EffHugh

Fed Cuts to 3%

So long USD.. was nice knowing you. I was raised to respect and save you. Shame on me. Shame on the upper echelon of this country for confiscating the wealth of savers.

Mark Cuban, Is the Stock Market Still for Suckers?

S. Olander you hit the nail on the head. Your summary can be taken further to say that our "system" encourages debt and discourages storage of wealth. The reason is because people that don't need the money aren't good employees and we certainly can't have that can we? If the current system wasn't so rigged with so much money funneling to the upper echelon we'd all be working 20 hour weeks by now with the productivity gains that have been had. Just think about how much easier it is to do nearly every job yet we are working more than ever for increasingly less. The revolution will not be televised :-)

Mark Cuban, Is the Stock Market Still for Suckers?

In theory you're right that stocks should be a great investment long term and risk adjusted but the problem is that most of that historical return everyone likes to point to in the market was provided by dividends. Don't look now but dividends on US stocks, for the small fraction that actually pay them, are near or at all time lows I believe (I can't substantiate this claim but I remember reading it and inherently it doesn't seem out of line).

Cuban was right on when he said that most stocks are like baseball cards. GOOG is a baseball card. It pays no dividend and doesn't have any inherent value to its holder other than the desire for another person to own GOOG's rookie card. As a result what you have left is an investment that's subject to the manipulation of much larger players in the market which is 90%+, I'm guessing, of the money pushing things around everyday in the market. And at the end of the day if GOOG goes back down to $100 what do you have to show for your "investment"? Nothing because the insiders and Wall St. crooks have taken all the value and provided nothing back to shareholders. That's not an investment that's a craps table. Give me a 7% dividend on a stable growing company whose stock price goes up steadily 5% a year or so who doesn't feel the pressure to continually seek out unwise risk in order to grow profits and I'm there (as would everyone else because there is no such thing that I've seen)

The market is a rich man's game and anyone playing it that doesn't realize that is only fooling themselves. You may get lucky by being in during the right timeframe when bubbles are being blown like in the last 20 years but why do you think so many people bailed on stocks and moved into real estate? Because it's inherently obvious that most stocks have become too expensive. I wonder what Benjamin Graham would think of today's market.

America's about to have a rude awakening. We've now blown the one thing that has allowed us to live so wrecklessly.... the most stable, strongest, and the least corrupt financial system. That's being tossed out the window as we speak along with the dollar. Nobody believes the rating agencies anymore and nobody wants to buy our overpriced, non-dividend paying stocks in a currency that's getting riskier by the day.

Buy Gold on Emotion, Not Fundamentals!

Awesome Rich! That is exactly right! I am pissed that my own government has driven me into gold. I used to giggle at "those" people and wonder why in the heck they would ever buy it. That is until I watched as my substantial annual savings wasn't making a dent into the cost of owning a home in CA. Once you start down the rabbit hole of "how is this possible?" you can't unlearn things and so your perception of reality changes. The Matrix is a perfect metaphor for how I feel with regards to watching the world around me and how nearly everyone is clueless about how money is created and how their own government is robbing them blind even more than they already know.

Anyway, I don't own a tinfoil hat but definitely view the world and our country more and more with open eyes. I look forward to being proud to be an American again, if only we could elect a leader capable of getting us there. If only I could make a deal to be put back into the Matrix and forget about all this I'd consider it just like Cipher :-)

Mark Cuban, Is the Stock Market Still for Suckers?

Additionally that 17 P/E is not going to remain there as corp. profits start falling dramatically as the evidence is showing quite dramatically that the consumer has finally run out of rope. Time for the fed to blow another bubble. Hmm.. let's see... stocks are shot, housing is wrecked for at least 5 years, next up on the bubble train express... PMs and commodities? But what the hell do I know... I'm not a billionaire or even a millionaire... just a lowly hundred thousandaire.

Wonder if the pending bankruptcy of MBIA, Ambac, and Countrywide will put a little damper on the 2009 rendition of this article.

Best of luck to you all, I've been locked into Gold since $400 and short housing and financials since 2005. I really wish I could find a reason to be long the market. Maybe if I just did buy and forget but I can't do that :-)

Pick Up Undervalued Financials - Barron's Interview

Does he back his conjecture with anything other than opinion? At some point he will be right but he's playing a dangerous game of bottom fishing. I think he underestimates the level of greed within these finance companies in terms of the bad positions in which they find themselves today. C is trying to sell white elephants to raise capital. Guess we'll see who's right. Myself I'm thinking of a short of the entire market as deflation is now starting to set in.

Bill Fleckenstein On Alan Greenspan's 'Don't Blame Me' Attitude

Hey Hugh,

I can only surmise that you went to "private school" because mommy and daddy had enough money to send you there. Well good for you, but to make a snide comment that suggests that anyone that went to public school needs "help" understanding the merit of not being overwhelmed by bad debt and financial decisions is so completely pompous and completely discredits your entire post and makes you look like an asshole.

You're no better than anyone else, whatever you level of education and where you got it from.