest in real estate investment trusts (REITs), which are traded on stock exchanges like any other stock. REITs are corporations that buy, sell, and rent real estate for their shareholders.

To be considered a REIT, 75% of a corporation?s income must come from real estate in some form. Furthermore, REITs can deduct their dividend payments from taxable income. Here are a few more of their key advantages over physical property:

????????? First, there?s the liquidity. You can buy shares this morning, change your mind, and sell them by the end of the trading day. Try that after signing a purchase agreement and the checks have gone through on physical property.

????????? Second, REITs are required to pay out 90% of their net income to their shareholders or they lose their special tax status. Where physical property doesn?t usually provide yield right away, REITS will start paying right off the bat.

????????? And last, you can invest to match your portfolio, whether that?s purchasing only $1,000 or $1 million worth of shares.

These are some of the advantages of REITs, but there are drawbacks as well. I asked our senior analyst, Vedran Vuk, to find us a REIT worth adding to the portfolio. His pick is a little more conservative than most REITs, but its great way to pick up steady dividend income with capital appreciation potential as well.

As just noted, we?re not looking to dive into the Florida condo market nor to start flipping houses in Vegas. Nonetheless, we still want to dip into the real-estate market... just not in the deep end of the pool.

Healthcare REITs are a more stable area in the real-estate investment world. While they took a hit in 2008 like many other real-estate investments, many bounced back a lot quicker than other REITs. Along with being more defensive, healthcare REITs offer a unique opportunity for retail investors. While most of us could afford a single-unit investment property or even an apartment building, only the wealthiest could even think about investing in a hospital or a retirement home on their own.

While researching the choices in the healthcare sector, HCP stood out. From the firm?s core operating principles, you can quickly see why:

1.??? Opportunistic investing;

2.??? Portfolio diversification;

3.??? Conservative financing.

Opportunistic Investing

HCP only invests when a good opportunity presents itself. In a recent earnings call, an analyst asked why HCP was making fewer acquisitions than many others (although the company is still making plenty). One of the executives answered that you don?t swing at every ball the pitcher sends your way. That?s our perspective as well. It?s not just about hitting home runs, but knowing when not to swing as well.

Portfolio Diversification

This item is very important to us too. Since this is our entrance into the real-estate sector, we don?t want to put our whole bet on a single part of the country. The map below shows the concentration of properties. While some places like California aren?t our favorite locations, within a diversified portfolio with strong allocations in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, among other states, the portfolio is diversified enough to mitigate the risk.

In addition to geographic diversification, we don?t want to get stuck in just one type of property, such as hospitals or medical offices. With more and more healthcare regulation coming through, certain types of buildings will be more affected than others.

For example, for all of the types of healthcare properties, Obamacare will have the most negative impact on nursing homes. The impact isn?t enough to crush those operators, but I certainly wouldn?t want a portfolio of 100% nursing homes in light of the new law. With a diverse mix of properties, HCP protects itself from being exposed to any single change in legislation.

Let?s break down these individual types of properties. ?Post-acute/skilled nursing? facilities are essentially nursing homes with skilled professional nurses assisting residents with continuous therapy.

?Senior housing? includes communities designed to help with the requirements of aging. They are not, however, necessarily staffed with skilled nurses. Senior housing includes assisted-living facilities, independent-living facilities, and continuing-care retirement communities. Some of HCP?s primary property operators in this space include Brookdale Senior Living and Sunrise Senior Living. The demographics pushing for these two properties are overwhelming. With 10,000 baby boomers reaching 65 every day for the next 19 years, these facilities won?t be running out of customers anytime soon.

?Life sciences? represents office buildings with modifications for pharmaceutical companies and other biotech firms. Currently, almost the entire life-sciences division is located in Mountain View, California (AKA the San Francisco suburbs). However, the company is developing a few new life-sciences projects in Durham, North Carolina.

And last, the ?medical offices? classification is self-explanatory. However, note that these physicians? offices are not scattered around remote shopping centers. Instead, 83% of them are located on hospital campuses. With an almost $21 billion market cap, HCP ownership totals in these properties are: 447 senior housing communities; 313 skilled nursing facilities; 274 medical office buildings; 108 life sciences properties; and 21 hospitals.

Conservative Financing

Perhaps even more important than diversification is the company?s conservative financing. S&P rates HCP?s credit toward the lower end of investment grade with a BBB+ rating. That?s not bad, but not perfect either.

