<p>Argbargy, I was a high frequency trader. The firm had an account at MF Global. How come you didnt ask me about MF GLobal? Lol</p>
<p>I worked in the financial industry a long time. The financial industry needs a lot of regulation. </p>
<p>Krillies , I should be copying you. You have a lot of nice winners. Congrats.</p>
<p>I guess the tax didnt stop Stryker from taking over another medical device maker.</p>
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That is a good point dstark. </p>
<p>Added:BTW, your SPWR is a winner too.</p>
<p>Krillies…I had no idea spwr crossed 30. Nice. :)</p>
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<p>a. why are you a high frequency trader? I am well informed by the standard of the regular public and I wouldn’t presume trade individual stocks (in an non-ironic way. I view my isolated investments like ERO) as ironic). </p>
<p>b. Based on your experience in MF global, how could you make <em>any</em> recommendation about an individual stock!? I note that this thread started with the premise that the run up in individual stock price indicated a windfall from ACA.</p>
<p>Well…I am not a high frequency trader anymore. Why did I do it? For fun and to make a few bucks. </p>
<p>I dont like to give advice on individual stocks. I dont really know where they are going. </p>
<p>I am also not paying much attention to stocks right now. I have no idea what the market did today. :)</p>
<p>I am not a fan of Corzine. :)</p>
<p>Some of Krillies picks have done extremely well.</p>
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<p>Well thats true prospectively.</p>
<p>"Well…I am not a high frequency trader anymore. Why did I do it? For fun and to make a few bucks. "</p>
<p>How can a person be a high frequency trader?? You traded on a millisecond time frame?</p>
<p>Yes…</p>
<p>Something like that – see:
[High-Frequency</a> Trading (HFT) Definition | Investopedia](<a href=“http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/high-frequency-trading.asp]High-Frequency”>What Is High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? How It Works and Example)</p>
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<p>That’s about 15%. The tax may not do the company in but it would pinch their R&D if they are getting 15% cut. I wouldn’t like it if my pay is cut 15%. If they can keep R&D whole by taking jobs overseas why wouldn’t they? Why was medical divice singled out for taxation? Was everyone else already doing their shares except medical device makers?</p>
<p>It is myoptic to look at medical device taxes alone. Whether 2.3% is negligible or whether they can pay is immaterial. It had to be put in the context of where everyone else stands in this.</p>
<p>[Venture</a> capitalists play Obamacare with tech bets - Yahoo Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/venture-capitalists-play-obamacare-tech-110000303.html]Venture”>http://finance.yahoo.com/news/venture-capitalists-play-obamacare-tech-110000303.html)</p>
<p>“This is the greatest opportunity I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s the first time we are seeing really fundamental changes happen. And there’s a lot of money that can be made as this chaos is sorted out,”</p>
<p>[Builders</a> of Obama’s health website saw red flags - Yahoo Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/builders-obamas-health-website-saw-111010939.html]Builders”>Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags)</p>
<p>If they spent at least $394M for this barely working system, how are they ever going to reduce health care cost?</p>
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<p>The really great thing is that they hired a Canadian firm. Really? </p>
<p>We want job growth. But we are going to hire a Canadian firm and pay them half a billion dollars and raise taxes on companies in our own country to pay for it?</p>
<p>Keystone cops</p>
<p>Its tough to know what is going on. At least yet. </p>
<p>I have seen reports that the government was late is releasing specs for the project to contractors because the Rules for ACA weren’t released until after the 2012 elections. My experience with project development is that it is almost impossible to meet deadlines if requirements are unavailable or change. And the project plan of <em>starting</em> e2e acceptance testing at the end of September is incompetent on paper. Its probably not enough time to really test, let alone fix anything. And, ya know, retest. </p>
<p>So I’d be inclined to say the government screwed this up, because I dont see how it could have ever made Oct 1. If you know there are issues- and they did because the WaPo reports the testing on September 26 failed with 200 simulated sessions- why do you do a hard rollout with advertisement and ‘Navigators’ trying to pack as many people in as you can? Doesnt make sense.</p>
<p>BTW- the $394M number you see around is wrong. Its based on the GAO report of spending up to June, and we have obviously blown past that. You also see $634M but it isnt clear if that is the full contract values until next April. </p>
<p>And of course the “tech surge” is likely to be new spending. So I guess the premise that you could make money off of ACA, at least in software development has been validated.</p>
<p>Well, that’s the start. What I am afraid ia we will never know how much money they are making off of ACA.</p>
<p>argbargy, I agree that you would need specs to get the project anywhere near final, but it seems to me that they would know very early on what the general requirements were, and could have built the underlying architecture. I mean, they knew that they had to have a system for user accounts, they knew that they had to develop API’s to interface with government computers for income verification, they knew that they will need a system to transmit data to insurance companies, they knew that they need a way for people to shop and compare different insurance plans, etc.</p>
<p>I mean, this is a much lower level of complexity, but I develop web sites for clients who tell me what they need (a shopping cart, a discussion forum, a blog, etc.) and I figure out the basic software and install that first, knowing that it will be customized later on. I don’t have to have the client give me all the details before I can get the basics set up.</p>
<p>So it seems to me they could have built a working prototype at least. </p>
<p>The problem I see with the “late specs” excuse is that there are all sorts of design and coding errors that are more generic – the web site problems aren’t just limited the back end coding stuff, there are a lot of issues that can easily be seen on the front end and reflect a lack of planning.</p>
<p>I think that’s part of the problem- you can use vBulletin and some standard cart software. My impression from news reports is that the government was in charge of the data hub. If they dont have the interface specification done how are you supposed to code to it? This was all new code they had to integrate with. </p>
<p>What fields, what order, whats the encryption, what the authentication, what is the session timeout and retry policy. In my experience unless you have locked specs you will end up throwing out labor, and who is paying for that. At the very least you end up slipping your schedule. </p>
<p>How was it every a valid schedule to do your e2e testing September 26th when it is supposed to go live on October 1? That doesnt leave time to fix any problem you find and retest. </p>
<p>Whoever saw that schedule at HHS should called off the October 1 start. This was high risk since that project plan was published. At least dont have the idiocy of having a giant ad campaign to push people to a site you know breaks at 200 concurrent users.</p>
<p>Here is an article from September 10 with the government announcing that they had just completed the Data Hub. </p>
<p>[Health-care</a> ?data hub? is ready, White House officials say - Washington Post](<a href=“http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-10/national/41933474_1_data-hub-immigration-status-health-care-law]Health-care”>http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-10/national/41933474_1_data-hub-immigration-status-health-care-law)</p>
<p>Yikes! September 10th is way too late. Without the hub no one could test anything, so there was barely two weeks to start one of the most complex parts of the integration. </p>
<p>Just from a basic project planning perspective October 1 should have been called off as impractical if there are only 20 calendar days for integration work. </p>
<p>Worse- the Data Hub work may have been rushed:
“A government watchdog warned this month that a critical security test for the data hub had been delayed and was not scheduled to be completed until Sept. 30. But on Tuesday, officials said they managed to finish that testing on time Friday, calling it a major turning point.”</p>
<p>Looks to me like they slipped all the deadlines except the final Oct 1 deadline. Because absolutely, they couldn’t do all the integration testing in less than a month; that schedule is preposterous. You know everything is going to break when it is first tested.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree. Dumb choice.</p>