Friday, June 24, 2011
06/24/11 It Don't Come Easy
illini- Unfortunately, the only decent custodian they'll find will be the guy they see in the mirror when splashing on the aftershave. Not that I use aftershave.
However, there are ground rules:
(a) It's not easy. If it was easy, we'd all be making money! Let's reflect on that for a moment. There is no activity on the planet that allows anyone to easily make money. Maybe that's all that needs to be said. It takes most of us a lifetime of hard work to make a mil. However, people unrealistically expect to be able to make a mil in no time playing the market. Naturally, on a day like today, longs won't be happy. They need an attitude adjustment. There will be days like this. A ----load of days like this.
(b) It's not easy. Have you the fortitude to put up with days like this? No?
(c) It's not easy. Don't tell me. You're the guy who cruised through school, dated the best-looking girls, and never had a setback in your life.
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The whole system is basically set up to separate you from your money.
ReplyDeleteMutual funds: management fees
stocks: commissions and spreads aka VIG
futures: commissions and spreads aka VIG
mortgage loan: bank collects interest on phantom money
and on and on it goes, I'm sure you can think of many more. A minority will do all right. We all just have to figure out how to be in that top 10%.
Years ago I did research on the wealthy of this country and thought we would be in the top 20%. I was stunned to learn that according to statistics we were in the top 2% of all Americans, but it is the top .5% who really have the money.
I think we could easily run out of money in our lifetimes at the rate costs are rising and projected to rise. Thus I'm seriously considering starting a new business and will do so when I can get the company to give me exclusive rights to what I want to market here. This is the main reason why I'm cutting back on blogging and spending time on this project.
GL to all.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwxMVV_EdTM&feature=related
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletemorning guys. I had posted about a DTI market review I was listening to this a.m. but deleted it since the review was crappy.
ReplyDeleteJB - it was your remark about 'running some scans and trudging forward' that caught my eye :-)
ReplyDeletehey Kyle, ya still a scanning and a trudging. haven't come up with a darn thing..:-)
ReplyDeleteJB - have a feeling this debt ceiling thing is going to make July a total fiasco...
ReplyDelete"Washington, DC, was chosen as the nation's capital as the result of a drunken compromise between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison at a dinner party hosted by Thomas Jefferson. So it's not inexplicable that politicians seem to be guided by mentally addled men acting like boisterous idiots. It's tradition.
For want of anyone on Wall St. able to make sense of the looming DC budget "crisis" beyond "it's a bunch of garbage being manufactured by self-motivated jackasses trying to boil down complicated issues to a stump-speech soundbite,"...
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/author/jeff-macke/
Telestar3d said...
ReplyDelete"The whole system is basically set up to separate you from your money.
Mutual funds: management fees
stocks: commissions and spreads ..."
That's why I never have bought mutual funds and use a discount broker. Been with Scottrade since soon after they started in 1980. Now Scottrade has applied the low fee concept to ETF's, having started up their own set of ETF's with the lowest fees in the industry. The lowest fee is for "Focus Morningstar US Market Index" (FMU), which has an expense ratio of .05%. What's more as a Scottrade customer I trade with no commission. I have owned and traded them a couple times just to try them out but not recently. The downside is that being new they have low volume.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Scottrade-Launches-15-etfguide-2823342019.html?x=0&.v=1
RB- Here's one for you. AIS. Go back to 2004 on a monthly.
ReplyDeleteMark - check out ALLT (from hammerongreg), a buy above 16.55
ReplyDeleteJapanese authorities were apparently well prepared for controlling riots while they were woefully unprepared for controlling the real threat:
ReplyDelete"Caught Unprepared
In the days after a giant tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi’s cooling system, the prime minister’s office and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the plant’s operator, wrestled over whether to inject cooling seawater into the reactor buildings to prevent catastrophic meltdowns, and then over how to do it.