Beyond the credit ratings, a REIT?s loan structure is a key point to take in to consideration, because interest rates are the Achilles heel of the industry. That?s why we?re putting HCP in our moderate risk category.

When interest rates rise, REITs are sometimes squeezed on two or even three fronts. First, with higher interest rates, there will be fewer buyers in the market, meaning real-estate prices will drop. Second, if the REIT wishes to purchase new properties, it will have to pay higher rates to do so. And third, if the REIT was borrowing with variable-rate loans, costs will go up regardless of what happens.

Unfortunately, there?s not much one can do about the first two factors. However, the third can be avoided by staying clear of variable-rate instruments, and that?s exactly what HCP does. 93% of its portfolio is in fixed-rate loans, with only 7% represented by variable rates.

If interest rates rise, does that mean HCP is toast? Not necessarily; REITs are not like bonds. When rates go up, bond prices must go down. On the other hand, higher rates will put pressure on REITs, but will not necessarily crush them. We could have a scenario where there?s a really strong real-estate recovery matched with rising rates ? the surge in demand could possibly offset the higher rates. This is a possibility, but we wouldn?t necessarily bet on it.

When rates start to rise, we?ll likely look for the exit door. Also, be aware of the interest-rate risk in your overall portfolio. If you?re already very heavy in CORP, our PIMCO investment-grade bond fund, consider buying a little less HCP or selling a little CORP prior to adding another asset with interest-rate risk.

Some Other Benefits of HCP

The fact that the medical industry is steadily growing ? in good times and bad ? seems to be the obvious reason for a conservative investment in HCP. But the structure and terms of leased medical properties make them even more secure.

Think about it. Obviously, a hospital or retirement home isn?t going to sign a one-year lease like an apartment tenant. Instead, they often sign for a decade or more. Furthermore, while a tenant in an apartment building expects the landlord to handle most issues, medical buildings are often leased under triple-net leases. In short, a triple-net lease is a landlord?s dream. The tenant pays his rent, along with the property taxes, the insurance, and the maintenance of common areas.

Since the tenant takes care of so much, the actual rent is typically less than in a normal lease agreement. However, this works perfectly for medical REITs, as it takes risk off the table. If a landlord leases a property for over ten years, there?s a significant risk of unexpected costs along the way. In most cases, property taxes and insurance will be more expensive in the future, not less. However, it?s hard to predict how much more. With a triple-net lease, the landlord can enter into long-term contracts without the uncertainty of future costs.

Nearly every single property owned by HCP is leased on a triple-net basis. The only segment excluded from this is the medical-office segment, which has only 48% of properties in triple-net leases. Since these leases take a lot of the risk off long-term contracts, around half of HCP?s leases will expire in 2022 or later. It?s nice to have revenues locked in so far in advance. Below is a chart showing the lease expirations:

??

You might be thinking to yourself: ?Wait, aren?t you missing one of your five points: inflation? Isn?t holding a long-term fixed lease a bad thing in the face of inflation??

Of course, that?s right. However, HCP?s leases are written to either adjust to the CPI or sometimes to include a fixed annual increase. Here?s an example of one of its recent contract provisions to protect against inflation:

?The contractual rent will increase annually by the greater of 3.7% on average or CPI over the initial five years, and thereafter by the greater of 3.0% or CPI for the remaining initial term.?

We?ve noted our issues with the CPI before, but nonetheless this is better than nothing. If inflation is tame, real rents will actually increase. If it gets worse, they will at least adjust.

Dividends, Yield, and Pricing

Here?s a pleasant surprise to finish off our analysis. HCP is a member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index. To be part of this Index, a company must have consistently increased dividends for at least 25 years. HCP has done so for 27 and has no plans of stopping now. (Note also that it is the only REIT on the Index.)

As you can see in the chart, the dividend increases aren?t always very large, but they are consistent. Last year, the firm paid out $2.00. In 2013, we wouldn?t be surprised to see around $2.07 per share, which would give us a 4.5% dividend yield.

HCP has been in our portfolio for a few months now, and even before then the company was mentioned in our special report Money Every Month, but we hadn?t officially pulled the trigger at that point.

While we still think the company is a solid pick, there isn?t too much meat on the bone here under current conditions. For the stock to move upward, something new needs to happen, like another push up in the real-estate market. Looking at the trend thus far, there?s a good chance of that happening.

