Featured Trades: (CHICAGO STRATEGY LUNCHEON) 4) Last Chance to Join the December 28 Chicago Strategy Luncheon! Come join me for lunch at the Mad Hedge Fund Trader's Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Chicago on Tuesday, December 28, 2010. A three course lunch will be followed by a 45 minute PowerPoint presentation [...]

Featured Trades: (THE ENERGY CRUNCH) 1) Why We Need Six New Saudi Arabia's. I recently spent an evening with Ambassador Richard Jones, the Deputy Executive Director of the International Energy Agency in Paris, who had some eye opening things to say about the energy space. The IEA was first set up as a counterweight to [...]

Featured Trades: (NEW NUCLEAR POWER) 2) This is Not Your Father's Nuclear Power Plant. On my recent trip to Oregon I met with venture capital investors in NuScale Power, which is trailblazing, the brave new world of 'new' nuclear. Their technology has been pioneered by Dr. Jose Reyes, dean of the School of Engineering at [...]

Featured Trades: (THE CHIHUAHUA GLUT) 3) Watch Out for the Chihuahua Glut. Yesterday, I wrote about the Nevadan wrinkle in the housing crisis where distressed homeowners are letting their horses go wild to make their mortgage payment. Now neighboring California is facing a Chihuahua glut, where evicted homeowners are handing over their pets to animal [...]

Featured Trades: (WHERE HAVE ALL THE JOBS GONE?) 1) Kiss That Union Job Goodbye. Those of you counting on getting your old union assembly line job back in Detroit can forget it. The recent eight year forecast published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 4.19 million jobs will be gained in the US [...]

Featured Trades: (CHINESE NUCLEAR PROGRAM) 2) China Steps Up Its Nuclear Program. The Middle Kingdom currently has 12 operational plants generating 12 gigawatts accounting for 2.3% of the country's power. Another 23 are currently under construction. It plans to add ten a year for the next decade, taking them up to 70 Gigawatts by 2020, [...]

Featured Trades: (INCARCERATION RATES) 3) Why don't we try Chinese style securities regulation? Former stock trader, Yang Yanming, was recently executed by lethal injection for embezzling $9.52 million from Galaxy Securities during 1997 to 2003. The move was part of a broader effort by the Mandarins in Beijing to crack down on rampant corruption in [...]

Featured Trades: (MUSTANGS) 4) The Bull Market in Mustangs. The Western US has found a new wrinkle in the housing collapse, where homeowners are desperately struggling to cut living costs to meet the next doubling of their adjustable rate mortgage payments on their underwater houses. Raising horses can cost more than children, so Nevadans are [...]

'It amazes me how quickly amnesia sets in,' said Stephen Crawford, former co-president of Morgan Stanley, about the willingness of hedge funds to re-leverage positions in these conditions.

Featured Trades: (SPECIAL DEMOGRAPHIC ISSUE) 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. I have been using [...]

Featured Trades: (SPY), (EWJ) Japan iShares ETF 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 [...]

Featured Trades: (VNM), (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 our shores. Boomers, [...]

Featured Trades:  (VNM) 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 more of their earnings [...]

Featured Trades: (LAS VEGAS GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON)   1) The January 7, 2011 Las Vegas Global Strategy Luncheon. Come join me for lunch for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Sin City on Friday, January 7, 2011. A three course lunch will be followed by a 45 [...]

Featured Trades: (PANIC BUYING OF THE TBT), (TBT) 2) Panic Buying Hits the (TBT). Buy the rumor, sell the news. That is one of the oldest adages one hears on trading desks, and it was never more true than today. Yesterday we learned that the ratings agency, Moody's, is considering a downgrade of US government [...]