Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
JPM's dealmaking would be impossible without TARP backing. Consolidation and control are on the bailout's hidden agenda.
GE's China deal is the handwriting on the wall for the U.S.'s last truly competitive industries: aviation and defense. GE may be trying to get secure access to markets for its big goods, not to mention the resources (rare earths?) needed to feed them.
UBS' turnaround plan will have to include a sale of its PaineWebber unit, as its clientele are too downmarket for Swiss tastes.
Stocks to Watch as Market Leadership Changes Hands [View article]
How will AMZN and NFLX keep their growth up if consumer spending stays weak? Style investing has its drawbacks, among them a disregard for fundamentals that affect all styles and asset classes.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Helicopter Ben isn't hiking rates anywhere near 2% until the U.S.'s entitlement liabilities are inflated away or foreign central banks quit buying Treasuries, whichever comes first.
Positive earnings results from MCD wouldn't be a surprise given their downmarket positioning. Positives from AAPL and WHR would be very positive indeed.
Drug companies to benefit? You don't say? Check their campaign contributions to evaluate the ROI on what they spent to get that outcome.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Actions speak louder than words with the Fed. They can't unwind their MBS purchase programs no matter how optimistic they pretend to be about the economy. They blew another mini-bubble in equities and are afraid to be blamed for deflating it.
C's move is odd for a so-called too big to fail bank. Apparently they want to be the next First Republic.
The final version of financial reform legislation will be so watered down as to render it unrecognizable as progress. The industry is still in charge of legislation and regulation.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Berkshire and Leucadia are cherry-picking good assets out of a bankruptcy. Smart move.
SEC's problems will continue as long as their employees pine for jobs on Wall Street. Solution: Bar them from employment in SEC-regulated firms in the event they leave the SEC, at least for a cooling off period (three years minimum).
Who will be forced out at Cerberus? Maybe they could start with Dan Quayle and John Snow.
Sell Off Ahead? 25 Ways to Profit and Protect from a Stock Market Correction [View article]
A sell off is likely with corporate earnings down 96% yoy. The main unknowables are when and how much. I'm seeking profit by selling out-of-the-money puts under things I want to buy more of anyway: FXI and GDX.
Time to Get Conservative? 50 Ideas for a Summer Sell-Off [View article]
Good analysis. Buy/writing is a safer bet after a rally that has no justification in fundamentals. The biggest difficulty IMHO is picking a strike price far enough away from the stock's likely closing price at options expiration that the position won't be called away.
How is a bully pulpit going to stir consumers to spend when many of them are still losing their jobs (or in the case of some state government workers, facing monthly furloughs)? Jawboning works best when people have spare cash to spend on planned or delayed purchases, not when people are drawing down rainy day funds to pay mortgages and grocery bills.
The only notable news today was Kuwait's scuttling of its joint venture with Dow Chemical. This severely jeopardizes Dow's acquisition of Rohm & Haas. Merger arbitrageurs, beware.
Dividend Paying Stocks: You Only Have to Be Lucky Once [View article]
Successful investing has less to do with gambling and more to do with long-term asset allocation. This is valid even in our Great Depression 2.0 if investors stick to dollar-cost averaging their purchases.
Dividend stocks are nice to own, and I once read an investment theory (sorry, forgot the source) that said that 40% of the returns of a market portfolio were attributable to reinvested dividends. Just remember that Warren Buffett got rich partly by investing in privately held firms that retained most or all of their earnings, allowing them to grow organically at amazing compound rates.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
GE's China deal is the handwriting on the wall for the U.S.'s last truly competitive industries: aviation and defense. GE may be trying to get secure access to markets for its big goods, not to mention the resources (rare earths?) needed to feed them.
UBS' turnaround plan will have to include a sale of its PaineWebber unit, as its clientele are too downmarket for Swiss tastes.
Stocks to Watch as Market Leadership Changes Hands [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Positive earnings results from MCD wouldn't be a surprise given their downmarket positioning. Positives from AAPL and WHR would be very positive indeed.
Drug companies to benefit? You don't say? Check their campaign contributions to evaluate the ROI on what they spent to get that outcome.
Shut down CIT already.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
C's move is odd for a so-called too big to fail bank. Apparently they want to be the next First Republic.
The final version of financial reform legislation will be so watered down as to render it unrecognizable as progress. The industry is still in charge of legislation and regulation.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
SEC's problems will continue as long as their employees pine for jobs on Wall Street. Solution: Bar them from employment in SEC-regulated firms in the event they leave the SEC, at least for a cooling off period (three years minimum).
Who will be forced out at Cerberus? Maybe they could start with Dan Quayle and John Snow.
Sell Off Ahead? 25 Ways to Profit and Protect from a Stock Market Correction [View article]
Time to Get Conservative? 50 Ideas for a Summer Sell-Off [View article]
The Bull Run Begins This Week [View article]
Low Volume on Little News [View article]
Dividend Paying Stocks: You Only Have to Be Lucky Once [View article]
Dividend stocks are nice to own, and I once read an investment theory (sorry, forgot the source) that said that 40% of the returns of a market portfolio were attributable to reinvested dividends. Just remember that Warren Buffett got rich partly by investing in privately held firms that retained most or all of their earnings, allowing them to grow organically at amazing compound rates.
Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday: Gen X and Y vs. the Baby Boomers [View article]