The good news is that the downside isn?t particularly large. The stock could retrace its steps a bit, but I don?t see it dropping 20% overnight. So put in a 20% trailing stop, pick up some regular dividends, and keep an eye on this stock.

If you?re interested in solid, stable dividend stocks then I suggest you check out our recently updated Money Every Month report. You?ll find out how easy it is to get dividend payments every month and I?ll even tell which stocks to start with. Click here to find out more.

? 2013 Copyright Casey Research - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

? 2005-2013 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.

Source: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40144.html

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Asian shares rise on U.S. data, regional earnings eyed

By Chikako Mogi

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Friday, tracking global equities higher after upbeat U.S. labor market data, while the dollar eased slightly on currency markets that were otherwise watching for the strength of signals coming from a Bank of Japan policy review.

In the share markets, investors turned attention toward regional corporate earnings to assess the outlook for growth.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was up 0.3 percent after reaching a six-week high earlier, and was set for a weekly gain of 2.4 percent for its best such showing in five months.

Hong Kong shares <.hsi> advanced 1 percent, with robust quarterly earnings spurring gains, while a sharp rise in gold prices helped underpin Australian shares <.axjo> which rose 0.2 percent. Australian shares were also benefiting from their relatively high yields compared to other countries.

An inflow of capital due to offshore demand from Japanese institutions and insurance firms to Australia's high-yielding shares in telcommunications and banks has helped lift the market in recent sessions, said Tim Radford, global analyst at Sydney-based advisor Rivkin.

"Yield outside of Australia has been pushed quite low," he noted.

South Korean shares <.ks11> edged down 0.2 percent, however, as the market took a breather from the week's relief-rally after the country's top exporters posted better-than-expected results.

In Japan, the Nikkei stock average <.n225> fell 0.4 percent, after touching on Thursday its highest level since June 2008. Japanese markets will be closed on Monday for a holiday. <.t/>

Although it is still early in the quarterly reporting season, only two out of the 16 Nikkei companies that have reported so far beat market expectations, data from Thomson Reuters StarMine showed.

Overnight U.S. S&P 500 <.inx> rose 0.4 percent, driven by stronger-than-expected earnings and the large drop in weekly jobless claims.

CENTRAL BANKS AT CENTRESTAGE

The Bank of Japan will likely project that it will meet its 2 percent inflation target in two years at a one-day meeting on Friday.

The BOJ on April 4 shocked financial markets by announcing a radical monetary expansion campaign aimed at ending stubborn deflation and reviving growth. The central bank's strong reflationary policy commitment has further weakened the yen and underpinned the dollar, lifting it close to the symbolic 100 yen mark earlier this month.

"It will be the progress of the plan, rather than the plan itself, which will be scrutinized and ultimately provide direction for the market. A positive take on the comments will support the current 'risk on' sentiment," said Tim Waterer, senior trader at CMC Markets in Sydney, in a note to clients.

"On the other hand, any ambiguity may lead to a cooling of the recent uptrend."

Recent weak U.S. data has slowed the dollar's progress. The dollar was down 0.4 percent at 98.79 yen.

The euro was up 0.2 percent at $1.3035, moving away from a three-week low of $1.2954.

Expectations of a rate cut by the European Central Bank at its meeting next week bolstered European shares but weighed on the euro.

The U.S. labor market report came ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy-making meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as a closely watched monthly payrolls report for April on May 3.

Market belief that global monetary stimulus will remain in place helped risk asset markets rebound from a sharp sell-off earlier this month, triggered by disappointing U.S. and Chinese manufacturing data which raised concerns about slowing momentum in the world's top two economies.

Spot gold rose 0.6 percent at $1,476.29 an ounce, recovering much of the loss it incurred in the massive sell-off two weeks ago.

"Markets are experiencing cross-asset differentiation following softer global activity data in April. This mainly reflects the repricing of slower Chinese growth and expectations of very easy monetary policy in G4," Barclays Capital said in a research.

"We continue to favor overweight positions in developed market equities but are less constructive on emerging markets equities."

U.S. crude was down 0.3 percent at $93.35 a barrel and Brent fell 0.4 percent to $103.01.

