G. Innuendo

6 Ways to Short the Obama Health Plan

A pure play on Obama health care reform:HI

Why Is Oil Creeping Back Up?

Israel has also been rehearsing long-distance bombing missions and aerial refueling. The risk of a major Mideast war, with Iran retailiating by attacking oil facilities, is being greatly underplayed in the American media--part of the don't-worry-be-happy economic recovery theme.


On May 31 10:58 AM The Geoffster wrote:

> Don't discount Black Swans.
> www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD...

Corporate Bonds Haven’t Been This Cheap Since 1932

Check out quantumonline.com. There are some major bargains in $25 par corporate debt, and the market is too small for the big boys like Gross to play in. Find a company you like, and look up whether there's any decently yielding micro-bonds that are its debt. Then go to

There is some amazingly irrational pricing in so-called corporate trust preferreds, as well as third party trust preferreds. The guru on all this is Richard Lehman and incomeinvestor.com, a for-fee site. Buy his book.

I found an issue yesterday that's a) is blue chip investment grade b) is named such that it looks like it belongs to a well known company that's about to go bankrupt and c) is yielding 16 percent. It was based on 100 million of a 500 million dollar bond issued by the blue-chip company, which merged and demerged over a period of years, and then took over the debt of the failing firm. The 400 million in bonds that didn't get chopped up into $25 pieces are currently priced to yield 7.5 percent. Insane.

Freeport-McMoRan: Suspends Dividend, Slashes Targets

So what's the story on FCX M (preferred convertible). It is senior to the common, mandatory converts to common in about 18 months. Is that dividend suspended as well? The co's press release specifically says "common stock" when referring to the dividend; however, their SEC filings suggest they would have to kill both common and preferred dividends to meet their 700 million plus saving goal. Someone give us a clue here.