Featured Trades: (U-HAUL) 2) My Favorite Secret Economic Indicator. It is the end of the school year at the University of California at Berkeley, and the unenviable task of moving my son, a junior, out of his hovel for the summer fell to me. When I arrived, I was stunned to find nothing less than [...]

Featured Trades: (THE WORST TRADE IN HISTORY), (AAPL) 4) The Worst Trade in History. Say you owned 10% of Apple (AAPL) and you sold it for $800 in 1976. What would that stake be worth today? Try $22 billion. That is the harsh reality that Ron Wayne, 76, faces every morning when he wakes up, [...]

'V-shaped recoveries don't have months where we recover only 40,000 jobs,' said Dan Greenhouse, chief economist at bond house Miller Tabak.

Featured Trades: (BP), (THE NUCLEAR OPTION)   1) British Petroleum: The Nuclear Option. I have never been able to use my talents both as a securities analyst and a nuclear weapons designer simultaneously, but British Petroleum (BP) has at last enabled me to rise to the call. Back before personal computers, the Internet, and hedge [...]

Featured Trades: (EDV), (SDS), (UUP), (TBT) Canada iShares Trust ETF Currency Shares Canadian Dollar Trust ETF iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN ProShares Ultra Short S&P 500 ETF Vanguard Extended Duration ETF PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund 2) The May ETF Score Card. I always find it useful to review the best [...]

Featured Trades: (CANADA), (FXC), (EWC) Canada iShares Trust ETF Currency Shares Canadian Dollar Trust ETF 3) The Loonie Takes Flight On Bank of Canada Move. The Bank of Canada finally raised interest rates yesterday, the first G-7 country to do so, taking the overnight rate up 0.25% to 0.5%.  The central bank said it took [...]

Featured Trades: (THE ASCENT OF MONEY) 4) The Best Financial Book Ever. I have just finished reading the best financial book ever, and I have read most of them. It is The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Harvard professor Niall Ferguson. It gives you a great explanation of how the [...]

'We've seen the S&P 500 drop 50% twice in the last decade. That is the new normal', said Richard Kang of Emerging Global Advisors.

Featured Trades: (YCS) ProShares Ultra Short Yen ETF 1) The Yen Short is Back in Play. The surprise resignation last night of Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has suddenly thrust my yen short back into the limelight. Coming in on a landslide only eight months ago, the hapless leader of the left of center Democratic [...]

Featured Trades: (AAPL), (MSFT) 2) Apple's Next Stop: $1,000. When I took a young, cocky, long haired, Levis wearing Steve Jobs around to meet Morgan Stanley's institutional investors to pitch an Apple share offering 28 years ago, I vowed never to buy anything from the man. He was such a great salesman, and possessed such [...]

Featured Trades: (GOLD), (GLD) Spider Gold Trust Shares ETF 3) The New California Gold Rush. The gold rush is back on in California. On my way back from Lake Tahoe recently, I saw that every bend of the American river was dotted with hopeful amateur miners, looking to make a windfall fortune. Weekend hobbyists were [...]

'80% of the world's GDP growth last year came from stimulus. It's not real. Our current debt/GDP is 360%, we have $55 trillion in total debt, and $108 trillion in unfunded liabilities. I think not only are we are going to hit the old low, but there is a pretty decent chance we are going [...]

Featured Trades: (APOL), (CPLA), (DV) 1) Hedge Funds Are Now Targeting For-Profit Education. Hedge funds have been circling for new carrion to devour in the next economic slowdown and have found a big fat target in the for-profit educational sector. The industry is ripe for the taking. For two decades, for-profit schools have lured gullible [...]

Featured Trades: (FXI) ISHARES FTSE/XINHUA CHINA 25 FUND 2) Another 'W' Warning. China traders (FXI) were sucker punched this morning by the shocking decline in the country's May purchasing managers' index, which plunged from 55.7 to 53.9. That leaves the coincident indicator teetering above the 50.0 boom bust level. The news threw a bucket of [...]

Featured Trades: (WATER), (PHO), (ITT), (DHR), (NLC), (VE) POWERSHARES WATER RESOURCES PORTFOLIO 3) Here Come the Water Wars. Long time readers of this letter know well that I have been a big fan of the water play (click here for my last report). The world is rapidly running out of fresh water, possible within five [...]