(Additional reporting by Thuy Ong in Sydney and Somang Yang in Seoul; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-shares-steady-u-earnings-data-004016703--finance.html

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The Best Experimental Chrome Features You Should Check Out

Google Chrome is an great browser as it is, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come with its share of annoyances and curiosities. You can fix some of these, as well as add new features by playing around with Chrome's experimental settings. Here are a few we really like.

When you type chrome://flags into your URL bar in Chrome, you get all kinds of crazy options for experimental features. Some of these can fix problems with Chrome, others do absolutely nothing, and others might wreck havoc on your system, so use them with caution. With that in mind, here are a few we've tested and love, although your mileage may vary.

Generate Passwords

If you're not using a password manager like LastPass (and you really should be) then you probably find yourself just reusing the same password over and over. That's no good for security, and while you're better off with a password manager, if you're holding out, you can generate new passwords right in Chrome. Just head to the Flags page, and enable, "Enable password generation." Now when you go to a new signup page, you'll see a small key icon. Click that, and Chrome will automatically make a password for you that's synced across all your versions of Chrome.

Tab Overview with a Gesture

Mac only: If you're a Mac user on a laptop you know the trials of having way too many tabs open. They line up across the top of the browser and suddenly you can't tell which tab is which. If you enable the experimental feature, "Tab Overview Mac," you can get a quick look at all the tabs you have open by holding down Option and swiping down with three fingers. It's incredibly handy.

Tab Stacking

Windows only: If you're on Windows and have a tab problem, Chrome has you covered there as well. When you enable "Tab Stacking" your tabs automatically start stacking on top of each other instead of just side-by-side when you have a ton open. As Ghacks points out, it's a feature that's been in Opera for a while. Tab stacking still needs a little work on Chrome, but it's better than nothing.

Speed Up Chrome's Performance

Whether Chrome is running slow or you simply want it to run faster, you have a few different options that can help boost performance. Enabling any of these can cause some problems with different video cards, so if you run into problems you might need to turn them off. Head into the flags page and enable these settings:

• GPU compositing on all pages: This option should speed up Chrome across the board by giving your GPU more stuff to do. We've had mixed luck with this one, so use at your own risk.
• Threaded compositing: As cool as the name sounds, you'll probably only get smoother scrolling when a page is loading with this enabled. Still, that's helpful enough for those slow-loading pages.
• GPU Accelerated SVG Filters: This might speed up graphics-heavy sites that have a lot of effects like shaders going on.

Those are the only ones that will speed up performance without significantly changing how web pages look. Other options, like "Disable accelerated 2D canvas," might speed up performance but it might have a negative effect on how pages are displayed.

Make Browsing On Touch Screen Devices Bearable

Chrome's not made for touch screen devices, and that means that browsing on something like a Microsoft Surface is next to impossible. Thankfully, our own Melanie Pinola tested out a few of the experimental features and recommends enabling the following flags: "Touch Optimized UI," "Enable Touch Events," and "Enable Touch Initiated Drag and Drop." Combined, those should make it possible to use Chrome on your Windows touch device without giving you a headache.

Keep an Eye On What Your Extensions Are Doing

Chrome extensions want access to all kinds of data, and if you're uncomfortable with that you might want to peek under the hood and see what they're doing. When you turn on "Enable extension activity UI" a new option is added to the Extensions tab in your Settings. When you click "Activity," Chrome starts logging what the extension is doing so you can get a look at it and make sure it's not doing anything you don't want. It's a little hard to read, but you can at least decipher a little bit of what it's up to.

Fix Annoyances

The other thing that Chrome's Flags do is fix common annoyances. Occasionally, Chrome adds a new feature that makes things work differently, or that starts shooting out annoying notifications. The first place to check is the flags to see if you can disable it, but here are a few that fix common annoyances:

• Revert to the Old New Tab Page: Just find "Enable Instant Extended API" and set it to "disabled." This should bring back the old new tab with history and recently closed at the forefront.
• Turn Off Chrome Notification in Windows: If the way Chrome's notification icon sticks around after you close it is annoying you then turning it off is pretty simple. Just find "Enable Rich Notifications" and set it to disabled. That should keep the notifications from popping up when you're not actually running Chrome.
• Smooth Scrolling: If you're not getting smooth scrolling on Windows or Linux, turning this feature on should get smooth scrolling working properly.

