nprfreak

Two Stocks with Market Caps Over $250 Million that Sell for Under $10

Unfortunately, based on the latest quarterly report from Cedar Fair (FUN), the pending dividend will be the last for a while. Q3 numbers weren't great but what pushed the price back so badly was an anticipated debt covenant breach before year end and the dividend elimination planned to pay down debt. THAT's the problem with low price / high dividend stocks!

Washington Should Let Credit Card Issuers Do Their Job

Hmmm. Seems to me Chase (JPM) is adding risk by assuming their better customers can take whatever arbitrary abuse they can dish out.

With U.S. Economy Still on the Ropes, Where Are the Banks?

Where are the banks? At least one of them, JP Morgan Chase, seems intent on insuring that the economic recovery is slowed while they "get theirs". Many may think anyone with credit card debt deserves whatever they get but should consider that many small businesses and self-employed folks float their business with credit cards. And consider that perhaps taking a 3.99% "for the life of the loan" offer from Chase may have been a wise decision based on other circumstances. Even letting a 7.99% fixed rate APR card with a 10 or 20 year history run a balance for a period may not have been irresponsible.

Chase has decided to punish their most responsible card customers: those who never paid late or exceeded their limit so as to put them in range of the abusive and usurous "default" rate. With their overall interest rate increases and raising minimum pays from 2% to 5% on certain card accounts, they seem to be hoping to push more people into "default" rates that are now approaching 50%!!!

What are they thinking? It makes no sense to me but they clearly want their money NOW whether that means losing customers (those who can pay off or get other credit in this environment). They are abusing those with the best credit history the most because they THINK they are least likely to default.

I think they are wrong. I myself am very close to doing the unthinkable and defaulting on my two low rate CC loans with them. They have pushed me to edge of insolvency and you can bet I'm not going to pay them before my mortgage and food.

Meanwhile Mr. Dimon is on a PR campaign to paint them as the hero of the day. True, they paid back their TARP money. But based on how they are treated their Chase customers (most acquired from other companies, WAMU most recently through Bank One near the turn of the century), they did that way too soon.

Mr. Dimon talks about "too big to fail" provisions. JPM is clearly that. It is my hope that the feds break them up BEFORE they put the system at any further risk. They should not be permitted this back-door method of keeping the economy down while floating their bank and CC operations on the investment banking divisions.

Two illuminating websites:
www.changeinterms.com/
www.consumeraffairs.co...

Clearly not everyone on the 2nd site is completely "clean", a few are pretty clueless, but most are and the list is just HUGE.

So at least the Chase part of JPM Chase is right in the middle of getting theirs regardless of the damage they might do to the broader economy. May the get their just reward! I'm pretty sure no one I know will ever do business with them again.

Finally, a recent CNN story. Chase has been pretty successful at squelching much of the negative press on this situation even (apparently) getting a Suze Orman interview with Debtor's Revolt Ann Minch of You Tube fame). A few outlets (like CNN, Consumer Reports, and The American Bankers Association) have resisted the pressure. This whole thing started in January and I am personally astonished that it continues to grow so steadily.

www.cnn.com/2009/POLIT...

Parsing the S&P / Case-Shiller August 2009 Housing Report

No particular comment on the quality of the analysis. Data can be made to fit any bias. Plus the analysis seems reasonable to me given the complete disconnect from reality this bubble exhibited vs. the 80s/90s bubble. The earlier price inflation resulted from home buying by baby boomers as they came to home buying age and was made somewhat worse by homebuilders not recognizing that the next "generation" was smaller. This one grew out of pure fantasy and, like the first, was made worse by homebuilders not recognizing that fantasies end.

However, the chart graphics don't work well after the first one. Perhaps if I had a 52" monitor, I would be able to read the labels. With my standard not-huge PC monitor, I can use some deductive reasoning to decipher the text by going full screen but only barely.

Was the Chicago PMI Leaked?

Interesting. I had assumed that players were just positioning against a possible "worse than expected" report.

