Rick S.

Weekly Market Notes: Don't Fight the Fed

Did Senator Bunning actually say "systematic risk"? Twice?

When you don't have the right word, you very likely don't have the correct concept either.

Does It Make Sense to Invest in a Shell Company?

Buying a shell firm hoping for a reverse merger is like buying an empty box hoping that somebody comes along and puts something into it. That happens with some empty boxes and shell firms, but who knows whether it will happen in any specific case? And that's what you're always buying, one specific shell firm.

What the authors fail to mention is that shell firms are also the favored vehicles for pump and dump operations. (My guess is that this is the reason for the short half-life numbers.)

Caveat emptor

Today in Commodities: Utilizing Leverage

Is there any reason why we have to "utilize" leverage? Can't we just "use" it?

Jeff Rubin: Expect Oil Prices to Rise Dramatically and Globalization to End

Chich: Much as I agree with what you say, I'm put off by your repeated use of the expression "gullible morons" to label those whose views are different from yours. Maybe they're just relatively smart folks who are behind on the learning curve on this issue.

Or have you always gotten every issue correct right out of the box, the first time you read about it?

Yahoo: Can We Please Have Jerry Back?

Bill Gates was never a product visionary. He was a marketing visionary. He took other people's product visions and successfully marketed them again and again.

Steve Jobs iwas and still is a product visionary.

Get your visionaries right. If you don't, you will continue to wind up with the wrong smart guy in the slot to be filled.

Has the China Bear Left the Room?

I'm with you, Richjoy403. Emerging markets, especially China's, are where the action will be for at least the next 20 years. One dark side of such investing is that it's much harder to do due dilligence on companies in emerging markets. Then again, it's our mature market that harbored con artists like Madoff and the CDO packagers in major banks. So I guess even that dark side is no worse than investing in our own market.

China's Latest Moves Closer to Having an International Currency

The "fiat bubble" has been going on since the Fed was established in 1913. Or at least since Richard Nixon cut the dollar completely loose from the gold standard around 1970.

In what century are you gold bugs expecting the bubble to burst? In your lifetime? In that of your children?

Base Metal Miners Win UBS Upgrades

Buybigtires, it would help if you would tell us all where you do your tire selling business. Are your sales improving in certain states or regions? Overseas?

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

I have accounts in one of the banks closed over the weekend, Affinity Bank in Ventura California. Nothing fancy about their leverage or loans. Simply a lot of mom and pop commercial development loans that went sour because of the overall economy. It happens when development comes to a screeching halt as it did last year, developers go bankrupt, and the banks that loaned them money find themselves with an asset that has essentially zeroed out. It's a stepped process that takes time, but it eventually hits a bank's bottom line of reserves.

Ron Paul, Barney Frank, Wall Street crooks, Glass and Steagal have a lot to do with a lot of things, I'm sure. But they had little to do with the banks that closed last weekend.

Is Anything Worth Owning in the Auto Industry?

EMTerprises: The problem in Airport Security isn't unionization. It's (1) minimum wage pay, and (2) the resulting revolving-door work crew.

Whatta deal! Every week a new team to paw through your bags for bombs. As they say, you get what you pay for. In this case that's not very much.

Is Anything Worth Owning in the Auto Industry?

Hey Gumby. Swear off coffee for the rest of the day. And try to keep your thumb off the Publish icon.

Is Anything Worth Owning in the Auto Industry?

Hershey: You have to keep your anti-union attacks straight. In the building trades--craft unions--you have to have an electrical union member to electrical work. The industrial unions like UAW were organized to prevent that sort of silliness from happening. Everyone working in a factory organized by an industrial union belongs to the same union. So in your example, in a UAW plant it would be a UAW member that changed the light bulbs.

I note that in explaining the downfall of American auto makers you neglect to mention the fact that they keep building cars and trucks that fewer and fewer people want to buy. Do you think that might have something to do with their current problems? Or how about the greedy top brass who keep upping their salaries and perks to new levels? Naah. It's the union's fault.

Market Share Doesn’t Matter; GM Mortgages Its Future

Gumbie: The "new and changed GM," as you put it, has been coming now since at least the 1970s. It never seems to arrive. Unless you count the Hummer debacle. That was indeed new and changed, or at least newer and bigger.

With their pal Rep. John Dingle preventing meaningful gas mileage standard upgrades in Congress, U.S. auto makers have behaved like alcoholics. They keep talking about changing for the leaner and better. However, it's always going to happen sometime in the distant future, never today, tomorrow or even next year.

John Keynes put it best: "In the long term we will all be dead." You go ahead and buy that long term screaming cheapie. I'm thinking short term and investing in today's performers.

CYXI: A Growth Stock Trading Below Book Value

Thanks for the replies Cabeza. The private investors--2?,3?--are indeed under water at the present price level. New investors could more than double their money before they reach the bottom of that overhang.

Again, it's really good to have you back in the game.

CYXI: A Growth Stock Trading Below Book Value

I note that in an early June SEC filing, they've announced the appointment of a new CFO. Hasn't this been a revolving door in CYXI and one of the weak spots in the operation?

I'm working off of memory in the last comment, so I could be wrong.