igggy

The Twenty Year Stock Bubble Is Still Inflated

What the graph doesn't show is the ratio of revenue/GDP for the S&P500. If the S&P500 companies sales used to be responsible for a smaller percentage of the GDP, that alone could account for the difference in the market cap / GDP ratio.

Basically, a historical price-to-sales graph for the S&P 500 would be much more interesting.

Trouble with the Russells

It's also interesting that the Dow is suddenly ahead of the S&P500
finance.yahoo.com/q/bc...=^GSPC
or I should say the latter is suddenly behind the former.

2009's Magic Formula Buyouts and Bankruptcies

SOAP didn't go bankrupt. It liquidated itself giving back all of its cash thru a special dividend.

Marc Farber: Gold Will Never Fall Below $1,000 Again

Last year T Boone Pickens said that oil will never drop below $100. It hasn't come back yet.

Seaboard: Watching the Stocks that Nobody Watches

> The thing I don’t get is why Seaboard pays a quarterly dividend of 75 cents a share. At the current price, that’s less than 0.2% a year. Why bother?

Well, if you bought the stock at $5-1/8 you wouldn't be asking this question.

A $2B company is not likely to grow another 30,000% - that's the sad part.

Investment Technology Group – POSIT-tively Cheap

Paul,

Did you close your previous ITG positions at the recent high?
Just curious if you hold until expiration or manage your positions actively.

Why I'm Long Helios Total Return Fund

> My bet is that mortgage backed securities are currently undervalued and HTR is undervalued against the underlying assets.

Why would they be undervalued if the Fed has bought $1T of those?

Are ETFs Causing an Emerging Markets Bubble?

So what do you think will burst this bubble?

Wells Fargo's Mortgage Conversion Scheme: Delaying the Inevitable

And I thought no one could do what Countrywide could:
www.youtube.com/watch?...

Q4 Growth Likely to Be Stronger than Q3

Hm, they've been revising past GDP estimates down lately so the 3.5% growth might turn out to be less than 3.2% after it's revised.
Also, if AMZN increases its earnings at the cost of its rivals, that's not going to improve overall earnings at all.

Getting Growth Back on Track Could Be Very Rewarding

The second graph is very informative but I don't believe the trend will continue. For the last 30 years GDP growth has been boosted thru borrowing. Not only will it be harder to borrow in the future but the US will also have to pay more in interest every year.
How about adding Japan to the graph? As I understand their real growth has been around 0% for the last 20 years. That seems like a more likely scenario for the US as well. Slightly better perhaps (1%?) since the US demographics is not as bad.

The Housing Shell Game Moves to Autos

Mark,
At least in this case the benefits are visible. Someone is going to buy a car, or a house, or whatever. Somebody else might keep keep their job.

When AIG got 100+ billion, nobody knows where the money went - at least the number of people who benefited was much smaller, those people already had plenty of money, and they live (or could live if they wanted to) in Switzerland.

How to Value Amazon?

I actually worked for Amazon as a software developer. Their website platform is not perfect but it's years ahead of many competitors. Another company might be able to replicate their platform and site features with one billion dollars but that would be the price tag every year for 10 years or so and by then Amazon's website will have improved too.
I imagine it's nice for Amazon's customers to have a single place to track their purchases (books, CDs, etc). That adds to Amazon's moat too.
Having said that, Amazon has too big a market cap to deserve such a high PE multiple.

TriQuint Semiconductor Savaged After Hours: Another Reason Not to Game Earnings

Good call. There is not much demand for value in a bull market.

David Einhorn's Speech at the Value Investing Congress

Einhorn's book (Fooling some people all of the time) is pretty interesting too. Highly recommend.