Facebook Inc (FB), TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD): Eight Fascinating Reads

Gone would be some of the accounting games of the past — such as the loading of sales into the last business days of a quarter. Yes, commercial practices vary between industries, but still a company with a steeper sales incline at quarter-end than its peers would have some explaining to do. The overall financial industry would also ultimately benefit from a smoother process of sharing information and building expectations.

Overexposed
TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE:AMTD) clients had a big exposure to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock on margin:

One-third of the multi-billion dollar margin balances at TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE:AMTD) are in accounts that have more than 25 percent market exposure to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).

“Our most widely held stock, our most actively traded stock and our most margined stock is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL),” TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE:AMTD) Chief Executive Fred Tomczyk said on a conference call to discuss the firm’s quarterly earnings report.

“A very large company that makes up a big part of our margin book has not participated in this rally over the last year.”

Bucking the trend
The newspaper industry has tried to stay alive by slashing costs. The Orange County Register did the opposite, and it’s thriving:

Conventional media wisdom posits several ways for a newspaper to commit suicide. It can drive up costs by multiplying staff and pagination. It can prioritise print over digital. It can erect a hard paywall to seal itself from the Internet.

Or, if you are the Orange County Register, you can do all three. The California daily did so almost exactly a year ago, prompting astonishment and morbid curiosity. How long would it last? In a crisis-stricken industry more accustomed to death by a thousand cuts, the Register, which dates back a century, at least promised a dramatic and original demise.

But this week, as the paper prepares to celebrate the experiment’s first anniversary, it appears to be thriving. “It’s working,” marvelled the editor, Ken Brusic. “We believe that this will work.”

The article 8 Fascinating Reads originally appeared on Fool.com is written by Morgan Housel.

Fool contributor Morgan Housel has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Facebook, and TD AMERITRADE. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Facebook, and TD AMERITRADE.

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