Sharon Merkle

5 Reasons to Expect a Near-Term Selloff

Still waiting for that "near term" pullback....
You do know "early" = "wrong"
right?

The iPhone's Next Carrier Is Likely T-Mobile, Not Verizon

You ignore the 28 dividends that VZ has paid during that time. When Jobs dies AAPL will tank because the company and its speculative helium share price are based on fluff and flash - when people look at their bills over the next two years and realize they've paid $50 to download cartoons of beer foam the iPhone will go the way of the iPod - collecting dust at the bottom of the drawer of shiny baubles which serve no useful function. VZ will still be paying dividends while drooling children line up to buy AAPL's next waste of time.


On Dec 01 11:01 AM pk de cville wrote:

> "Mr. Jobs overplayed his hand on this one. "
>
> Jul 02, 07 Today %
>
> VZ 41.55 31.82 76.6%
>
> AAPL 132.30 200.97 151.9%
>
> Seems AAPL Doubled VZ in PPS. Interesting.

Insiders Selling into the Rally

Insider sales at Christmas time to raise cash for gifts happens every year. O, wait, forgot, this is the year of post-traumatic stress disorder, in which every data point triggers a relapse of the trauma - that means insider selling at Christmas is actually a sign of the apocalypse. Please continue shorting this market - my kid needs a new GI Joe with the kung-fu grip.

5 Reasons to Expect a Near-Term Selloff

And equally interesting that none give a time, use any causal evidence, or do anything more, really, than smatter up some associations of co-incident events in a chart, give no sources for their data, and ask a spooky, scary question in their headline. This site is really turning into a PTSD denial group, whose authors can't stop reliving the last crisis. Maybe S/A should get together with ZeroHedge and re-name the combined entity "Seeking Apocalypse." They can solicit Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, the Ayn Rand Foundation, and ACORN for funding, all get into bed together, and realize that crazy is just another word for short this country. Let's scroll down, yep- FED conspiracy theorists have started to chime in. Now let's get some Bernanke haters and Geitner blamers and this thread will comply with the standard recipe.

On Nov 30 07:23 AM daniel3582 wrote:

> I think it's interesting to note how there are a lot of articles
> recently about how there is going to be a "short-term" correction.
> I have been saying since June that this rally will last (at the max)
> only until December of this year. Now that everyone's geared up for
> a correction, I have my doubts.... if everyone is anticipating it,
> will it actually materialize?

Financials: Missing the Rally and Warning for the Future

Ooooo- another spooky, redundant warning of vague, un-actionable darkness at an indeterminate future moment. Disclosure: author is long other people's money?

Why GM Is Repaying Bailout Money

When GM and Chrysler are finally dead and their bodies burned, the most politically powerful union in the country will turn on Ford because it has the only brains left to eat. When that organization drifts into the happy memory of history, then we can end the war and start building some American industry again. Until then - render up your skull. The zombies are still hungry.

IPO Analysis: Hyatt's Balance Sheet Is in Much Better Shape than the Competition's

Bill,
I don't think S/A does requests, but I am particularly curious about another IPO next week: the one for Global Defense Technology & Systems, to be traded under GTEC. The company is forty years old, and they make money. Price to be in the $9-$11 range. They do spook tech for the US intelligence community and they seem opaque to me, an amateur at money analysis. Is this a proxy government bond with EPS potential, or a commando raid on the open market for a quick financing buck?

Any interest in analyzing that one?

Why Are Climate Change and Deficit Reduction Considered Mutually Exclusive?

Yet another "climate" policy with no reference to what the ideal climate is. When hysteria is high, science is low. Eugenics, cosmic ether, music of the spheres, the world is flat, the body is made of four humors, spontaneous generation. All proven science, all promulgated by unimpeachable experts.

For the very best analysis of this question, see the summary of Nordhaus here:
www.nybooks.com/articl...

Despite What You May Have Heard, There's Hiring Going On

Three ad hominem attacks, roughly at the level of urinal scribble. Anyone want to argue with the actual data?

One of the great values of an advanced university education is that it trains into the mind the ability to see one's own thinking, which allows one to separate data and decisions supported by them from emotional blather.

Ask not what an employer can do for you - ask what you can do for an employer.

Has the U.S. Been Playing Loose with Oil Market Data?

In 1845, the US experienced its first "peak" in energy production. In whale oil. Over the next twenty years, we killed so many the resource became too expensive to pay. The whales did not go exhaust. Then we found something else.

Why do those who link peak oil to catastrophe ignore the extant status of so many other something elses? Nuclear is held up by secular religionists of the tree-hugger flavor. Natural gas is held up by capital costs not yet attractive due to oil (Hey! Wake up! You need to go to sleep!), solar, wind and hydro are held up by predictable innovation refinement cycles exactly like the addition of landing gear to the DC-3 thirty years after Kitty Hawk, and biofuels are held up by forces similar to natural gas.

