BigGuy

S&P 500 Stocks with the Highest Short Interest

Stocks shorted below $5 are not marginable. Also, most full service and many discounters require at least $2 per share on penny stocks and $5 a share on stocks between $1 and $5.

In other words, to short 10000 shares at 50 cents -- $5,000 proceeds -- most firms will require you to put up $20,000. To short 10,000 shares at $1 -- $10,000 -- most firms will require you to deposit $50,000 in cash or T bills, not stock, to secure the transaction.

Shorting MRK and PFE here is really unwise. What bad news there could be is already out. Big pharm has much better chances of having a positive surprise or no surprise at this point than a negative surprise. What could push the stock down has already happened.

Rail Transport CDS Levels and the Dow Theory

CDS Levels?

I think you mean the pricing of credit default swaps for railroad stocks. How about the volume? Most of us don't have access to see volume figures for privately traded securities like CDS.

2009 Depression Will Be Nothing Like 1929

Some areas are already worse off than during the great depression. The average price for a home in Detroit is $18,000. The average price for a home in Braddock, PA is $6,000.

The vice ridden cities in the East and Midwest, across rivers from major cities, that are now mostly Black and very poor are getting even poorer. But their major cities -- and their suburbs -- have much further to fall. Philadelphia is likely to become more like Camden, NJ; Cincinnati is likely to become more like Newport, KY; St. Louis is likely to become more like East St. Louis, IL.

2009 Depression Will Be Nothing Like 1929

Next panic will be based on 2 year treasuries.


On Mar 06 08:33 AM User 370947 wrote:

> OK...Can you please tell us what the next bubble will be based on?
> Since our country and most people in it are insolvent, what are we
> going to do for an economy? Can you explain to me who will buy our
> debt? Who will rent all the vacant commercial property, which by
> the way will start to crumble this spring and summer. Oh let's not
> forget that the second wave of ARM defaults have yet to hit, what
> happens then? Many of the MSM predict a bottom at the end of 2009,
> BASED ON WHAT? How is the GDP going to grow? Are we going to start
> charging more stuff on our credit cards? We don't manufacture much
> of anything in our country anymore, we can't afford to buy anything,
> so please tell us why we should listen to you, you have a factless
> opinion advising people to put money into long and short positions
> in crashing global crisis. Yes you're right on one thing, this depression
> will be nothing like 1929, it will be much much worse. Put that in
> your delusional pipe and smoke it.

Bad Now? It Was a Lot Worse in the Early '80s

Not true, the economy is worse now. The charts distort reality, they do not show it. if the jobless rate is calculated today as it was in 1982, it would be over 11%. Adjusted for inflation, the 30 year mortgage in 1982 was 3.7% vs. 5.16% now.

Gold / Silver Ratio Tops 80 to 1

The gold/silver ratio may be 80, but it could go to 90 and stay there for months. It's rational to expect the markets to revert to the mean, but when the whole world is going crazy, maintaining your sanity can help you stay around to be in the game, but does not necessarily help you wing the game.

There have been instances of pork bellies selling for less than live hogs for more than two years, in ALL cash and future markets. It does not make sense for bacon to cost LESS than live hogs, but it's happened again and again.

Anheuser Busch: The First Round Is On Bud Shareholders

Family run firms that get beyond the third generation are consistently better managed and have better long run stock performance. Figuring in how well Bud is managed now and what management could do now to get the stock price up, without being acquired, $70 a share is still too low a bid.

There have been many studies through the years attesting to the strength of family management. Here's a news article referencing a few: a 2006 IHT article about family firm's outperformance:
www.iht.com/articles/2... /mfamily.php?page=3

The Hilton and Wrigley families have sold out at top dollar. The Bancrofts were stewards of Dow Jones for many years, not managers. The Busch's are more like the Hilton's and Wrigley's -- they've been good managers.

BUD's two major assets are not on the balance sheet and are not figured into the stock price. One, their distribution system is just about the best of any legally controlled and monitored product -- alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or prescription drugs. Two, the goodwill maintained by the firm is primarily a gift of the Busch family, which substantially undervalues itself (no matter the size of Busch family egos). Economists value such goodwill as 10 to 25% of a firm's capitalization; follow up from the IHT article to find academic studies backing that assertion.