guymar

Mapping the GM Fallout

I worked as an expat in Czechia in the beginning of the 90s. A Trabant crashed in my Saab at a traffic light and the car just exploded. The driver was holding the engine on his lap. The total loss of my Saab bankrupted the local insurance company. Duh? A credit-crash avant la lettre? Now that you make me think .....


On Jun 01 10:46 AM Whippet wrote:

> Hey- nice Trabant photo! Two cylinder, two-stroke gem of GDR engineering
> with PAPERBOARD "sheet metal". My friend gets in one of these things
> when we're in Bulgaria and goes to put on his seat belt. Driver
> tells him- "It doesn't matter."
> Later on that same trip, I read in the newspaper that one had a head-on-collision
> with a Mercedes. They found the engine 100 METERS from the car.
>
>
> Welcome back to the future.

The Big Three Are Out to Lunch

I am driving a 40 mpg GM product ...... It's called an Opel Signum runs a 2 liter 185 bhp engine from Fiat, is roughly the size of a BMW 5 series.

The Petrobras Find is Bigger Than You Think

Be careful though, the 200 usd move up would normally happen after massive deleveraging and coincide with a virtually worthless dollar? Isn't the better strat to buy Petrobras on the Sao Paolo exchange and pay in reals?

2 Concerns with Michael Lewis's Review of Buffett Book 'The Snowball'

Dear Dan, I found quite some material after Googling Horesji. All negative stuff was written by ..... you ????????? What you are doing here is called trolling, or am I missing some bigger picture here?


On May 19 11:31 AM Dan Plettner wrote:

> I admired Warren Buffett until recently. To fully understand any
> man I think it is important to be fully familiar with the company
> he keeps. Recently, I learned of Warren Buffett's purported personal
> friendship with Stewart J Horejsi. Despite multiple opportunities
> to comment on this publicly purported personal friendship, Berkshire
> Hathaway and Warren Buffet have failed to comment. Those who wish
> to know more about the company Warren Buffett keeps will not have
> much trouble finding thorough reads on Horejsi.

2 Concerns with Michael Lewis's Review of Buffett Book 'The Snowball'

I fully agree. By the time this bear market is over everyone will aks themselves: why did we ever listen to this man, he made a lot of money on the stock market during the greatest bull run of all times...and became third richest man on earth (according to a magazine)? The Buffet mojo ended with the current bear market. It is time we set out and find ourselves a new Ben Graham.


On May 18 10:32 AM Graham and Dodd Investor wrote:

> Over a full 75-80 cycle, it's better to be Warren Buffett than Ben
> Graham. But we are now in the quarter of the cycle that is most like
> the 1930s, the time when Graham made his reputation. Hence it's better
> to be like Ben Graham than Warren Buffett today.
>
> The "good" three quarter cycle will probably start in the late 2010s,
> at which time I'll be ready to retire. A new, perhaps Buffett-like
> generation, will follow me. But I plan to be "Ben Graham" until then.

It's Election Day in California

Amen. But it could also be a re-enforcement of a new kind of wealth distribution. Makes me think of IX in Dune.

Well, The Natural Gas Play Worked

What, are you kidding? You're one of the only guys around here with genuine valuable ideas! I do technical analysis and mainly invest in ETF's, but your macro vision the best I came across here. If we did not have such huge correlation with indexes because of the bear market I would play them.

Google's Android Will Become the Default Mobile Platform

Seekingalpha transformed in ZDNet today? The problem with the I-Phone and Android is that, how ever brilliant they are, you cannot invest in them. You need to invest in over-valued Google's advertising business (as a sideline to Android?) and an Apple with no answer to netbook mania. And investing in RIM? With a global business downturn going on? Ok, back to charting as far as I am concerned ....

'Government' Motors or Ford: Which Automaker Will Remain Viable?

Are we all forgetting that it's about products as well? I have never seen a heavily gov't run company perform above par. If furthermore the market is highly unregulated. Let's go for Ford.

Current Recession Is Tracking the 1930s Bear Market

Perhaps we should start re-reading original works of Gann and Elliott or Bolton's "The Bank Credit Analyst".

12 Stocks in Focus for the Obama Era

All the vision of your garden-variety mole. Does this article contribute to anything but providing opportunities to some seekingalpha trolls?

Shooting for 100% Return in One Month

Well, at least you made some money doing it, except if you started shorting on friday afernoon.


On May 15 10:15 PM jayinasia wrote:

> Guymar.
>
> It's simple. We all follow him so we can FADE his picks. In fact,
> since I posted above. I went all short in S/P, DOW, NSDQ. I consider
> a few young punks coming online and proclaiming their brilliance
> (including CETIN) as the beginning of the end.
>
> I suggest everyone should do the same. At least until the end of
> Summer.
>
>

Suburban Housing Markets Are Unsustainable (Part 2)

First of all, I am happy to see no more "cretin" postorrhea, did he get kicked off after all???

More seriously I think we cannot blame "the people" for being materialistic and being hooked on 42 Inch Screens and I think is it a pity that Mr. Quinn, probably by lack of time, did go into this deeper. Personal Debt has increased solidly since the role of the state decreased, we could simply state that it has largely helped to create the 1982-2007 bull market rally of a lifetime, and we should know: huge rally = huge pile of debt created somewhere. The old mechanism, where we funded development through taxes and government bonds was a healthy mechanism, as it made people handle money in the present, with government creating the leverage. This model has flaws as well: it tends to create performance sclerosis by big government and state subsidized and/or partially state owned companies (cfr European situation until mid-end 80ies). In the end the model gets crushed by it's own weight, largely something happening between end of 60ies-beginning of 80ies depending on where you live. For banks it has another disadvantage: default management is very tricky if your debtor is a government. So the mega double decennial rally we just ended co-incided with a move away from this model and the adoption of a new model where state interference was eliminated and debt brought back into the personal realm, largely facilitating default management. This means that banks could work balance sheets much more efficiently, on a larger scale. Combine this with the introduction of electronic money and banks get more and more independent from M1, fueling expansion on individuals. Some people will argue that this is false as government spending did not go down significantly. This is true, but I would argue that we have not just seen the above move, but also a move towards distribution from poor(er) people to rich(er) people with government helping to "pump". Several "oil" related wars have put great strains on the budget. War spending (in the modern sense) is highly capital intensive and is perfect for wealth re-distribution to the holders of capital. So please Mr. Quinn, don't blame your fellow citizens, they just have difficulty with grasping time and velocity as a concept when it comes to handling money (does anyone want them to grasp this?) and they sell their opinion to cheaply: in a world where we try to develop the "left" brain, who can blame people from following the consensus, in a society where community judgement is so wide-spread instead of the sense of community?

Preview from Europe: Another Yo-Yo Day

Like yesterday, right?


On May 13 06:33 AM Cetin Hakimoglu wrote:

> Looks like we'll see a nice rally today based on the futures. Thanks
> for the update.

Ford's Stock Issue Makes More Sense than Microsoft's Bond

It seems to be an illustration of the CNBC factor: once you have been in print or on tv, or you have your own website you can post anything here, even nonsense. Editorial policy someone?