DEcho

European Commission Gives Intel Record Fine for Antitrust Violation

Seems to me you're screaming for protectionism unfounded. I'm from Europe and I don't recognize a European "buy European" attitude you're claiming. Remember, Europe is made up of different countries usually feeling a bigger urge to compete against each other than the US, despite EU and all...


On May 14 12:26 PM Charles Lieberman wrote:

> The Europeans quite clearly believe in enforcing anti-trust cases
> against U.S. companies and levying huge fines when possible, yet
> fail to do so when domestic companies engage in anti-trust practices.
> Domestic companies are considered "national Champions" and they get
> support, whether it is a domestic airline, EADS the aircraft manufacturing
> company, food companies, or whatever. I'm sure there's no bias behind
> the fact that most European countries buy their planes from Airbus,
> buy their defense equipment from domestic companies when possible,
> buy domestically for food products (and keep out U.S. products that
> they falsely claim are dangerous due to genetic manipulation) and
> on and on. Perhaps their implementation of anti-trust policy is
> now just a new way to raise revenue from successful foreign companies?
> It sure seems like that's one element that must be work. Otherwise,
> why are all the largest fines on U.S. companies out of a region that
> is notorious for a domestic bias?

Beware Small ETFs

InteractiveBrokers tightended their margin requirements of ETFs with low market cap (<$100m if I remember correctly).. I don't if this is universal, but it's certainly a factor this week. I'm getting daily margin calls (or forced liquidations - in this internet age), it hurts! Certinaly you want to free up margin as cheaply as you can ..

What Will Happen to Closed End Funds?

I was disapointed to see the article didn't discuss any of the risks associated with CEFs. I have lots of them in my portfolio, and I understand the difficulties with leveraged CEFs, but any of the risks of doing a short index - buy discount non-leveraged CEF, was not discussed.. So what happens if an CEF sponsor goes down the drain ?

PID: International Dividend Achievers for Diversification

Glad to see PID getting some attention. It's a major component of my portfolio aswell (since mid 2007). One fact not mentioned in the article; PID is actually down more than the S&P 500 since the top Oct 31 2007, but this must be because PID has a 34% allocation to financials (16% for S&P).

Will be exciting to see if the big dividend payout last quarter is a one-time-thing..

Short Covering Helps Boost Stocks

Great article and good comments. It was about time Bespoke Investments got some credits given all the bashing lately. :-) The connection to short covering was well placed.

Personally I don't think this will change the fundamentals (besides financials book-keeping one quarter), except possibly to the downside. It increases the downside risk to the US economy in my opinion. As this crisis evolves, fundamentals will ultimately be the clue for the future, and I sadly don't feel that this move will change that. It smells like a desperate last attempt, even though it's not time for it.

Anyways, good article. Keep up the good work. I use this opportunity to roll forward covered calls on new positions, and are ready to go short around the trendline mentioned.

Trading Put Options With Buffett

Must say I loved this article. With the historical upwards trend of equities, and generally higher IVs of puts vs calls, this strategy makes a lot of sense. Especially now with the VIX approaching a five year high, and the fact that a retail investor can roll forward infinitely. I guess that the longer the current downturns continue, the more attractive this strategy becomes.. The downside besides book-keeping, is ofcourse that on this time horizont, one would have to consider the statistical outliers, like wars and the likes..

Anyways, great work! thanks

Alpine Global Dynamic: A Timely CEF

I can't see what's good with this fund. Beeing international and tied to the dollar seems counter intuitive, and the good thing about CEFs these days are the discounts. There's a universe of CEFs with similar yields trading at discounts, many at lower expense ratios.
JPZ - that's one undervalued CEF!

Is the Dollar the New Carry Currency?

Nice article. As a European I've been borrowing in USD to finance some of my equity positions, it has worked great. One benefit is I can do tax-loss repositioning even on the positions that has not declined in USD terms.

