Global Market Comments November 3, 2009 SPECIAL ‘END OF JAPAN’ ISSUE Featured Trades: (NIKKEI), (YEN), (JGB), (ATLANTIS JAPAN GROWTH FUND), (LSE-AJG) 1)  Having spent a decade living in Japan sharing shoe box sized apartments, living on fish heads, rice, and instant ramen, I am something of an authority on that enchanting country. I spent the [...]

Global Market Comments October 30, 2009 Featured Trades: (SPX), (TBT), (FISKER AUTOMOTIVE), (TAR SANDS) NOTE TO READERS: There is a short letter today, as a cable has snapped on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, slicing though a car, and shutting down Interstate 80. Mercifully, the startled driver was spared. I am holed up at the [...]

Global Market Comments October 29, 2009 Featured Trades: (GOLD), (DOW), (BRAZIL), (EWZ) 1) A few years ago, I went to a charity fund raiser at San Francisco's priciest jewelry store, Shreve & Co., where the well heeled men bid for dinner with the local high society beauties, dripping in diamonds and Channel No. 5. Well [...]

Global Market Comments October 28, 2009 Featured Trades: (ROACH MOTELS) (FCX), (COPPER), (DOLLAR), (ALTERNATE RESERVE CURRENCY), (LONDON OLYMPICS) 1) This is how you trade this market. Buy the dips on any pull back in any asset, keep a tight stop loss, and run like Hell if it get’s triggered. No doubling up or leaning in. [...]

Global Market Comments October 27, 2009 Featured Trades: (CIA), (TBT), (DBA), (FCX), (USO), (TM), (CVX), (XTO), (RSX), (GOOG), (BIDU)   1) Lunch with the Central Intelligence Agency is always interesting, although five guys built like brick shithouses staring at me intently didn’t help my digestion. Obama’s pick of Leon Panetta as the agency’s new director [...]

Global Market Comments October 26, 2009 Featured Trades: (CANADIAN DOLLAR), (FXC), (AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR), (FXA), (NEW ZEALND DOLLAR), (BNZ), (RSX), (OIL), (ZACHARY KARABELL) 1) It’s all about the dollar, which I have despised all year like the red headed stepchild it has become (click here for my initial recommendation). The assured onslaught of federal debt issuance [...]

Global Market Comments October 23, 2009 (SPECIAL WHEAT ISSUE) Featured Trades: (AGU), (POT), (MON), (DBA), (CAT), (JON STEWART) 1) With December wheat (WZ09) tickling $5.48 yesterday, the e-mails are now pouring in from farmers, co-ops, and silo managers in the Great Plains states offering reasons why it should go higher. The Northern states and much [...]

Global Market Comments October 22, 2009 Featured Trades: (XOM), (DBA), (USO), (RJI), (AFRICA), (AFK), (GAF), (EWH, (FXI) 1) Those of you searching for the 'new normal' better take a close look at the China National Offshore Oil Company's (CNOC) efforts to top Exxon Mobil's (XOM) $4 billion bid for development rights to a giant new [...]

Global Market Comments October 21, 2009 Featured Trades: (GOOG), (MS), (1987 CRASH), (CVA), (AMSC) 1) When people ask me what is the one stock they should put in their kid’s college fund and forget about, I always give them the same company: Google (GOOG). The toll taker for the Internet that controls 70% of the [...]

Global Market Comments October 20, 2009 Featured Trades: (DINNER WITH OBAMA), (MS), (BYRON WIEN), (JULIUS CAESAR),   1) The black GM Suburban barreled into the parking structure at San Francisco’s posh St. Francis Hotel, its emergency lights flashing, and quickly disgorged a team of secret service agents. Behind them the armored Cadillac limo screeched to [...]

Global Market Comments October 19, 2009 Featured Trades: (BILL FLECKENSTEIN), (DIN), (RIMM), (JWN), (DOW 10,000), (FSLR) (TRES AMIGAS TRANSMISSION FACILITY) 1) I have worshipped legendary hedge fund manager, Bill Fleckenstein, as the God that he is for decades. So I thought it was time to catch up with the noted bear on the day the [...]

Global Market Comments October 16, 2009 Featured Trades: (RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE), (ETF’s), (CALIFORNIA WINE MARKET) 1) I can honestly say that I have worked for the worst boss on the planet, Rupert Murdoch, when I free lanced for his flagship newspaper, The Australian. No matter what I wrote about Japan’s trade down under in sugar, [...]

Global Market Comments October 15, 2009Featured Trades: (WHEAT), (WZ09), (HELEN THOMAS), (TROLL DOLLS)   1) I bet I’m the only guy you know whose wedding was filmed by the KGB. My friend, the TASS correspondent,  shot 8mm film of the entire assembled foreign press at the event at The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in [...]

Global Market Comments October 14, 2009Featured Trades: (NATURAL GAS), (CHK), (DATA BASE SEARCH), (REGIONAL BANKS), (DOLLAR BILLS)   1) I received another scratchy, crackling cell phone call from my drilling buddy in the Texas natural gas fields today. You could almost hear the dust on the line. The doubling of prices in the last month [...]

Global Market Comments October 13, 2009GLOBAL RISK ALERT! Featured Trades: (GOLD), (SILVER), (CANADIAN DOLLARS), (AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS), (NEW ZEALAND DOLLARS), (BRAZIL), (RUSSIA), (INDIA), (CHINA), (TAIWAN), (SOUTH KOREA), (VIETNAM), (JNK), (TBT) 1) When everything is working, and my portfolio is firing on all 12 cylinders, I pinch myself and ask ‘Is this real? What can go wrong?’ [...]