Multi-Year Bear Market Appears Ready to Return

Don't get this at all! How do you predict a multi-year bear with only the most recent 4 months of data? At least in the 2nd half of the article, but it's not even clear in the multi-year charts at the top.

What Could Fiat Be Thinking?

Yes, it would certainly seem that Mr Marchionne is trying to outdo Carlos Ghosn as far as running multiple car companies. Whether growth by acquisition ever produces actual growth is an open question in the best case. An acquisition spree in tough times is certainly not the best case.

Google bought up idle capacity during the internet bust, a good way to get themselves positioned "on the cheap". Fiat isn't Google and auto manufacturing is not internet band width.

Why Television Needs a Reality Check on Sustainable Business Models

Disney CEO Bob Iger points to the unmanageable "cyclicality of hit-driven content and a lull in the creative cycle."
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No argument from me on a lull in the creative cycle. And that's not a recent development. Do we need another idiot chef "reality" show? I think not.

Years of copy catting and what do you get? Mediocrity times four!

The Wells Fargo / Wachovia Story from 1994 to 2012

Thank you. Nicely done. Having worked IT with most of the big banks on the credit card side, I've long thought Wells Fargo to be best of breed for risk management. I also had a high opinion of Wachovia, though with less recent direct experience, and began buying shares when they dropped below the 2002/03 lows. (Should have paid more attention to that Golden West acquisition - high price at a bad time to purchase a subprime lender.) So I now have 35 shares of WFC at an adjusted average cost $170/share. OUCH!

The shares are in an IRA so there is no advantage to selling. I've been watching for a good entry point(s) to do two things: Add shares somewhere and convert the existing position to a Roth. It may take decades for the current position to acheive the 10x appreciation required to break even. But more shares generating reinvested dividends, even if reduced, will drive down my average cost more quickly.

I'm probably driving my broker nuts with all my Roth conversions this year. I'm moving my biggest losers 10 shares at a time on down days. I'll give Uncle Sam some tax money now at these low tax rates. I'm pretty confident those rates will be higher 5-10 years down the road.

Roth conversion of cash is a suckers game this year for anyone with stock or funds in an IRA. Move those depreciated shares instead. They might have a current real value greater than their current price. And you KNOW they cost more than the current price!

The Shallowest Generation

Excellent article with many well thoughtout responses in the comments. As a mid-boomer (1956), my generation has often puzzled me. That puzzlement is broad based but the failure to elect a president who reached the age of majority AFTER WWII before Clinton (1992) has been particularly bemusing to me. Perhaps that's a sign of voter apathy, something not characteristic of the depression babies with their higher percentage participation in the vote.

Boomers certainly seem to have abandoned the ideals associated with them in the 60s and 70s. I think the reality might be that those ideals were never adopted by the majority of the generation, which is to say that other than gross numbers, boomers fall into a similar normal distribution as any other generation.

One thing that did change for boomers was women in the workforce. That exploded in the 70s and I don't believe the "system" (financial, cultural, etc.) has ever really adjusted to that. I suspect it is a major factor in finanicial illiteracy that may have made post-boomer generations more suspectable the financial come-ons that lead us where we are today.

All things run in cycles that interact with other cycles. If we are lucky, we'll see a cultural reversal that will eventually reward us with a recovering economy. That cultural reversal must come before we get sustainable ecomonic improvements.

SEPA Report Showing End-Market Demand Disconnect Could Sink First Solar, SunPower

A valid concern for investors in the short term. However, I hold out some hope that state and federal policies might shift to at least put local energy production on par with centralized production. You can't get much more local than your home or business. With some attention to conservation, these smaller locations may be more likely to produce more energy than they consume. Or at least, the capitalist ideal of parties taking actions that are in their own best interests, the owners should strive for that goal.

Personally, I think solar PV is a poor choice for centralized utility power production. Solar thermal makes much more sense for utility-scale installations, in part because of the stored (heat) energy characteristics that allow for a gradual production decline at sunset.

On the comment about the price of oil, solar stocks may be becoming untied from that. Solar is to replace coal, not oil. Mining and burning coal is an so many ways a bigger environmental threat.