BioBoy

Yahoo or Baidu? The Choice Is Clear

Yahoo! is a dying, soon-to-be-dead company. The offer nothing. They create nothing. The only thing of value is the name.

Volt Information Services: Going Where the Panic Is

The market cap of Volt is 276M, not 163M.

Short ETFs: Time to Buy - Not Sell

This is just plain bad advice. For short-term trading (a few days), yes, these short leveraged ETFs do the job. But for long-term plays, the tracking error can really add up. Why do you think there are lawsuits? All the "contrarian thinking" in the world is not going to change the math that causes these instruments to perform poorly in the long run. You article makes no sense, and this type of shoddy advice is truly dangerous for inexperienced investors. I agree that now might be the time to short, but there are FAR better ways to do it... like actually shorting.

Short ETFs: Time to Buy - Not Sell

There is absolutely NO reason to buy leveraged ETFs (especially short leveraged ETFs) unless you have a non-margin account and cannot short. Assuming you have a margin account, it makes far more sense just to short the non-leveraged underlying and avoid the tracking error altogether.

Do Gold's Recent Moves Indicate Global Confidence in Currencies Is Unraveling?

There are many factors moving gold, but one often overlooked tidbit is that gold is NOT a good inflation hedge, but quite the contrary: it truly shines in a deflationary spiral-type situation, where it may be the only asset to hold its value. When risk-aversity increases, I think you may find those running to gold that would have previously run to the dollar.

Gold: What Professional Futures Traders Think

I agree with bkdc. If it's "paper" gold (or more like "digital" gold) then that's fine for short-term trades, but NOT fine for long-term investment. If you want to own gold for the long haul, you need to actually possess the gold. And I'm not talking about physical gold supposedly off in a vault 5000 miles away with your name on it. I'm talking about under the mattress. There is less physical gold behind GLD than people think.

Repros Therapeutics: Circling the Drain to Zero

Good post. Definitely better than most of the junk on this site.

FINRA to Raise Leveraged ETF Margin Requirements

I'm confused...

These ETFs are really only useful for people with NON-margin accounts. You can't short or buy with leverage on a non-margin account, but these allow you to accomplish roughly the same thing.

Whereas if you have a margin account, you CAN short (lessening the utility of the short ETFs) and you have plenty of leverage already (especially if you are using Portfolio Margin and not Reg-T).

So are you saying that these leveraged ETFs can no longer be purchased from non-margin accounts? Or do these new margin requirements only apply to those with margin accounts, but non-margin accounts can continue purchasing these ETFs as before.

And what about accounts with Portfolio Margin. There are no set, defined margins with Portfolio Margin, and your margin required is based on stress-testing. So can I assume that these changes will only affect people using Reg-T margin?

August Buying Time for Gold

"Isn't GLD still buying gold?"

Does GLD actually buy much GLD? Take a closer look and you will find evidence that GLD doesn't hold nearly as much actual gold as it's supposed to...

Market Timing vs. Dividend Income Strategies

I fail to see how holding those stocks allows you to sleep at night. Those yields might keep up with inflation, but will generally be matched by the safer, more stable CD. "Daily market gyrations" might just be noise, but when you have multi-year gyrations of +/- 30%, a decades worth of dividend gains might be wiped out in a month. Dividend investing is certainly easy and requires little attention, but in reality it is a crap shoot just like all buy-and-hold investing. (Works great if you bought in 1945 and held for the next 60 years... otherwise, not so much.)

Two Stocks Going Ex-Dividend in August

Both these stocks pay quarterly, which means you're only getting a quarter of that yield... So a 1% price movement down and you've lost money. Better to look for stocks that pay annually.

S&P 500 Up Big; VIX Down

What did the S&P average over that time period in all other circumstances? Since you're not comparing the S&P/VIX positive correlation to anything else, it doesn't mean much.

How Will Agriculture Investments Be Affected by New Deadly Wheat Fungus?

Why not just buy wheat future? I understand that buying ETFs are easier, but the effect of wheat prices on these ETFs is fractional at best. If you want to play wheat prices, then play wheat prices, not a vehicle loosely related to wheat prices. If this fungus ravages the wheat crop and wheat prices skyrocket - but the stock market tanks in the meantime - do you think MOO is going up or down?

Shorts Eye Harley-Davidson for Discretionary Spending Revival

I fail to see how Smith & Wesson is discretionary. Only someone who doesn't own guns could have put it into that category.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Comes Back from the Dead

The problem for Vanda owners is that even when Fanapt comes to market, it's still a loser. It shows no superiority over current generic drugs (which, one presumes, will be much cheaper than Fanapt) and is generally inferior to similar name brand drugs.