David in England

Which Banks Are More Risky, The Largest EU or U.S. Banks?

So some of the Europeans in a 'tougher' regulatory environment took on more risk than US banks.
Regulations failed so we should have more regulations.
That may make sense to some people but not to me.

Five Reasons the Market Could Crash This Fall

People who missed investing at or around the March low have been talking the market down ever since. And it has continued to go up.
It doesn't do any good to say "the market is wrong". We have to face recognise it is what it is.

Would Glass-Steagall Have Stopped this Mess?

It was Clinton's people (Rubin) who led the repeal and now they are back in power, so it will not be re-imposed.
As Galbraith says, the only protection from bubbles and crashes is not regulation but the memory of the last one. So it probably doesn't matter now.

Are We Seeing Shades of 2003 Markets?

Unlike the other commenters, I liked this piece. My understand from it is that if there is a high volume positive move next week it will be time to go long, at least for a bit. And, if not, not.

Poor Strategy Is Costly

Wow, that sounds really intelligent.
I am not sure that DCT can be the key however as it only really exists in America and Pharma's problems are global.
High development costs resulting from increasing regulatory pressure have put pressure on margins.
High prices have encouraged buyers to band together and exploit generics which has also put pressure on margins.
The fundamental problem however is that many Pharma companies have worked out the old small molecule seam and their transition to the new one has not yet paid off.

In Search of the Next Reserve Currency

The last time the world reserve currency moved, from GBP to USD, it took many years, bankruptcy of the UK, semi defeat of UK in WWII and total dominance of the world economy by the US.
Only some of these conditions are in prospect now and the Euro is a long way from being ready, even if the UK joins it.
We do need a world reserve currency to support globalisation and prosperity and it would be better if its 'owner' did not exploit it as shamelessly as the US has done. What would a basket look like?

The Real Unemployment Numbers

I just hope you Americans, and lost-n-space in particular, remember that it was American protectionism that globalised and magnified the 'great' depression. It took WWII for us to recover from that one.

Pfizer: Seeking Alpha in Pharma

A wise post from Shiv. Only Novartis currently use the generic arm in the way that Shiv suggests and they use it a a competitive weapon as much as anything. Even if Pfizer does decide to launch its own generic of Lipitor they are still going to have to face the loss of about $10B in topline and not much less in bottomline.
Becoming a biologics company with therapeutics vaccines may be the way of the future but it will not produce much in the next couple of years.
Given that we know likely sales, ebitda and dividends for the next 3 years, the share price is predictable. Currently however PFE is a safer place to park some money than certain banks.

The Long Case for Pfizer

The comments in posts so far are all well known issues affecting PFE and other big pharma. The question is if PFE has learned a way to overcome them. They have been destroying value for 10 years. They do finally say that they realise they must turn themselves into a biotech company, but I'm not sure. They were always better marketers than scientists.

Just How Correlated Are Oil and Equities?

Nice article, it might be worth testing if there is a lagged correlation rather than bar-to-bar. After all you might expect it to take 6 months for the immediate impact of an oil price hike.