Archive - Jan 2010 - Blog entry

ETF’s are bringing a long overdue shake up to the mutual fund world. Say goodbye to notoriously bloated expenses, spendthrift marketing costs, and bogus performance data. You’re the sucker who’s been paying for all those glitzy ads. (EEM), (EEG), (VWO), (GLD), (SLV), (QQQQ), (XLK), (PPLT), (PALL)

In a theme everyone ought expect hear replayed ad nauseam for the next week, the infallible genii at Harvard's Kennedy School tell us (yet, again) that the US will be the target of an Al-Qaida WMD attack by 2013. (1) What stinky BO will announce during tonight's SOTU, (2) the WMD Commission's Report Card & Full Report and (3) KSG's latest ~ "Al Qaeda WMD Threat - Hype or Reality"

Instead of trying to curb short selling, curb the uncertainty that comes from misleading and fraudulent reporting practices.

Now, it is time to see if fundamentals return to the market as the write down's start to roll in. This would have made a good "I told you so" accept for that damn bear rally that totally distorted the price of stocks in relation to their underlying fundamentals. We shall see what happens when the rubber hits the road.

The U.S. and Japan face similar economic problems and they are trying to solve them in the same way: fiscal and monetary stimulus. The comparison is eerily similar. It hasn't worked for Japan and it won't work for the U.S. Japan just received a downgrade warning from S&P over their credit rating and the U.S. is not far behind.

The big news on Tuesday was that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised up its global growth forecast to near 4% in 2010, with significant revisions to US and Canadian growth projections...

We can't tell you because ... er ... it will hurt national security, yeah, that's it ...

I have decided to release a significant amount of opinion on Wells to the public, and have created an extended version of the report for subscribers with geo-specific charge-off estimates stemming from the FDIC/NY Fed model that we have created in house. A rather comprehensive piece of work. It appears that much of the sell side community is much, much more optimistic on the prospect of Wells than I am. It must be the Warren Buffet investment...

Is it time to offer a human sacrifice to atone for the financial crisis? You don’t give an arsonist a medal for putting out the fire. How the smartest kid from rural Dillon, South Carolina saved the world. When do we find out how smart Bernanke really is? Nothing less than the fate of the free world depends on the answer.

One of Canada's largest pension funds, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, is refocusing its priorities as it tries to come back from an underwhelming investment performance...

What a terrible day. Rained and blew like hell. I stayed inside and solved part of the problem of the deficit.

Few people realize that home prices in the United States have only risen in a sustained manner twice in the last 116 years...

...The general public seems to believe the bottom in housing has arrived; however, I believe no one will make any money on their real estate investments for the next decade. There may be an exception or two with a fixer-upper or a foreclosure, but buying a home for your primary residence under typical circumstances will be a net loser.

~ Information Technology, Social Media & the Structural Integrity of the Internet in the 21st Century ~ after China got caught with its hand in Google's POP3 Port 995 cookie jar, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fired THE first salvo in what will likely prove itself to be the terrain of WW III ~ the digital battlefield. This highlight is intended to set the stage for a short-series that will delve deeper into the multivariate 'strategery' of the issue du jour ~ China, Computers & Freedom in the 21st Century.

I thought the readers of ZeroHedge would like to see excerpts from the note we put out for clients of the IRA Advisory Service earlier today. Despite the confidence of Treasury Secretary Tim Geither, who is well known for his keen political instincts, the Bernanke nomination is far from a done deal.

The SPX is going to plunge 10-20%, Treasury bond interest rates are going to soar (TBT), and gold (GLD) has peaked out. Then brace yourself for the Big One in 2013. (SPX), (TBT), (GLD), (FXA), (UNG), (WHEAT), (CORN), (SOYBEANS)