But my sympathies goes ofcourse to the US population that sees its wealth decline compared to the rest of the world..

Interpret a Stagnant VIX As You Will

History is history, it was a time to buy options.

Interpret a Stagnant VIX As You Will

With the big players overweight in cash (ref: recent survey among European fund managers), and the bagholders feeling it's already too late to get out, I think we have a high level of apathy for those still active in the market..
So what comes after apathy ? Two possibilities: Apathy turning into fear when reality sinks for latter group, giving another leg down. Or cash coming into market again...

This is just me speculating ofcourse, any feedback most welcome..

Decoupling During a Downturn Difficult To Predict

Beeing a Norwegian investing mainly through US listed products, I was amused to see Norway mentioned in this context. Actually I can't say how Norway will fare in the case of a US recession, but here's a few quick facts; Norway has a strict fiscal policy, putting almost all of the revenues from oil into a "Pension fund", currently amounting to about USD $450.000.000.000, which is about $100.000 per capita. Quite honestly, Norwegians don't feel these $$$ (or NOKs rather) belong to them personally, as most political parties are commited to "save for later" - we have the same social problems etc as other European contries, and Norway actually spends less money on goverment funded research than our neighbours.

I won't pretend to know how Norway would fare in the case of a US recession, but the last couple of years we've seen incredible gains - for a developed market . It's not all connected to oil; see f.ex.:
finance.yahoo.com/char...;range=20050425,200711...
Much of the growth the last couple of years have come from cheap imported labour from eastern Europe..

Alternative Energy Investing and the Next President

Agree with Winston. I'm in Europe and we do have some electric cars driving around here; problem is you only get like 100-150km per recharge. Talk about a nightmare planning the recharges if you are crossing the country, especially taking into account the recharge times. You know Ford did have an stake in electric cars; with a stock majority in Think. en.think.no/

As for ethanol; I would hate to see a situation where fields are converted to fuel production causing the less fortunate part of the exponentially growing population starving for us in the west beeing able to drive our cars. It could very well happen..

As an investor in PBW I'm a bit disapointed how it has lagged the increase in oil price as the author points out. I guess scaling up an industry requires oil to stay high for a long time...

AMD Needs a Multi-Core Killer App

I think the article had a too strong bias towards AMD. The general consensus in the industry is that AMD is struggeling real bad, see f.ex. theinquirer.net/?artic... - the current situation is clearly not sustainable. Intel is executing better than ever, while the opposite can be said about AMD.. It's partly reflected in stock price, but I think the divergence between AMD and INTC stock price to widen. For one, the article does not mention AMDs execution problems, with delays and poor performance of their Barcelona line, while Intel is actually one generation ahead in terms of process technology (better technology, better margins)

Intel Quarter Hints At AMD Trainwreck Coming Thursday

Reading through the Q&amp;A in the earnings call transcript, when asked why desktops did a lot better than expected, Paul Otellini replied "....The bulk of our products sold through the channel is desktop product which principally is non-U.S., non-Western Europe markets. So if I were to say one large chunk of upside was in the emerging market desktops. "

Intel has with its superior products pushed most of AMD product line into this segment (low-end), so it will be exciting to see how much of a boost this translates to for AMD's sales.

As for the price war, I stumbled upon an article on theinquirer.net the other day: "AMD declares peace in Intel price war", theinquirer.net/defaul..... Fingers crossed - let the peace come. ;)

Disclaimer: I own Intel shares, no AMD.

Two Day Declines: No Sweat Off This Bull's Back

Agreed about the quality of this site. I especially like Bespoke' and David Fry's articles.

As for market manipulation, your proposal would seem very risky in my eyes. I'm only a retail investor, so I wouldn't know the inner workings of the investment houses, but dumping your holdings in the hope of other participants will be doing the same, on the basis that there would be some unspoken agreement to dump prices seems kind of far fetched. There are after all fundamental reasons for the latest correction; bond yields and storm in middle-east...