CM in MA

The Undisclosed Costs of the U.S. Government Bailouts

Sheep get shorn. The answer is for the voters of this great country to take matters into our own hands and vote for anybody, repeat anybody, running on a third-party ticket or as an independent. Vote via write-in if necessary. Both major parties have become corrupt beyond comprehension. Yet, they succeed in convincing millions to vote for them under the delusion that the other guys will somehow be worse.

Fear Not Yet a Factor

kimasabe--I agree with you and wpdragon. Shorts help to make a market. My point is that a market can't be considered free, open, transparent, etc. when one side is allowed to keep its cards from view. The fact that a sell order is a short sale is known by the person placing the order and the firm executing the order. This fact isn't disclosed to the buyers until well after the transaction--using the car analogy above (and it's not a perfect analogy), it would be like buying a car or house from someone and then finding out that the title isn't clear. My solution is to let the market know that the seller is short the shares. The only reason that I can think of not to do so is to provide the short seller with protection from longs. Since longs don't get such protection, why should shorts? I have nothing against shorts, I just believe the playing field should be level. If someone wants to sell shares short, go ahead. The short sellers should have the confidence of their conviction, just as longs do.

Fear Not Yet a Factor

Make that twice a month. Sorry.

Fear Not Yet a Factor

Sure, shorts are valuable to the price discovery mechanism. IMHO, the problem with shorts is that they hide in the weeds. Longs cross the tape in full view and in real time. Shorts disclose their position once a month, and the information is already dated when it comes out. Mark the tape as a short sale and make it a truly transparent market. As it stands, short-selling is too easy a deck to stack.

The Current Market Atmosphere: Easy Money Hard to Come by

Interesting article, but forming any opinion, thesis or course of action on "facts" such as "the median wage-earner is unable to afford the median priced home" is fraught with danger. I glanced at the study and am fairly certain it is using national medians. Well, we don't live in a median world. Wealth and earning power tends to cluster. Those earning at or below the national median wage in a high-wage area will likely find themselves consistently priced out of the local real estate market where most homes will tend to run above the median house price. Conversely, a person earning at or above the median wage in a low-wage area will be able to afford a home at the upper end of what is likely to be a below median priced housing market.

Facts and data only have meaning when put in context. And also remember that all studies have biases (yes, even at Harvard) and perhaps even hidden agendas.

Lost Decade for Stocks?

For some, it's potentially worse than the authors illustrate. If a person had the worst timing in the world, and invested in the S&P 500 at the start of year 2000, their annualized return (including dividends) to date would be 0.03%. Of course, this means that if the first 20 years of this century are going to revert to 8% return levels, then there's going to be a heck of a bull market sometime during the next decade. For those wondering, to get approximately 8% annualized during the period 2000-2020, the S&P would need to reach roughly 6600 by 2020. To get 8% annualized from 2002-2022, the S&P 500 would need to reach just 3725. As Warren Buffett has long noted, the price paid determines the rate of return.