BondClipper

The New Bull Market Fallacy

Well written. But since the author has pretty much been wrong for the past 5 months, I'm not sure how much credit he has at this point.

Should GE Shareholders Sell to Protest MSNBC's Left Leaning News Bias?

GE really doesn't care about the political leanings of its networks, as was clearly the case in management's response in the shareholders meeting. NBC has always been left of center, and MSNBC has carved out a niche a the anti-Fox.

It's been a focused strategy, perhaps initially well conceived, that had some success as the Bush administration became increasingly unpopular since the '04 election, but the niche strategy has lost steam since their man was elected President. Now it's just rehashing attacks on Bush administration policies which are getting tired and worn out.

MSNBC currently devotes the better part of two hours of prime time each night to the single issue of torture - when there are a plethora of other news items to cover - and it's not surprising that their ratings have gone in the toilet. As someone commented above, it's only a matter of time before there's a shakeup.

The Mark-to-Market Bank Trade This Week

As a devout free-marketer, I understand the arguments against relaxing M2M. However for markets to work effectively at pricing assets, markets must be functioning properly and have some level of, if not perfect, efficiency. Right not that is not happening.

In essence, these markets are broken. There simply are not enough participants (buyers) who have the capacity or desire to support the demand curve. And on the supply curve, banks are not willing to take more than a nominal "haircut" on assets that continue to produce cash flows by and large (at least for now).

So some form of "mark-to-model", even if temporarily, makes sense in this environment. And relaxing M2M probably won't be the panacea that many believe, nor should it, because the model should factor in worse-case scenarios into the pricing mechanism, but the result would surely be better than .20 as the author suggests. We shall see if Washington buys in. If so, longs may finally have their day.

Corn and Its Industry: The Next Tobacco

The author includes CPO in his list of stocks to watch, but fails to acknowledge that as a refiner (purchaser) of corn , CPO actually benefits from lower corn products even if demand for its refined products is declining. Plus a major product of corn is alcoholic beverages , which the author does not mention and is not likely to decline on the demand side based on "health" concerns.

Finally, the author fails to note the fact that CPO is to be acquired by BG, which manufactures fertilizer, so it's a moot argument regarding CPO.

Stocks Ben Graham Would Like Today

Your explanation of book value is misleading, if not incorrect. Please allow me to clarify. Intangible assets are in fact included in a company's book value, so a P/B ratio that one looks up on yahoo or seekingalpha already factors these in.

I generally follow Graham and remove all intangibles from book value before completing this analysis to determine Tangible Book Value. It is Price to Tangible Book Value that theoretically can increase up to 2.5, while basic Price-to-Book should always be lower than this if used in a screen.

I agree 1.2 is conservative, but its a moot point if removing intangibles leaves little or even negative tangible book value. Graham would have us go the extra step, I believe, and remove the intangibles.