jfrits

4 Ways to Ride Oil's Ups and Downs

Bernanke is like panic-stricken amateur pilot trying to crash land a 747, ergo, the spike in interest rates this past week; slamming on the brakes to stop the dollar from going off a cliff. the chinese were buying oil and other commodities like crazy with the buck free-falling.
but they, like other asian govts. are very price sensitive, and the recent demand for stocking up on oil and other commodities in the emerging markets could vaporize as oil tops $70. meanwhile the summer driving season is a bust, so i heard on fox business today that valero has just shut down a domestic refinery due to lack of demand for gas. so the chinese and others will return to buying u.s. paper for the windfall higher yields. so my guess is lower oil prices by winter, not higher, say $40 bucks give (+10) or take (-5)?
i could be wrong. iran and israel could stumble into a nuclear war, there could be a nigerian govt. coup, etc. etc. but then would not oil be boring if not trading on riveting world political developments? bring on the 3x direxion crude ETFs! trade on!

Why AIG Wasn't Allowed to Fail

who invented derivatives like stock options etc.?
who invented hedge funds and why? investing for tax dodgers?
the italian head of govt. said hedge funds should be illegal.
if investing is risk taking, then why make phony insurance on investments legal? an investor who wants it both ways is buying snake oil, and should not delude himself that he has an appetite for risk. that thinking made madoff and others very wealthy.
clinton had a dream: a home for every american to own. if the financial institutions had not bought into phony insurance on garbage loans, the govt. would have had to fund the mortgages with taxpayer money, not private capital. ooops, they thought they did, except when freddie and fannie failed, they found out they didn't.

Treasury: Still Going Nowhere

if the boss of the tax collectors cheated on his taxes, yet got nominated anyway over public outrage, would not you be a little leery if you were a competent economist and political animal? would you want to be nominated to work in a dept. that obama nominated a tax cheat to head?
duh?
btw, now we find out that greenspan was a fraud -- according to wikipedia he was given a PhD without ever doing a dissertation!! his main expertise was as a saxophone musician [maybe why clinton kept him on when his tenure came up for renewal?]. its verified that
helicopter Ben bernanke has earned a phd, but of course all grad degrees have been diluted since greenspan's student days.

'AAA' Rated Companies: And Then There Were Six

PeteK, i agree with you, but one cannot know the dark soul of man, only his balance sheet or tax return, if the govt won't let him hide it [e.g. tim geithner].
however cnbc has a guy called cramer who tries to "rate" CEO's, but it is hit and miss [e.g. aubrey mcClendon]. probably because cramer is a loonie tune, it is more miss than hit.

Don't Watch CNBC

best way to watch cnbc: use your tv PIP and put cnbc on the right half, where you can still see the upper ticker [you can't see it in HD anyway, GE doesn't have the electrical expertise to show them how to center their pic so that the upper financial info strip is not cut off] then on the left half you can toggle between the other news networks for use info like the current prices of the "fox fifty" etc.
btw, i DO listen to rick, pisani, the nasdaq guy, as they are giving accurate battle info that is up to the min.
and fire whoever put Karen Fineman on a panel of boisterous traders [Fast Money, the after-hours discussion show]. her only plus is that she never interrupts anybody, and that's because she doesn't have anything to contribute, except a perpetual short-seller's scowl.

In Defense of CNBC (Sort Of)

GE's Immelt should be fired for not spinning off the many flavors of nbc.
why? the only advertisers they can get are "rag-peddlers" e.g. the shammy cloth, or snake oil daytrading brokers, e.g. E-trade, whose ad showing a baby barfing at the camera is supposed to turn who on? new mothers who just lost their mortgage?
without a dish network dvr, it is not watchable, without fast forwarding past the ads and past the repulsive "reporters" like that bridge troll, the bald headed obama butt-wort steve liesman. also every time i see bartiromo, i wonder why she wasn't fired for illegal trading just before she went on camera with a story that affected her prior trade.
by the way, one of the rare good guys, rick santelli, has not been seen for two trading days, thu. and fri. [uh oh, its friday the 13th] -- is he on "leave" or worse?

Cramer Grilled on Jon Stewart

more important than the details of the housing bailout,
are the details of the housing bubble? another coverup by the liberal obama butt-worts? didn't clinton create the program that destroyed credit-worthy standards for potential home buyers? now that the dam has burst, can't we get a new political party into power that will not let the idiots who created the tsunami try to apply bandaids and destroy what is left of the u.s. and its economy? we no longer have two opposing political parties, and the result will be to turn a tragic, misguided mistake into a national catastrophe. most of the money to be made in the aftermath will be by parasitical lawyers and their corrupt judge allies, bandits posing as robin hoods raiding what is left of the corporate wealth of this country.

