'Ten year government bonds yielding 2.5% are an accident waiting to happen,' said hedge fund legend Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors.

Featured Trades: (PORTLAND STRATEGY LUNCHEON) 2) The Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Portland Strategy Luncheon. Come join me for lunch at the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s semiannual Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Portland, Oregon at 12:00 noon on Friday, November 26, 2010, the day after Thanksgiving. A three course lunch will be [...]

Featured Trades: (PEAK LIGHT), (THE FIBER OPTIC CABLE SHORTAGE) 3) Now It's Peak Light. Many of the big telecommunications investments of the last decade were made possible because the cost of long distance transmission was essentially free, thanks to the massive overbuilding that took place during the dotcom boom. That era may be coming to [...]

Featured Trades: (THE EURO AND GLOBAL RISK APPETITE), (FXE) 4) The Euro is the New Canary in the Coal Mine. Short term traders and long term investors should be keeping a laser like focus on the Euro/dollar exchange rate these days, as it has emerged as the canary in the coal mine for global risk [...]

Featured Trades: (THE TRUE COST OF OIL), (NSANY), (PGE), (GM VOLT), (TESLA S-2), (MITSUBISHI iMiEV) 1) The True Cost of Oil. I received some questions last week on my recent solar pieces as to whether I minded paying more money for ‘green’ power. My answer is ‘hell no,’ and I’ll tell you why. My annual [...]

Featured Trades: (RARE EARTHS), (MCP), (AVARF), (LYSCF) 2) Bring on the Rare Earth Wars. One of my many former employers, the Singapore Straights Times, reported yesterday that China planned to cut rare earth export quotas by 30% next year. The story comes on the heels of a voluntary ban of exports to Japan on September [...]

Featured Trades: (MONGOLIA), (IVN), (RTP), (975:HK), (MONGOLIA MINING) 3) Get On Board With Mongolia Mining. The 3:00 am phone call was scratchy, broken, and barely intelligible. Would I be willing to accept a collect call from Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia? My man on the ground there was on the line with a stock [...]

Featured Trades: (LUNCH WITH THE TREASURY SECRETARY)   1) Lunch With the Treasury Secretary. When I wake up at 4:30 am each morning to check the overnight markets and review the opening salvo of incoming emails, I often have trouble focusing in my groggy state. So I had to blink twice when the first message [...]

Featured Trades: (SPECIAL DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUE), (SPY), (EWJ), (VNM), (EEM) 1) If Demographics is Destiny, Then America's Future Sucks. Desperate homeowners counting on a “V” shaped recovery in residential real estate prices to bail them out better first take a close look at global demographic data, which tells us there will be no recovery at all. [...]

Featured Trades: (SPECIAL DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUE), (EWJ) 2) Why I'm Avoiding Japan Like the Plague. Now look at the world’s worst population pyramid, that for Japan (EWJ). These three graphs show that a nearly perfect pyramid drove a miracle stock market during the fifties and sixties which I remember well, when Japan had your textbook high [...]

Featured Trades: (SPECIAL DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUE), (SPX), (EEM) iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF 3) Brace Yourself. The US is Turning into Japan. (SPX) As a silver tsunami of 80 million baby boomers retires, they will be followed by only 65 million from generation “X”. The intractable problems that unhappy Japan is facing will soon arrive at [...]

Featured Trades: (SPECIAL DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUE), (VNM), (GE) Market Vectors Vietnam ETF 4) Vietnam is a Paradise for Demographic Investors. Now that we have figured out that Vietnam is a great place to invest, take a look at the Van Eck Groups Vietnam Index Fund (VNM). The venture will invest in companies that get 50% or [...]

Featured Trades: (THE YEN SHORT), (FXJ), (YCS)   1) The Collapse of the Yen: When is This Party Getting Started? ‘Oh, how I despise the yen, let me count the ways.’ I’m sure Shakespeare would have come up with a line of iambic pentameter similar to this if he were a foreign exchange trader. I [...]

Featured Trades: (IRAQI OIL), (SLB), (HAL), (BHI), (WFT) 2) The Gold Rush in Iraq. 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), [...]

Featured Trades: (MULTIFAMILY DWELLINGS) 3) The One Bright Spot in Real Estate. After my weekly dump on residential real estate, 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 US [...]