Stone Street Advisors's blog
2/25 Bond Market Summary
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/25/2011 17:08 -0500Fairly quiet day, next week to round out February's issuance, early in the week we have a couple of bill auctions.
General Motors Has Profitable 2010, Hurray! But Wait, There's More...(UPDATED)
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/24/2011 14:48 -0500Things are far less rosy as the headlines would have you believe...
Financial Voyeurism - Why You Can't Beat Fast Money
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/21/2011 15:00 -050045 days after the end of any given quarter financial television programs and bloggers race to be the first to report the holdings of – insert name of big hedge fund here. They analyze the report to see what the hedge fund managers are buying and selling. However, the question remains – can you beat the fast money at their own game?
Why Cost of Living Matters
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/21/2011 14:53 -0500$250,000/year in St. Louis you can live in one of the top 10 most expensive houses in town. In Manhattan? Not even close...
Pondering the End Game of the Changing Nature of Online Media
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/20/2011 14:31 -0500SEO, meta-tagging, Demand Media, etc. These media trends are scary, and unfortunately only seem to be picking up steam. If allowed to continue unabated, these trends will only put us on a quicker path towards a seemingly inevitable Idiocracy.
Why "Data" From Trade Groups is NOT to Be Trusted: National Association of Realtors Edition
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/18/2011 16:11 -0500Not only does the National Association of Realtors issue overy-optimistic future predictions (to get people to buy/sell homes, duh), but they misrepresent and manipulate historical data! That should be a crime (if it isn't already)!
Caveat Emptor, David Lerner Associates Edition
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/16/2011 12:31 -0500Hope you like the 12% markups on the CMO's your broker sold you...
John Paulson's Interview With The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/15/2011 18:08 -0500All the signs of a housing/credit bubble were there, but no one was looking...
This Week in the "We Are So Screwed!" Department...
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/15/2011 17:18 -0500The "Youth of America" is dumber than rocks, especially in Math & Science...
Egypt & Implications for Oil
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/15/2011 15:10 -0500Terrorists would have looked at an unguarded canal as the opportunity of a lifetime, now that Mubarak has left office and the military is in control this is out of the cards.
Who the REAL Taxpayers Are & Why Income Inequality Isn't Nearly As Much of a Problem As Critics Claim
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/13/2011 18:12 -0500The top 25% of earners pay almost 87% of Federal Income Tax! And that was in 2007, I doubt that number has gotten any smaller in subsequent years.
Why the Wells Fargo CFO Quit and other Pick-A-Pay Games People Play
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/10/2011 10:11 -0500What, exactly, would cause a highly paid executive to abruptly quit his job? The executive in question is Howard Atkins, former CFO of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). In 2009, Mr. Atkins' total compensation was $11.6 million. That was up from $4.9 million in 2009 and $5.7 million 2007 – that’s not bad living by any standard. The folks over at The Street.com say it was for “personal” reasons. I will let them speculate on what those reasons may or may not be. I would rather take a look at some numbers. As I suggested in an earlier post, the Wells Fargo numbers look suspect when compared to its universal banking peers.
Fuzzy Logic: Those Who Fail to Learn From History...
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/03/2011 16:51 -0500If you don't know the stories of LTCM, Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, Global Crossing, the S&L Crisis, how portfolio insurance contributed to the 1987 crash, or countless other investing lessons going back centuries, then you have no business investing your or anyone else's money. Now, it looks like China MediaExpress Holdings is about to become another one of these lessons.
Ireland to S&P: Oh Downgrade, Where is Thy Sting
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 02/02/2011 18:06 -0500What if a rating agency downgraded a country and no one listened?
With all of the news outlets focused on tensions in the Middle East, have we forgotten about the elephant(s) in the room? Ireland’s credit rating was downgraded one level to A- today by Standard & Poor’s - leaving it four levels above “junk” status. To add insult to injury, S&P said that the country remains on “credit watch with negative implications.” Nonetheless, the market barely shrugged. In fact, we remain within points of the post meltdown highs. The real kicker was the fact that Ireland’s 5-yr Credit Default Swaps FELL 4.6% today in the face of the downgrade. Perhaps the market has become numb to the rating agencies.
Pseudonymous/Anonymous Publishing: Good, Bad or Ugly?
Submitted by Stone Street Advisors on 01/31/2011 20:33 -0500I've written on this subject before, and my bottom line is that its a net positive for society for people who know what they're talking about to do so in a public forum, even if in order to do so they must use a pseudonym. I want to take a survey here and see what you all think, but before that, I want to clarify a few things:
