<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Jason Zweig: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Those Quarterly Earnings Surprises This month, market strategists, television commentators and other investing pundits will bombard you with breathless updates on the percentage of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index… Continue reading The Earnings Game
The Wall Street Journal – S&P: Greece Debt Plan Is a Default Standard & Poor’s Corp. said Monday that a leading proposal for easing repayment terms on Greece’s sovereign debt would amount to a default under the ratings firm’s criteria, complicating efforts by international lenders to forge a second bailout package to keep the country… Continue reading Greece
<Click on graphic for larger image> Barron’s – Gene Epstein: Get Ready for $150 Oil After a decline this summer, crude’s price is likely to rise sharply by next spring. It will hurt the economy, but it won’t be a disaster IS THE WORLD RUNNING OUT OF OIL? Probably not. Libya can eventually bring 1.5… Continue reading Crude Oil: A Cover Story For Contrarians
Barron’s – Randall W. Forsyth: A Midyear Rate Roundup Forecasts from Street seers call for the 10-year Treasury bond to yield 3.75% in the second half of 2011 as the economy perks up The yield on the benchmark 10-year rose to 3.21% Friday, after hitting a six-month low of 2.84% the previous Monday when apprehension… Continue reading Predicting Interest Rates
The Wall Street Journal – Barton Biggs: U.S. Needs a Massive Public Works Program Speaking exclusively with The Wall Street Journal, Barton Biggs, managing partner at multibillion dollar hedge fund Traxis Partners, painted a bleak outlook for the developed world with only huge government intervention likely to improve things. … On the final day of… Continue reading Barton Biggs
Bloomberg.com – Berkshire’s Munger Says Wall Street ‘Megalomania, Insanity’ Fueled Bubble Charles Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Wall Street and mortgage sellers drove real-estate prices to unsustainable levels through reckless bets. “The bubble in America was caused by some combination of megalomania, insanity and evil in, I would say, investment banking,… Continue reading Why Didn’t You See It Coming Charlie?
The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath: Weak Economic Rebound Suggests Statistical Parallels to 1980 and Other Anemic Upturns The U.S. economic recovery that began in June 2009 in many ways mirrors the short-lived one that started in 1980 and was quickly followed by another recession in 1982, induced when the Federal Reserve pushed up… Continue reading A Poor Economy?
<Click on graphic for larger image> The New York Times – Floyd Norris: For Home Prices, It’s Back to at Least 2004 IS your home worth as much as it was seven years ago? If so, you’ve done better than most Americans. What is most impressive about the decline in home prices is the ubiquity… Continue reading How Bad Is Housing?
CNBC – China Bears Have It Wrong: Jim Rogers Commodity bull Jim Rogers says hedge fund managers such as Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates and Hugh Hendry of Eclectica, who have been shorting Chinese related stocks and credits, have got it wrong. “Those guys have been dead wrong for two years. Chanos said two years… Continue reading Jim Rogers Speaks
The New York Post – Fink, Dimon among leading candidates for Treasury secretary job President Obama may extend an olive branch to Wall Street in selecting his next Treasury secretary. With current Treasury boss Tim Geithner expected to step down before the end of the year, at least some of the names being bandied about… Continue reading The Next Treasury Secretary?
<Click on chart for larger image> Yahoo Finance – Daniel Gross: North Dakota, Spurred by Energy and Ag Boom, Has 3.2 Percent Unemployment There’s a full-on oil boom in the western part of the state. The combination of new technologies — horizontal drilling, fracking — and high energy prices has led to a boom in… Continue reading The Nation’s Lowest Unemployment Rate
The Sydney Morning Herald – Peter Martin: Global ‘train wreck’ coming THE global economy is facing ”a slow-motion train wreck” with Greece only the first nation to be hit, Reserve Bank director Warwick McKibbin has told a Melbourne conference. Referring to the most recent global economic crisis as a mere ”blip”, he said the coming… Continue reading Scary Talk