With radiation levels too high for workers to approach the reactors, the Japanese authorities floundered. They sent police trucks mounted with water cannons — equipment designed to disperse rioters — to spray water into the reactor buildings. Military helicopters flew over the buildings, dropping water that was scattered off course by strong winds, in a “performance, a kind of circus” that was aimed more at reassuring an increasingly alarmed Japanese population and American government, said Kenichi Matsumoto, an aide to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
What became clear was that Japan lacked some of the basic hardware to respond to a nuclear crisis and, after initial resistance, had to look abroad for help. For a country proud of its technology, the low point occurred on March 31 when it had to use a 203-foot-long water pump — shipped from China, an export market for Japanese nuclear technology — to inject 90 tons of fresh water into the No. 1 reactor building. But perhaps more than anything else, the absence of one particular technology was deeply puzzling: emergency robots."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?_r=1&hp
Here's the best part, do you remember my previous comments pertaining to Japanese safety philosophy?
ReplyDelete"“The plant operators said that robots, which would premise an accident, were not needed,” said Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, 77, an engineer and a former president of the University of Tokyo, Japan’s most prestigious academic institution. “Instead, introducing them would inspire fear, they said. That’s why they said that robots couldn’t be introduced.” "
CP - I remember you had an interesting comment on Japanese safety philosophy but can't recall it. Can you repeat or retrieve?
ReplyDeleteJB- Nice. I'll raise you an Israeli 15 year cup and handle... Don't worry, it's not magic...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.screencast.com/t/y6Fjss58mlhA
Shell Oil - World's largest floating object.
ReplyDeleteWonder if Posco (PKX) will be producing any of the steel for this baby and how much of it will be stainless made with nickel and molybdenum?
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/harvest-natural-gas-ocean-shell-building-worlds-largest-man-made-floating-object
illini - I beat my head against the Japanese safety culture brick wall for many years actually, trust me, I'm familiar with it:
ReplyDelete"Chickenpookie said...
Have I ever mentioned my observations pertaining to Japanese safety mentality?
We fought them for six months before they'd allow us to place safety caution/warning/danger labels on the various electrical and chemical service panels of their production equipment b/c they didn't want people to think their equipment was dangerous.
March 16, 2011 12:40 PM "
MY finviz is not working does anyone else have a problem
ReplyDeleteBookmark went bad. Fixed it. USA screwed the pooch in soccer. Good to see ADU play. Need new blood I am tired of watching these guys.
ReplyDeleteCP - Yes, I recall it now. It's a quaint and dangerous attitude for all involved. Propaganda in action and not just with words. On that note, I retire at 11 PM here in Midwest, hoping for pleasanter thoughts as opposed to Japanese inspired nightmares.
ReplyDeleteLNKD - Bottomed out yet?
ReplyDeleteAIS WOW I don't know if a 5 year C+H is valid, but I like the stock right here right now. Thanks. Has a 6 day short ratio.
ReplyDeleteLNKD is a short squeeze waiting to happen. It is worth watching. It could be a 5 to 10 % gain in a single day when it turns. See SOHU. Need to enter on strength IMHO
ReplyDeleteAIS. There whole break out was the last 30 min on Friday. Somebody bought 1.3 million shares. creating the entire 10% move.Look at a 30 min chart.Pump and dump? or the real McCoy.
ReplyDeleteBCM.V - Bear Creek Mining license revoked due to political clash in Peru.
ReplyDeleteEurope/PIIGS - What a convoluted mess the unified currency seems to have created over there, the fun just keeps on growing daily:
ReplyDelete"In July 2010, the ICMA’s European Repo Council published “A white paper on the operation of the European repo market, the role of short-selling, the problem of settlement failures and the need for reform of the market infrastructure”.1
Among other things, this document highlighted concerns among market users about the persistence of barriers to interconnectivity between the ICSDs and the domestic CSDs in Greece, Italy and Spain. These barriers have undermined the efficiency of cross-border transfers of securities, fragmented the European financial markets and exacerbated the impact of the recent crisis. They have remained in place despite many years of strenuous effort to create a single European financial market."
