It’s another sign of the times when the weekend fruit picker population is doubled by people hard hit by the economy, looking to save money on food costs. After driving through miles of undulating brown hills studded with oak trees, passing mile upon mile of horse ranches, rusted out cars, and abandoned mobile homes, you [...]

Global Market Comments April 25, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trade: (MAY 8 LAS VEGAS STRATEGY LUNCHEON), (SELL IN MAY HAS ALREADY STARTED), (SPY), (IWM), (TLT), (TBT), (GLD), (SLV), (USO), (UNG), (CHINA’S VIEW OF CHINA), (FXI), (EEM) SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM) iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treas Bond (TLT) ProShares UltraShort 20+ [...]

Come join me for lunch at the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. An excellent meal will be followed by a wide-ranging discussion and an extended question and answer period. I’ll be giving you my up to date view on [...]

I ran into Minxin Pei, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who imparted to me some iconoclastic, out of consensus views on China’s position in the world today. He thinks that power is not shifting from West to East; Asia is just lifting itself off the mat, with per capita GDP at [...]

Global Market Comments April 24, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trade: (JULY 2 NEW YORK STRATEGY LUNCHEON), (THINGS ARE HEATING UP IN MEXICO), (EWW), (UMX), (BSMX), (EEM), (BUDGET CUTS HOT THE WILD ANIMAL MARKET) iShares MSCI Mexico Capped Invstbl Mkt (EWW) ProShares Ultra MSCI Mexico Cppd IMI (UMX) Grupo Financiero Santander S.A.B. de C.V. (BSMX) iShares [...]

Come join me for lunch for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Seminar, which I will be conducting in New York, NY on Tuesday, July 2, 2013. An excellent three-course lunch will be provided. A PowerPoint presentation will be followed by an extended question and answer period. I’ll be giving you my up to [...]

In case you missed it, the second hand animal market has crashed. Forced to slash budgets by cash starved municipalities, the nation’s public zoos have been paring back their collections of living exhibits. The Washington Zoo is trying to offload a 7,000 pound hippopotamus; while the San Francisco Zoo is short some tigers after one [...]

Global Market Comments April 23, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trade: (MAY 8 LAS VEGAS STRATEGY LUNCHEON), (PROBING FOR A BOTTOM IN GOLD), (GLD), (IS THIS THE FINAL BOTTOM FOR APPLE?), (AAPL), (GOOG), (JCP) SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) Apple Inc. (AAPL) Google Inc. (GOOG) J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (JCP)

Come join me for lunch at the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. An excellent meal will be followed by a wide-ranging discussion and an extended question and answer period. I’ll be giving you my up to date view on [...]

Thanks to last week’s Armageddon type crash in gold prices, implied volatilities on options in the SPDR Gold Trust Shares (GLD) have rocketed to five-year highs. This is in sharp contrast to equity index option implieds, which are just a few percent above six year lows. Therefore, the deep in the money option strategy in [...]

Global Market Comments April 22, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trade: (MAY 8 LAS VEGAS STRATEGY LUNCHEON), (THE TAX RATE FALLACY), (AN AFTERNOON WITH BOONE PICKENS)

Come join me for lunch at the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. An excellent meal will be followed by a wide-ranging discussion and an extended question and answer period. I’ll be giving you my up to date view on [...]

When anyone starts lecturing you that the US has the highest tax rate in the industrialized world, just turn around, walk away, and pretend you never heard of them. This person is either ignorant about this country’s taxation system, or is deliberately trying to deceive you. According to a report released by the Internal Revenue [...]

Reformed oil man, repenting sinner, and borne again environmentalist T. Boone Pickens says that “When we turn the US green, it will have the best economy ever.” I met the spry, homespun billionaire at San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins on a leg of his self-financed national campaign to get America to kick its dangerous dependence on [...]

Global Market Comments April 19, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trade: (MAY 8 LAS VEGAS STRATEGY LUNCHEON), (AMERICA’S NATIVE INDIAN ECONOMY), (BUSINESS IS BOOMING AT ROUGH TIMES), (GLD), (SLV), (CCJ), (NLR) SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) iShares Silver Trust (SLV) Cameco Corporation (CCJ) Market Vectors Uranium+Nuclear Enrgy ETF (NLR)