Long-Short Guy

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"Drugmakers boosted prices for their 50 top-sellers by 7.82% in 2007, on the heels of 6.73% and 6.22% jumps in 2006 and 2005, in an effort to boost profits in the face of patent expirations and waning pipelines. The ploy could backfire by pushing government to beef-up its regulation of drug pricing."

Doesn't this mean that the decline in profits when these drugs hit patent expiration will be even sharper?

GMO: Stocks Will Lag Historical Average for Next 7 Years

Interesting that they think REITs will outperform the S&P.

Shorting Coal on Extraordinary Short-Term Demand

I love this idea -- this is gutsy, original thinking.

However, I'm also not sure about your timing. Specifically, the transmission mechanism you specify (increased price => increased suppy) takes a while, potentially years, to kick in. In that time, you can lose a lot of money on a short.

China's Global Impact: Inflation Exporter or Deflation Trendsetter?

Good article.

"According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, there is evidence to suggest that foreign exporters are willing to adjust prices to hold on to U.S. market share as the dollar declines in value."

This effect is recognized by economists, but tends to be only short run. In the long run, producers react to lower prices in their domestic currency.

An interesting issue that you didn't discuss is the potential lack of price elasticity of demand for Chinese products in the US. Normally, when prices go up demand falls. But the US has now become totally dependent on Chinese products, and even with rising prices there are no cheaper alternatives. In which case higher prices may lead to the same relative demand for each product, but overall cuts to consumers budgets.

I wonder how rising Chinese prices would impact Walmart.

Why Junior Miners are Underperforming

Can you suggest a buy list of junior minors that trade on US exchanges?

The Price VeraSun Pays For Corn

Helpful data.

The Current State of the Solar Energy Sector

Outstanding article. Thank you!

Green and Alternative Energy ETFs

Any opinions on which is best?

The Most Bullish Sign I've Seen In Awhile

What a bizarre set of comments. Paul's point is simple (and he's right): highly negative sentiment can't get worse; lots of hedging means significant pent up demand for stocks. The earlier commenters just didn't seem to get this.

First Solar Q4 2007 Conference Call - Visualization

It would be useful if the excerpts in the tree could link to that line in the transcript, so you could go and check out what was said in the transcript.

Why a Yahoo-News Corp. Deal Makes Sense

Excellent analysis.

SkyGrid Finds Gold In The Wisdom Of The Webs

This is a fantastic idea, which will make hedge funds a ton more money than the monthly fee. I wonder how it compares to Monitor 110.

MainStreet.com: Worst Idea Ever?

I remember that TradingMarkets had a series of stock picks from Playboy Playmates. The main attraction was the photos (say no more). The justification for the stock picks was hilarious.

But the irony was that some of them did better than the indexes.

The Dollar, the Euro and Oil

Excellent article. And the obvious trade for US investors is to buy the oil ETFs with dollars?

Google To Acquire Stake in CNet?

What would be the reasoning behind Google investing in CNET? More captive ad inventory? The MySpace deal didn't work out so well for GOOG, so I'm not sure they're ready to rush into another of these deals.