There are some simple lessons from all this. The Dominique Strauss-Kahn case hammers them home.
We should never assume the crowd, or "everyone else," or the market is right or even rational. Five hundred ill-informed opinions don’t amount to a hill of beans.
We should always listen to what contrarians have to say especially when they sound most ridiculous, and especially when they are being shouted down. We should never trust any judgments reached quickly.
In reaching our own conclusions, we should fight the urge to join the crowd. We should take our time, do our own homework and make up our own minds. There is no hurry.
We should always be willing to change our minds if need be. This is the hardest thing to do. We constantly have to remind ourselves that we could be wrong.
Arnie Gundersen is freaking me out! Gundersen is no tin-foil hat guy, he’s the chief engineer of energy consulting company Fairewinds Associates and a former nuclear power industry executive who served as an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island accident. Gundersen has said that the U.S. nuclear industry and regulators need to reexamine disaster planning and worst-case scenarios, especially in reactors such as Vermont Yankee, which have the same design as the crippled nuclear plant at the center of the 2011 Japanese Fukushima nuclear emergency. Vermont Yankee and similar plants are vulnerable to a similar cascade of events as in Japan.
The Nikkei had fallen down to 8,227 from 10,678 (23%) at the quake and has since recovered 10,017 on May 2nd but was back to 9,648 on Friday (3.6% off the bounce) and the 50 dma has now formed an aptly-named "death cross" below the 200 dma. Japan is already on the hook for $124Bn from the earthquake and will also have to cover TEPCO’s $31Bn (so far) liability as the alternative is let the country’s biggest energy supplier go bankrupt and that would be lights out on their economy.
Warning: Do not watch this video on a full stomach:
Accident is a funny word isn’t it? With 435 active plant and 250 more under construction, even if they are 99.9% safe, that would still mean we get an accident like this every year. Hopefully they are 99.99% safe and we only have a major catastrophe every 10 years – wouldn’t that be nice but, so far, that’s not the case as we’ve had about 16 in 50 years with 9 of those considered "major." So accident applies to this situation in the same way…
Back in April, when we discussed the inception of the IMF’s then brand new New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) $500 billion credit facility, we asked rhetorically, "If the IMF believes that over half a trillion in short-term funding is needed imminently, is all hell about to break loose." A month later the question was answered, as Greece lay smoldering in the ashes of insolvency, and the developed world was on the hook for almost a trillion bucks to make sure the tattered eurozone remained in one piece (leading to such grotesque abortions as Ireland, whose cost of debt is approaching 6%, funding Greek debt at 5%).
Well, if that was the proverbial canary in the coalmine, today the entire flock just keeled over and died: today the IMF announced it "expanded and enhanced its lending tools to help contain the occurrence of financial crises." As a result, the IMF has as of today extended the duration of its existing Flexible Credit Line (FCL) to two years, concurrently removing the borrowing cap on this facility, which previously stood at 1000 percent of a member’s IMF quota, in essence making the FCL a limitless credit facility, to be used to rescue whomever, at the sole discretion of the IMF’s overlords. Additionally, as the FCL has some make believe acceptance criteria (and with countries such as Poland, Columbia, and Mexico having had access to it, these must certainly be sky high), the IMF is introducing a brand new credit facility, the Precautionary Credit Line (PCL), which will be geared for members with "sound policies [which just happen to need an unlimited source of rescue funding] who nevertheless may not meet the FCL’s high qualification requirements." In other words everyone. In yet other words, the IMF as of today, has a limitless facility to bail out anyone in the world, without a maximum bound in how much is lendable. One wonders who would be stupid enough to take advantage of the gullibility of IMF’s biggest backers (the US), to borrow an infinite amount of money for any reason whatsoever… And just what all this means for the imminent explosion of the amount of money in circulation…Not to mention the brand new Ben Bernanke smokescreen of…
Factset Buyback Quarterly has an interesting series of charts and facts on corporate share buybacks.
Here is my favorite chart in the series.
Aggregate Buybacks: Dollar-value share repurchases amounted to $93.8 billion over the fourth quarter and $384.3 billion for 2012. The fourth quarter total is in-line with that of Q3, but represented year-over-year growth of 9.6%.
Sector Trends: The Information Technology and Health Care sectors spent the most on quarterly repurchases ($19.8 billion and $14.4 billion, respectively) in Q4 2012. However, of the sec...
Via Sean Corrigan of Diapason Commodities' Tangible Ideas,
Even if the monetary fuel for this whirl of self-reinforcement is not lacking, the market still needs a narrative around which it can cluster psychologically. It needs a canon of shared myth about which the bard can weave a reassuringly familiar refrain so as to reinforce the sense of community when the members of the clan gather to listen to his warblings amid the flickering fires and guttering torchlight of the Great Hall at night.
If, in contrast to the slow?evolving customs of traditional society, the tribe we personify as the Market is a promiscuous sort, ever ready to cast off one cycle of songs for another, it nevertheless becomes fierce...
"Europe needs to be rethought. We consider just one year of information and then hold a referendum to say yes or no to the euro and yes or no to Europe. " Beppe Grillo to ride a strong theme of the last election campaign the 5 Star Movement. "Europe on the euro and the British teach us democracy. No party can claim the right to decide for...
Following the market opening Tuesday, the Dow traded up 0.36 percent to 15,390.13, while the NASDAQ rose 0.17 percent to 3,502.38. The S&P was also up, gaining 0.30 percent to 1,671.30.
Top Headline Home Depot (NYSE: HD) reported an 18.5% increase in its Q1 earnings and lifted its 2013 earnings forecast.
Home Depot's quarterly profit surged to $1.2 billion, or $0.83 per share, versus $1 billion, or $0.68 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Its net sales climbed 7.4% to $19.1 billion from $17.8 billion, while comparable-store sales rose 4.3%. However, analysts were estimating earnings of $0.76 pe...
ANF - Abercrombie & Fitch Co. – Shares in teen retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., are getting hammered today, down 10% at $48.92 in early-afternoon trading after the company reported a wider-than-expected first-quarter loss and missed topline estimates, lowered its full year earnings forecast and said same-store sales would be down slightly for the rest of the year. A review of pre-earnings report activity in Abercrombie options yesterday indicates one trader was prepared for the pullback today. It looks like the strategist initiate...
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
While the S&P 500 has had quite a year already the Nikkei has been the story of the globe as they are performing acts of central banking that even put the U.S. Fed to shame. And Japan's central bank can buy ETFs and REITs directly per their charter versus the U.S. bank. Combined with a yen in free fall it's been a heck of a move for the Nikkei since last November. I noted last week we were seeing extremely rare weekly and monthly type overbought readings on bo...
The market went through some gyrations on Wednesday in reaction to Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. He first defended continued quant easing by warning, “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.” Stocks dutifully rallied and all major indexes hit new intraday highs.
But alas, consensus is apparently not a given over the longer term. The minutes hinted that a tapering off could start sooner, “A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth.” So …...
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(