The long-term, multidecadal picture here is economic, not capacity based. The developed world is smart. Remember Indiana Jones stealing the gold head and swiping it with the bag of sand? That's energy capacity over the next fifty years. We will find a way to make all the something else's pay. Because we've done it before.

Yeah, he had to flee, dodging lethal booby traps. What fun would it be if it were easy? Where would the arbitrage be in that?

What Rising Oil Prices Mean for Energy Investors

Many have noticed. Apocalyptic ideation is itself a leading indicator of multi-sigma events. Keeping in mind that shell shocked trauma victims recover to function, but one city bus backfire and they dive under the coffee table, one can form a pretty good metaphor for market action like that of the last two months.


On Nov 14 09:41 AM Snitzer wrote:

> S/A's lunatic fringe quotient seems to be rising.

Emerson Electric CEO: Washington Is Destroying U.S. Manufacturing

REG: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.

LORETTA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

REG: Yeah.

LORETTA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: Perfect dividend record?

REG: What?

XERXES: The perfect dividend record.

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the 90,000 US jobs remaining.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the 90,000 US jobs remaining, Reg. Remember what St. Louis used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the dividends and the 90,000 jobs are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the hospitals backup generators.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the hospitals. I mean, the hospitals go without saying, don't they? But apart from the dividends, the jobs, and the hospitals--

COMMANDO: $100 million to community 501(c)s.

XERXES: 2700 patents.

COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh...

COMMANDO #2: Preferred military veteran hiring.

COMMANDOS: Ohh...

REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1: And the new construction.

COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah...

FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

COMMANDO: Green energy investment.

LORETTA: And it's safe to invest in now, Reg.

FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought profits.

REG: Oh. Profits? Shut up! Bloody corporations!

---for jsevenseven, who got lost on his way to this month's meeting of the Judean People's Front.


On Nov 12 10:30 AM jsevenseven wrote:

> What a load of garbage. I love how guys like Farr never say which
> regulations or taxes are the cause of his troubles. The fact is that
> the percentage of tax revenues paid by corporate America is at an
> all time low, and companies like Emerson have become masters at the
> art bleeding subsidies and tax breaks out of state and local governments
> for the honor of allowing them to build a factory and create a few
> hundred jobs.
> These guys have been moving jobs offshore for years, even during
> the Bush administration when corporate tax breaks, and un-enforced
> regulations were the flavor of the day. Why, because the workers
> get paid very little, have virtually no rights, and the paid off
> local officials look the other way when you pollute the air and water.
> This allows CEO's to pay themselves ever fatter paychecks as well
> as satisfying the penny pinching buyers at Wall Mart.
> The United States (even under the Democrats) is of the corporations,
> by the corporations, for the benefit of people like David Farr, who
> run the corporations. So spare me the platitudes about his honesty
> and bravery.

Picking Up Pier 1 Ahead of Earnings

The comments on this excellent tip appear to be taking a multi-quarter view. As usual on SA, commenting without framing a time horizon is equivalent to howling at the moon. I would note that a 1000 share investment in PIR on Monday morning would have been worth about $2560, and as of Friday afternoon, it is worth $3010. For a one-hour-long period on Thursday morning, it was worth $3250. I consider a 5-day profit opportunity of 18-24% to be a pretty sound piece of advice.

Kroger Gains Back Market Share from Wal-Mart

"Net sales
for the Walmart U.S. segment increased 3.8% for the first quarter of fiscal 2010
compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2009. The increase resulted from our
continued expansion activities, strength in the grocery and health and wellness
categories and a comparable store sales increase of 1.6%."
- WMT: Quarterly Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For the quarterly period ended April 30, 2009.
investing.businessweek...

"Comparable Supermarket Sales
($ in millions)
First Quarter 2009 2008
Including fuel centers $21,306 $21,483
Excluding fuel centers $19,729 $19,075

Including fuel centers (0.8)% 9.5%

Excluding fuel centers 3.4% 5.9%"
- KR QUARTERLY REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
investing.businessweek...

Kroger increased its same store sales more than WalMart, while WalMart explicitly linked its smaller increase to groceries, not air conditioners. Research your stones before you throw them.


On Sep 17 06:51 AM malach hamovess wrote:

> pretty faulty logic when you consider that Kroger is almost all food,
> while Walmart includes both food and a large component of discretionary
> non-food consumer durables.
>
> A drop in sales of air conditioners by Walmart doesn't mean it's
> still not taking food business from the grocers.

Don't Bet Against King Kroger

Also worth pointing out that Morgan Stanley's "downgrade" of KR today included a $27 price target. KR is cheap, strong, and predictably profitable. KR also raised its dividend today, thumbing their nose at MS. Ex-DivDate 11/16, pay date of 12/1.