turnkeusa

Why Austria’s Economy and ETF May Face an Uphill Battle

Austrian banks hold non-performing Eastern European loans of more than 200% of gdp. Austria is Reykjavik on the Danube. Will Germany, France and the UK consent to bailing out Austria, a much more costly one than Latvia or Lithuania? Austria is as good a short now as it was in June 1914.

A Strong U.S. Dollar Isn't in Anyone's Best Interest

"If a country is spending recklessly and overstimulating the world economy, it gets punished with reduced export demand, the result of a strong currency. If a country is saving heavily and thereby facilitating investment throughout the world, it gets rewarded with increased export demand, the result of a weak currency."

Not what actually happened. You miss a few points in forex history. The $ dropped as the US bubble economy crested until July 08 as fear drove the $ up. I sold a large pile of euros and bought euro puts in 7/08 because the euro was in a commodity boom-inflation fear driven bubble. Post Lehman, the euro crashed from $1.60 to $1.28/euro in the biggest short term move in postwar forex history, in exactly the inversion your scenario outlined above. Flight to safe haven currencies from a stock market and commodity crash drove demand to $ as institutions with toxic liabilities in $ had to buy $ to cover.

Fuel Systems Solutions: Fueling a Rocketing Stock

game, set, match. should've bought more puts.

Santelli's Rant: A Watershed Moment?

The caddy won't get govt money since he's not living in the condos.
Your irresponsible neighbor's foreclosure will drop your house's value by 10% immediately and more later as there are more on your block. Choose your poison: moral hazard or financial hazard.
Rising unemployment will drop rents and rental yields until yields are T-bonds + 5% or more. Santelli has a point, but it's economically, and in terms of keeping the political and social order from going over a precipice, beside the point. Emotionally satisfying in its moral superiority, but financially meaningless to those who own real estate near foreclosed houses. Dumb buyers sold the rest of us a naked put on their houses because we deregulated the mortgage and banking industries and let Bush & Co. eviscerate the regulatory agencies and enforcement. Santelli is getting angry at the wrong people.

Five Most Promising Emerging Market ETFs for 2009

I own an apt in a Bulgarian ski resort and found Bulgaria to be more cosmopolitan, open and globalized than the American south or provincial northern Italy, where I used to live. Bulgaria has many problems, but xenophobia is not one of them.
I have owned real estate in Latvia since 1998 and find your idea that the Baltic states are "fairly uncorrupt" absolutely laughable, except for Estonia, which is less corrupt than Italy, where I lived for 15 years. Even former president Freiberga used govt funds to redecorate her personal library; and that's the least of the corruption. Go and see the illegal construction along the beach in Jurmala, which resembles the degree of illegally built real estate in Sicily or Calabria, but never bulldozed by the authorities, as in Italy. The lack of accountability and the impunity of the powerful in Latvia is what led to the recent riots in Riga on January 13, appropriately the anniversary of the 1905 revolution in Tsarist Russia.
Before you generalize about countries in eastern Europe, buy a couple of plane tickets and come visit this summer and swim in the Baltic under the near midnight sun.

Fuel Systems Solutions: Fueling a Rocketing Stock

Low petrol prices is already killing demand for FSYS' systems. Car owners won't install them when low petrol prices lengthen the payback period to recover the cost of installation.

Atlas Energy: More 'Criminally Undervalued' Than Cramer Realizes

Does NFG have the same kind of infrastructure Atlas has?
With IRR so leveraged, wouldn't a minor decrease in gas prices kill the stratospheric IRR? The low price of the stock seems to reflect this risk.

Atlas Energy: More 'Criminally Undervalued' Than Cramer Realizes

Does NFG have the infrastructure Atlas has?
With their IRR so leveraged, a minor drop in gas prices should greatly decrease IRR, correct?

Panic Driven Sector Rotation

Anyone who uses the English language effectively must be prepared to hear "what are you really saying." Literacy is a dying art.
Good description of raw mass emotion. Robert Johnson once called the currency markets a ship listing violently from one side to the other, with the ship's listing exacerbated by the crowd on the deck madly fleeing from one side to the other.

Especially liked the brief--and false--dawns intermittently provided by the Fed. Until absolutely all the false dawn scenarios are exhausted, every upturn, especially in financials, will be a bear market sucker's rally. When we starting hearing the popular press braying helplessly and hopelessly for Bernanke's head and proclaiming the "death of equities" a la Business Week in 1979, the bottom will have been reached. Until then collect dividends from cheap hard assets like oil & gas income trusts and J-REITs or buy the companies that service those assets, like drillers, shippers, tankers and geophysics companies.