Geithner on Yuan: Misstep or Warning Shot?

welcome to the United States of Latin America. this shot across the bow of china is a calculated distraction intended to blunt well thought out and presented arguments by the opposition party to block the confirmation of a Wall St incompetent/crook. if you watched the confirmation hearing, it is clear this guy lies brazenly and arrogantly. i don't know exactly what his real agenda is yet, but it definitely is NOT to serve the people of the u.s. with fidelity and loyalty. maybe this was a practice run for some future major distraction - anyone remember argentina and the falklands war? i am not optimistic that the attack on the u.s. middle class will be recognized for what it is before it's too late.

Apple: Like Starbucks and Whole Foods, A Trend That's Past Its Prime

the article's author is merely applying his objective analysis to IBD's Investing Rule #15 - or a corollary of it. if MCD serves coffee superior to past offerings, that is bound to have some quantitative effect on the price of MCD stock as well as SBUX thru the bottom line. e.g., when i am driving home thru my local neighborhood strip mall, the McDonald's is 2 doors from the starbux. oftentimes, if in a hurry, i can pass up the starbucks and get a quicker served coffee at mickey's, that is close enough in quality to starbucks to forego the slower service sometimes, and i'm on my way with a reasonable coffee alternative. i doubt if 99% of the comment posters have every picked up an IBD and studied the 20 rules, otherwise they would have understood the real point and value of the article. don't forget to click on the thumbs down for this comment, the more the merrier, and i'll know i've effectively driven my point home!

Own Gold? Time to Fold

i gather that Bretton-Woods, 1973, not Madden 2008, is the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time? is the current global signs of monetary instability the first ripple of an impending currency Mt. St. Helens? then producer nations will demand gold from the u.s. in pmt for, say, oil? first step to a global barter system to replace the exploded global currency bloated float? seems to me ANY hard assets, esp. gold, would be preferable to owning dollars, but wouldn't the u.s. govt. make it illegal for their citizens to own any hard assets that would be popular subs for money, as in the thirties, when FDR made it illegal for us citizens to own the most popular hard money sub, gold? still, i would rather own some hard assets, even in paper form, just to hedge against a market panic. at least i might make a killing on a price spike, just like my bear 3x ETF increased in value hugely during the recent stock crash. of course the dollars i profited from the trade would have to survive such a monetary market panic. but isn't that worth the risk? isn't the conclusion from all the above that hard assets, or paper hard assets [ETFs] have better risk-reward than say, gold or mining stocks in most scenarios? it's hard to convince myself that it is so, as the mining stocks soar while bullion indices stumble-- one step forward, two steps back, etc. etc.

Great Depression Not Imminent, But Inevitable

one difference between now and 1929 is the presence of large, unregulated pools of money, e.g., hedge funds. in 1929 the unregulated money was investor leverage. post-crash laws eliminated the excesses, but, per darwinian law, the "new rich" money has found a way around that-- some of it even found its way into unregulated pools of quicksand -- "Ponzi schemes" -- i wonder how much wall st. bonus money in this way has passed from one unethical parasite to another?

The End of Excess

sounds like NYC may have surpassed london as the world's most expensive city. or is it just the restaurants in london are tied to a psychological perception of british cuisine?

Stocks Over $100 and Under $10

why pick the russell3000? i thought the most widely followed small cap stats were the russell2000 and the wilshire4000?

Should We Really Bail Out the Big Three Automakers with $73.20 Per Hour Labor?

For all you USA-haters:
even tho we are in a worldwide auto industry sales slump,
how is it that i, for less than $50K, was able to buy the world's best, most beautiful street-driven sports car, made by any company, at any price? and this from a stupid, non-competitive, bloated, union-riddled car company that has "had to" export thousands of labor jobs to factories in canada and elsewhere. oh, i forgot, it was made by good ole overpaid union rednex in the "country" of kentucky, not the capital of the rust belt, Detroit? wanna guess the avg. salary of the white-collar engineers?

[hint: this auto co. didn't want to leave their financial ops, crucial to sales, with the degenerate greedy pigs on wall st., so they took the initiative to do their own banking. altho a courageous move, they, like the rest of "main street" regional banking industry got hurt because the elected and executive govt. & their regulatory agencies were looking the other way and buying the Clinton kool-aid: a chicken in every pot? a mortgage for every home buyer? a medical plan for every patient? a college education for every high school grad? (or is it a h.s. ed. for every college grad)? a bailout for every incompetent financial crook? a dollar for every Yen? a ... a ...].

p.s. wish they could release the phone records into the capitol switchboard for the past 2 yrs from area code 212 and NJ/CN area. if the 911 investigation could be whitewashed, why not again? don't worry, they won't have time to figure it out before the next admin. drops the next shoe:
GLOBAL HYPER-INFLATION which will result in desperate nations resorting to the desperate measures of the 30's: tariffs and/or disguised barriers to trade and immigration, restrictions on hard asset ownership, etc. [hope my $2 F stock goes up first, tho, so i can buy gold w/the profits].

What Effect Will Hyperinflation Have?

actually, Kaczinski was not granted parole, so is still jailed in one of the cities to be afflicted. i assume he will starve to death when his jailors have deserted their posts and melted down the cell keys for coinage. [could somebody pass the kleenex?].