bond investor

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    • Thu Oct 2nd 20:02 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Some True Safe Havens Are Still (Surprisingly) Undervalued
      Mark/JJ: most recent theories suggest black holes *do* emit energy:
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      LHC generates only a fraction of the energy of cosmic rays hitting Earth all the time. If it was going to create a singularity from same rays, don't you think odds are higher one would have naturally hit Earth some time in the past zillion years?

      Also, read your own article link: LHC helium was caused by good old-fashioned equipment failure.

      I admire the level of detail in your analysis, and your candor in admitting that you've been short-term wrong on SWC and PAL.

      Agree that hoarding instincts may drive the stocks higher. However, there is no similar inflationary force like 1980, but a debt-destruction-fuele... deflationary one.

      Will have to check your GM sales data vs retail auto sales data. Initial reaction is that the platinum is still a closed-loop, and whether it sits on dealers' lots or in customers' garages, it's the actual auto production minus guzzlers' Pt reclaimed that matters.

      Wish I knew if older cars used more or less Pt than new ones...


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    • Fri Nov 23rd 18:50 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      TIPS: Nominal Yield, Risky Real After-Tax Return
      It isn't just the tax rate for TIPS, it's the timing of the tax payments and the liquidity and transaction costs of meeting them with internal cash flows. Just Google "TIPS phantom income." Taxable investors get principal added to their investment, to be paid at maturity, but the IRS taxes it in each tax year. Funding that tax payment from cash flows would require selling a sliver of your TIPS investment. That reduces the number of "uninformed" retail investors, and it also creates distortions in the big TIPS mutual funds, which are also trying to smooth their yields across months.
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    • Wed Oct 24th 23:58 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      It's October - Should We Be Buying?
      Alan, very cogent analysis, as I'd expect from a fellow CFA charterholder. You lay out your reasons for bond bullishness, but don't cover the scenario in which commodities would do well. Since you like bonds if the Fed doesn't cut "too much," I'm guessing that you'd prefer commodities if they cut "too much" and take us down a stagflationary road instead of a recessionary/slow-grow... inflation or even deflation road.

      Rather than looking at the Fed, I would look at the Asian and Middle Eastern central banks and sovereign wealth funds, since they own and buy far more debt than the Fed. They'll tolerate currency declines in their U.S. holdings only for so long.... perhaps until just after the Beijing Olympics. At that point, look for weak U.S. demand to be exported to the rest of the world.
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    • Wed Oct 24th 23:34 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The 'Credit Crisis' is Really a Risk Crisis
      Yes, but as Stichnoth no doubt knows, investment is all about the marginal change. Are corporate spreads wider or tighter than they were in early 2007? Answer: wider. So credit is more costly. Is it "costly enough"? There certainly seem to be plenty of investment banks getting stuck with junk bonds and bank loans on their balance sheets.

      Saying it's a "risk crisis" instead of a "credit crisis" is just semantics. "Credit" is just another form of risk, like interest rate risk, reinvestment risk, inflation risk, etc.
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    • Thu Oct 18th 01:02 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Small-Cap Growth: Analyst Coverage Discount?
      Alan, the analyst optimism in WHQ would appear to be misplaced, at least in the short term, after the pre-announcement and lower guidance for the company. Your screen might be improved if a sell discipline was built. Maybe there's a "critical mass" of analysts at which excessive optimism is sure to result in underperformance. Given there's a finite number of sell-side firms with any real power over sentiment, there might be a trigger to sell when all the bulge-bracket firms cover a stock. (Note that I'm *not* suggesting that smaller-firm sell-side or independent analysts can't be more "right" than the big boys, just that they by definition they reach fewer people who actually follow their advice (blindly or not).
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