StreetMedic

Markets Reverse Back to Top of Trading Range

Mad Hedge Fund guy,

Why do you spam all the article with various copies of the exact same post with only a few words changed? It's stupid.

An ETF Portfolio Strategy

Oldman,

Consider the ShoeBox ETF. Very low expense ratio (0.00%) with exceptionally low turnover (0.00%). It has outperformed the S&P for 3 of the past 5 years in returns. It's on most NTF programs, and is a no load fund.

Socialized Medicine Is Coming

Amen to that. I too work as a paramedic and have had an identical experience. I have transported patients across the country to various VA hospitals and can say, having seen many of them, that they all are a testament to how inept government health care is.

Folks, the government could screw up and ham and cheese sandwich.

And if you loved the VA, you'll like Indian Health Services hospitals even more. Visit a reservation hospital once and tell me what kind of impression you get. It's not for lack of funding either.

I transport many veterans every day who opt for hospitals they must pay out of pocket for when their care at the VA would be free. What does that tell you? That maybe there's a cost associated with the "free" health care.


On Jun 16 10:29 AM jhm47 wrote:

> I have worked on an ambulance crew for over 20 years. The absolute
> WORST hospital that I visit regularly is the VA hospital. If this
> is an example of government run healthcare, we are in for a real
> mess. I wish all of you who are championing a government run system
> could see what I've seen. Uncaring doctors and nurses, unsanitary
> conditions, and run down facilities. Not what I want!

5 Reasons to Avoid the Gold Rush

Finally, someone with some common sense posts in this thread.

On Jun 21 08:15 PM noob wrote:

> Gold is not money. You cannot use Gold in the US as "tender" by
> law.

> GLD is nice for inflation hedging and very convenient.
> GLD is useless for a currency crisis. For that you need something
> you can put in your pocket and take to someone who can give you Euro's,
> Rupees, Yen, Pounds based on the value of what you have in your pocket.

Where Should You Put New Money?

All the talk and all the huff and puff about where to put money -- what kind of time frame? A day? A week? 6 months? 10 years? 35 years? If you have a 25 year time horizon, who cares about a small percent difference between where the market sits now and where it might be in the near future. It doesn't matter what you buy. Compared to 2007, when almost nobody worried, "Where's the market going?! Where do I put new money?!" you can purchase equities at a 40% discount. Over the big picture, a hundred points on the S&P is small fry.

These are strictly defensive plays. Defense doesn't make money, just like defense doesn't win the war. You need to take risk to make money, hence the very URL of this website.

The adage in investing is that you trade the timeframe you watch. If you're a long term investor who watches streaming quotes day to day, you will trade day to day.

Here's the risk in following this advice -- poverty. May 29 to June 19th. QQQQ. Return of 3.46%. About three week period and you've made more money than an entire year in a CD.

China -- if you don't trust the US government, how can you trust the Chinese government with respect to statistics. I feel like I'm reading old Soviet era propaganda. "Industrious farmers near the Volga river grsew 10,000,000 hectares of cotton this year, enough to make clothing for 500,000 school children and soldiers."

So, where's a good place to put your money? All of the above, and then some.

Big Move Day Likely

Executive summary: Markets might go up. They might go down.

Grail to Launch Active Single-Manager ETFs: Leader of the Pack

Here's the problem with actively managed anything -- where is the proof it works over the long term? For the VAST majority of investors, there are some fundamentals that cannot be ignored:
1. You are not as smart or as talented or as savvy as you think. Timing the market, rotating sectors or stock is really really hard even for the best traders.
2. Most fund managers would be well served by understanding item 1.
3. Compared to their passively managed, low fee counterparts, actively managed funds (and their associated higher fees) do not generate better returns.
4. The whole idea of ETF began with the indexing idea. This is a stab at mutual funds. The difference, however, is that for most investors, mutual funds can be had for no transaction fees.

.89% is a lower than average fee ratio for some mutual funds, but factor in the transaction fees paid on the ETF purchases and it adds up.

If you want actively managed funds, or even passively managed funds, most investors would be wise to head for Vanguard or DFA funds.

The advantage of ETFs is their low fees and transparency. Actively managed ETFs remove the low fee part of the benefits.

Green Shoots: Too Small, Too Far Apart

In my line of work, we say, "All bleeding eventually stops." This is true for the economy, too.

> This is like telling someone lying on the street after a bad accident,
> bleeding and torn, that the rate of blood loss has slowed so all
> is well: just get your confidence back, get up and go home.
> As Americans will perhaps discover in the months ahead there is
> a huge difference between honest optimism and wilful deceit.

This Rally Is Running Out of Steam

Lowes attracts a broad swath of people, from professionals to novices. I worked at a building supply retailer several years ago that catered exclusively to the commercial customer. Our business took a nose dive when a Lowes opened nearby. This was on the cusp of the housing bubble. It's price.

As margins in the construction and rehab business get thin enough to see through, builders go for the cheapest crap they can buy. Yeah Lowe's sales are down YoY, but the path we were on before was entirely unsustainable. So it's not necessarily the do it yourself types doing the shopping. It's everyone.

Lowes sales were down 2%, but profits were WAY down, 22%. That tells me more than anything else. Yes, there's some big ticket items that are high margin, but that's a big difference in those two figures.

Hedging Strategies for the Next Move Down

A novel approach for one's IRA are several of the closed-ended S&P covered call funds. BEO and BEP. They have a rather splendid payout of 26 and 18% respectively at their current NAV. Both lost more than the S&P last year, but have taken off in the past 4 months.

Consumption Junction: 2 Thoughts on the Declining Savings Rate

Fantastic article. Long time reader, and this was the first time I felt compelled to create an account to make note of this fact. I am a middle class person. Household income only slightly above the median $48,000. We have a tremendous debt-income ratio that has only recently begun to decline through our efforts to tackle this situation.

I get particularly irritated when I hear the cries about the "credit crisis." Frankly, it was easy and cheap credit that fueled this. We, as a society, borrowed against the future for the present. And look at the net. Credit should be hard, not easy, to get.

As far as I'm concerned, the price of risk is not readily included in credit, either at the corporate or pesonal level. When credit is expensive, and exclusive (namely to those that can actually afford to pay it off) there is a pretty obvious dampening effect on the promiscious spending by consumers.

Because risk was not priced appropriately, the dominoes fell.

For my own part, I'm learning the hard way the benefits of having little to no debt in this dep/recession. Look at the deals. Now is the time for spending. I've resolved to never again lose this chance to make fantastic deals while others struggle.

Chance favors the prepared mind, as it is said.