The U.S. dollar has been…
What a quarter that was! Q3, 2011, will go down in the history books as one of the worst in market history, and certainly one of the most volatile. 1929,…
Although stocks around the globe appear to be expecting the Eurozone to produce a game changing plan involving a leveraged, TARP-like approach, not all investors are convinced that Europe is…
With oil having bounced $5.50 over the last couple of days, I am going to flip back to the short side for several reasons, not all of which have to…
Long term readers of this letter know that I have long been banging away on the fact that the world is making people faster than the food to feed them.…
When the Dow crashed 514 points on August 8, the market lost a staggering $850 billion in market capitalization. High frequency traders were possibly responsible for half of this move,…
Down, then up, then down again. How about that? I believe that the global risk markets will bottom sooner than people think, and that the time has come to compile…
Commodity markets lost more than $16 billion in value during last week’s selloff, Reuters reported in a special report. Equity and commodity markets plunged…
Take a look at the chart for the emerging market ETF (EEM) below and you will be surprised to see how well it has held up in the recent collapse.…
I believe that the risk markets are discounting a recession that isn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. So I am going to start adding some small, limited risk call…
When I went to bed late last night, the (SPX) was trading down 30 points, and I was thinking “here we go again”. When I woke up, the market was…
There has been a lot of growth over the last decade in funds that take long positions in commodity futures contracts in order to offer investors an asset that follows…
I don’t think that we are going into recession immediately. I believe that we can eke out a few more quarters of 2% ish type growth before we put in…
At long last, after months of warnings, leaks, hand wringing, and speculation, Standard and Poor’s has at last downgraded US Treasury bonds a notch to AA+. The change was the…
What to say about Thursday’s market? The “RISK OFF” trade had its finest hour. The Dow average WAS down 512 points, NASDAQ (QQQ) cratered by 135 points, oil (USO) was…
I spent the morning doing a round robin with hedge fund trader friends of mine trying to figure how we all got this so horribly wrong. I did this as…
Back in the seventies and eighties, when inflation was soaring well into double digits, the markets were regularly punished by a band of gun slinging traders known as the “bond…
Jim Rogers says the investing game is simple these days. Rogers said this week, “I do believe I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been presented…
The open criticism of the US policy is getting more vociferous by the day. For example, a former central bank advisor pointed out that in the medium to long term…
The first half of 2011 went out with a bang last week. The S&P 500 delivered an awesome 72 point run, its best performance in two years. After threatening the…
Every day, when considering what to write about, I tell myself that I’m not singing enough praises about India. Then events demand that a topic more urgent be thrust upon…