Featured Trades: (NEW YORK STRATEGY LUNCHEON) 1) Just a reminder that you only have a week left to buy tickets to my New York  Global Strategy Update. It will be held at 12:00 noon on Friday, May 7, at the New York Athletic Club. The club can be found at 180 Central Park South, New [...]

Featured Trades: (FXI), (SPX), ($SSEC) 2) How Can the US Go Up and China Go Down? There is something that is not right with these pictures. Investor sentiment is now 54% bullish, the highest since December, 2007. In the meantime, the Chinese stock market is rolling over like the Bismark, with the Shanghai Index's ($SSEC) [...]

Featured Trades: (NICKEL), (JJN) 3) Nickel Smashes Through to Three Year High. The bull market in industrial commodities has spilled over from copper, palladium, iron ore to nickel, which hit $27,500/ tonne in trading on the London Metals Exchange yesterday, up 42% YTD. As a result of the price surge, a nickel is now worth [...]

Featured Trades: (PALM), (HPQ), (AAPL), (RIMM), (CHA), (GS) 4) The Real Logic Behind Hewlett Packard's Takeover of Palm. I think that Hewlett Packard's (HPQ) takeover of Palm (PALM) for $1.2 billion speaks volumes about the future of technology in the global economy. While HPQ's late entry into the sector so they can go head to [...]

'Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open,' said Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone.

Featured Trades: (GREECE) 1) It’s All Over But the Crying for Greece. The home of Socrates and Plato is so deep under water with its finances that only three years of Great Depression conditions could bring them back into balance. Yesterday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the beleaguered nation’s debt to junk, causing the yield on [...]

Featured Trades: (OIL), (USO), (SLB), (BHI), (WFT), (HAL) 2) There is a Gold Rush Underway in Iraq, with Major Implications for the Rest of Us. The success of the recent oil auctions in Iraq is creating a windfall for American oil services companies. Schlumberger (SLB), Baker Hughes (BHI), Weatherford (WFT), and Halliburton (HAL) have committed [...]

Featured Trades: (SOUTH KOREA), (EWZ) 3) The Economic Miracle That is South Korea is Firing on All 16 Cylinders, taking the KOSPI up 6% YTD. Q1 GDP grew at an annualized rate of 7.8%, driven by a huge rebound in electronics exports and a big contribution from stimulus driven civil engineering. Credit Suisse says the [...]

Featured Trades: (CAT) 4) It's Off to the Races at Caterpillar. I hang on every word that comes out of the mouth of Caterpillar (CAT) CEO Jim Owens. His company sells the bulldozers, heavy trucks, and diesel engines that are the required tools for miners and drillers to rip their essential resources out of the [...]

'The debt crisis was the equivalent of an under-age drinking party with the rating agencies handing out fake IDs,' said Pimco's Paul McCulley.

Featured Trades: (THE NEW ASSET BUBBLE) 1) There is only one trade right now, and that is 'Risk On.' I noticed that I have had trouble composing my newsletter lately because in thumbnail form, all charts now look the same, those of a gull winged 'V's'. Looking at the long list of positions that I [...]

Featured Trades: (MULTIFAMILY HOUSING) 2) The One Bright Spot in Real Estate. After my weekly dump on residential real estate yesterday, I feel obliged to reveal one corner of this beleaguered market that might actually make sense. By 2050 the population of California will soar from 37 million to 50 million, and that of the [...]

Featured Trades: (YEN), (YCS), (YUAN), (CYB) 3) Ganging Up on the Yen. My old friend, Eisuke Sakakibara, Japan’s former vice minister of finance and director of the IMF, also known as ‘Mr. Yen,’ believes that the Japanese currency is going to trade in a ¥92-¥97 range. That will frustrate hedge funds that pile on enormous [...]

Featured Trades: (UNP), (PPLT), (PALL) 4) Union Pacific (UNP) is Barreling Down the Rails. I am going to run a series of articles over the next several days about the earnings reports of companies which are great ‘tells’ on the state of the global economy.  Union Pacific (UNP) just announced Q1 profits of $516 million [...]

If you think you are going to get a free ride, or a white horse to bail you out, the white horse is dead,' Said Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, about the new financial regulation bill.