Good Morning As Israel/Hamas fight escalates the prices for both gold and oil rise. Recent price behavior for oil has been a strong opening and a quick fade by 10am. Unless the Gaza turmoil escalates I expect oil to resume its recent pattern, down. Storage …
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Before you go into the movie, go. A.O. Scott, the NYT’s movie reviewer writes that Brad Pitt has mastered the art of reticence as Benjamin Button. I have to agree here. Pitt never really lets himself go, really go, as he did in Burn after …
Merry Christmas!
Put a fork in me, I’m done for the week. Another travel day tomorrow and then busy with family. You should be too, busy with family I mean. Hope you are enjoying these posts and that we can meet again next week.
A disappointing day. Once again my gold positions (DGP, GLD) bailed me out. That’s not a good sign. Corporate bonds are getting the nod from numerous quarters. I painted that picture last week: junk bonds historically have a 4 1/2% default rate but have recently …
Our President? This is almost too painful to watch. The President seems to so unsure of himself. Its like he has never thought of some of these things before. His sighs after each question smacks of depression; his own. http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=242763 Now watch this: George Bush: …
Noon, Monday, December 22nd With GE, GOOG, and GS all down this market isn’t going anywhere. My Amazon idea was errant, to say the least. But am still thinking revenues w/b higher. Here is a good site to check sector strength/ weakness: MarketGauge by Dataview, …
Good Morning. Futures are pointing to a moderately positive opening. We may be getting a Santa Clause rally both before and after Christmas. The TED spread indicator on Bloomberg.com: Investment Tools again appears to be improving. Remember that a ratio of 1.40 to 1.60 indicates …
Closed End Funds Late December is the time to dig for CEFs. Most share holders are under water and sell to establish tax losses. Since many CEFs are thin traders these sales push the share prices way below the NAV. A good place to begin …
Junk
By now almost is everyone is familiar with the junk bond default rate. The scenario goes like this: the historic default rate of bonds rated BBB or lower is about 4%. Yet, the recent pricing of junk bonds indicates a default rate of about 21%. …
Crushed
I saw GE weakening over the last two days, I even commented on it. Idiot. Go with the obvious. The 3-G’s; Goldman, Google and GE are great market tells. The market finds it difficult to go up without at least two and preferrably all three …