"Solutions to the scarcity of securities caused
by credit issues include a special official repo facility for primary dealers to
borrow phantom/synthetic bonds; a bond exchange facility; a CCP facility
operated by a Greek sovereign entity to clear repos or collateral swaps; and the
recycling of Greek government securities held by the ECB. Discussions
between the CSD and market users are continuing."
https://www.icmagroup.org/ICMAGroup/files/bd/bd3ed7a0-b944-481a-9215-de3dbab5639d.pdf
Here is one for you CP. What does SWC have that PAL dosen't. SWC is an old fav of mine that I haven't looked at for a while. I was expecting it to be down much further. I am surprised.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1309112389659&chddm=46920&chddi=86400&chls=CandleStick&cmpto=AMEX:PAL&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:SWC&&fct=big
RB - SWC vs PAL - The one thing that comes to mind is PAL's current cost of production on their recently purchased Sleepy Giant gold mine of $1500+/oz. Other than that, last I heard the upper zone of their palladium mine was producing somewhat lower grade and so they were building a ramp to reach the lower zone beneath.
ReplyDeletePAL is a primary palladium producer looking to expand into gold, I guess SWC produces other metals besides from their mines and their earnings have increased remarkably while PAL's have not.
If PAL can finally get their shit together and metals out of the ground instead of burning cash on exploring what looks like a clapped out gold mine, the share price could offer considerable upside.
$indu - Will we be retesting the 11863 area early this week? Hopefully that level holds...
ReplyDeleteHome foreclosures - I calculate there were $250B of homes foreclosed last year, that's about half of our annual military budget.
ReplyDeleteOne beautiful monthly chart.
ReplyDeletehttp://screencast.com/t/xFfs75Is
What is it T3D?
ReplyDeleteUNG - David's money pump getting cheap again?
ReplyDeleteHey, where have I seen that chart before???
ReplyDeleteAll that glitters is____?
ReplyDeletePM's - Wonder what might happen to precious metals prices if government were to implement new taxes on PM miners? Surely that would tend to remove supply from the market?
ReplyDeleteAhhhh! How slow of me.
ReplyDeleteKinda interesting the euro is falling still and the ES is holding this level.
The euro - I've been waiting forever for that thing to fall, seems like the dollar may benefit and PM's will feel some pain. Sheesh, it's taking an eternity for this to play out...
ReplyDeleteInteresting article over at Seeking Alpha from a smart oil guy on why lower oil prices should actually help the price of junior oil stocks.
ReplyDeletehttp://seekingalpha.com/article/276693-how-latest-big-oil-news-could-reward-small-investors
I still believe it is a good time to buy Insurance Companies for long term buy and hold:
ReplyDeleteArticle from AM Best (provide insurance company ratings) http://www3.ambest.com/frames/FrameServer.asp?Site=news&Tab=1&RefNum=149038&AltSrc=104
says "relatively speaking, the other public insurers have relatively little PIIGS exposure, either to sovereigns or the banks. Aflac has the only real meaningful exposure."
So not only are insurance companies very cheap on a fundamental basis, but relatively safe from European issues. Would stay away from the big European insurers for now other than the reinsurers.
Plus Doug Kass had buys last week on PRU, MET and LNC.
My personal insurance holdings are: NWLI, KCLI, NSEC, MFC, AIZ, VIST (banking and insurance) and POW in Toronto.
Scaling back into BEXP. 1000 @ 26.33.
ReplyDeletehey Mark - why would you enter at .33? wouldn't have been safer to hop in above S2?
ReplyDeleteJB- Yes, good point. I didn't want to wait because I was also taking into account the price of oil and what I think was a reaction to a NYT article about natty this weekend.
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing?
makes sense.
ReplyDeleteliving the dream down here, looking for a nice 105+ weekend.
what's new with you?
Should have bought APKT also.
ReplyDeleteNot much. Works still slow.
ReplyDeleteThere is a trade in XCO for the brave.
Got to run. GL.
BEXP - Damn, I missed a good entry this morning!
ReplyDeleteOkay, so I'll wait to see if another opportunity opens up just as the laws of unintended consequences kick in.
Meanwhile, maybe GPL/SVM can fall enough to compel adding... SVM has filled it's gap but I'd like to see it close below today's low and then dump tomorrow morning on the coming PM blue light special (assuming there is one and this isn't another head fake designed to shake weak hands out)...