---

These are just a few we've tested and enjoyed. For the most part, you can fiddle around with the Chrome flags to your hearts content. Just make a note of what you're enabling (or disabling) so you can fix it in the future. Not every setting is going to work for everyone, and a few that sounded great, like "Enable desktop guest mode" and "Full History Sync" didn't work for us at all, but you might be able to get them running.

Photo by MARCELODLT and Evgeny Atamanenko.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/aBfe1gXS4cA/the-best-experimental-chrome-features-you-should-check-478620752

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Hoax tweet tests firms that filter social media for Wall Street

By Ryan Vlastelica

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Firms that scour social media sites such as Twitter for information to help investors and traders make money faced their biggest test yet this week.

A tweet reporting explosions at the White House appeared on the Associated Press's official feed Tuesday afternoon, sparking a temporary sell-off that briefly wiped out about $140 billion in market value on the S&P 500.

The tweet was a fake and the account had been hacked. But for analytics firms that comb through tweets for tradable ideas - a small but growing niche industry - it was the latest example of the challenges they face in delivering information to a client base that often prizes speed first.

Failure to highlight a tweet saying President Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion would have left people in the dust as the market zoomed lower - but a hair-trigger response to sell may have been worse.

Some of these firms did throw up red flags, based on other tweets or on the unusual nature of the news, but the selloff had already happened. For some of the firms, that's just fine - they're aware of their limitations.

"The guys who trade on tweets as they happen will always be susceptible to things like this, that's why we've shied away from delivering every tweet to people for them to trade off," said Oli Freeling-Wilkinson, chief executive officer of the London-based analytics firm Knowsis, one of several recent start-ups which sell subscriptions to investors and institutions such as retail brokers and fund managers.

"Algorithms used to trade off news headlines, now they trade off tweets. That's very dodgy, very shaky ground."

For Knowsis and other firms doing this analytical work, the ability to discern news from noise is the key to success, and it appears to be getting harder. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said earlier this month that companies can use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to make key announcements.

Tuesday's fateful tweet appeared at 1:07 p.m. EDT. It was picked up almost immediately by investors and analytic companies scanning Twitter for key words to determine breaking news or measure sentiment. Stocks and commodities moved sharply lower and bond prices soared.

Within minutes, analytics firm Dataminr issued an alert saying the AP account was probably hacked, citing another tweet by a reporter in the White House basement.

That warning came at 1:11 pm EDT, "just four minutes after the fake message had been published on the AP's hacked Twitter account," said Ted Bailey, New York-based chief executive of Dataminr, which was founded in 2009.

The difficulty of reacting to such news can be seen in this case, however. By the time Dataminr's message went out, the market recovery was already underway.

The nature of the hoax created a challenge as the AP account is considered a trusted source. Past hoaxes originated from newly created accounts that were more readily identifiable as suspect. But the extraordinary nature of the news would have been another cautionary signal, some said, especially in the absence of similar reports by other news outlets.

"We would have published the AP tweet but because it could not have been verified at the time we would have clearly marked it as a rumor," said Emmett Kilduff, chief executive officer at Eagle Intel in Dublin. "When it was proven to be false we would have published a note to our clients saying so."

Kilduff, in an email, noted differences in the language of the fake tweet and official Associated Press style that could have outed it as a hoax, including the use of capital letters and that it referred to "Barack Obama" instead of "President Obama" or "Obama," the two ways the AP refers to the president.

European markets were closed at the time of the hoax tweet.

The mini-crash sparked by the bogus tweet was reminiscent of the "flash crash" of May 2010 when security prices suddenly plunged, as if the floor had been yanked from underneath them.

The free-fall nature can be explained by a couple of factors. For one, automatic stop-loss orders, which are designed to limit an investor's losses, kicked in, adding to the selling.

In addition, trading firms that provide liquidity pulled their bids, making the selloff more chaotic. Similar moves worsened the flash crash. In a market where participants step back when news is either onerous or uncertain, the combination of stop-loss orders and market makers withdrawing bids can make a selloff worse.

"We see this every time this type of news comes out: liquidity evaporates quickly. High-frequency traders cancel their orders on even one little tweet," said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

Freeling-Wilkinson said analytics firms like his are more interested in looking at trends than individual tweets.

"I would never recommend that anyone trades on a single tweet," he said.

(Additional reporting by Herb Lash; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hoax-tweet-tests-firms-filter-social-media-wall-075118556--sector.html

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