deuxsous

American Express Calls Investment Banks' Bluff

I think many do not know that American Express classic card holders MUST pay their charges each month, and do. They have been trying to convince me after over 40 years with them to sign up for one of their "defaultable" credit charge cards so I can spend hundreds of dollars of interest in addition to normal merchants' charges they get. They are apparently not clear on the concept of their own cards and clients.

I knew they must be hurting because I am recently getting at least five emails and three post mailings a day for some new schemes I don't want or need.

Some friends tell me Amexco are cutting monthly charge limits on some of their BIG business clients who have always paid on time. It looks like we'll all have to start getting cash at the bank like in the olde dayz and carry a Glock! jeeeeeziz...

Calling It Quits on Gold, Platinum - It's Time to Go Financials!

i've been trading them for 30 years. commodities are different. they don't just go up and up in low volalitilty walkups forever, as stocks often do. they tend to spike up in a matter of months and then consolidate somewhere just under the highs for long enough to establish that higher prices were justified after. but that's too long for today's short term bandits, so they are gone and into the latest spike somewhere else. then when everyone is bored with commodities in 3-15 months, they spike again. the average consolidation period after a spike in this commodity bull market since 2002 has been 4-5 months and we're not quite two months into this one. by the way, look at one or more of the CRB indexes which have most of the US and some London commodities in them. i prefer the CCI version (similar to the old CRB) which GCC tracks. DJP tracks another CRB version. gold alone doesn't cut it.

the commodity bull market has at least another decade to run, and if you're not overleveraged you can just hold and kick back and do nothing. but of course EVERYONE IS overleveraged these days. so we have to have these long consolidations so we can pick them apart......yawwwwwnnnn...

Jim Rogers' Picks and Pans - Barron's Interview

Rogers is a boorish blowhard, but he understands that the inflation cycle has another decade or more to run. He was negative on investing "IN" China for a long time because of the legal system and lack of financial transparency. He said he'd rather invest in things they were going to buy so much of that they had to go up in price. I still think that is a better plan than investing "IN" China.

My guess is he got angry with the US because a lot of his commodity fund clients in the US and Europe got caught and lost a lot when the "famous" brokerage Hillary made her cattle killing on went belly up.

Singapore is a good place to trade from, and the climate is no worse than NYC in the summer. He can fly all over Asia to bad mouth the US and get new clients. He'll fit right in in the rich Maylasian highlands in the summer...... A nice country club life for an aging billionaire who's burned his bridges here.