A number of analysts, and even some of those in the real estate industry, are finally coming around to the depressing conclusion that there will never be a recovery in residential real estate. Long time readers of this letter know too well that I have been hugely negative on the sector since late 2005, when [...]
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Trade Alert Service Clocks 26% Gain In 2013
The Trade Alert Service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has posted a 26.01% profit year to date, taking it to another new all time high. The 26-month total return has punched through to an awesome 81.06%, compared to a miserable 15% return for the Dow average during the same period. That raises the average [...]
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A Conversation with the Boots on the Ground
I have spent many hours speaking at length with the generals who ran our wars in the Middle East, like David Petraeus, James E. Cartwright, and Martin E. Dempsey. To get the boots on the ground view, I attended the graduation of a friend at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, the world’s preeminent [...]
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Sunday With President Jimmy Carter
When I heard that our 39th president, former governor of Georgia, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter was coming to town, I moved heaven and earth to meet him. I served in the White House Press Corps as the The Economist correspondent during the latter part of his term, and was dying to get [...]
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Why the Markets Could Care Less About Sequestration
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. The map below is worth a PhD thesis, and perhaps a weighty tome. Prepared by my friends from government data at the online financial site run by Henry Blodget, Business Insider, it ranks the states most impacted by the sequestration of federal spending that starts on Friday, [...]
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Be Careful Who You Snitch On
Buried in the recently passed Dodd-Frank financial reform bill are massive financial rewards for turning in your crooked boss. The SEC is hoping that multimillion-dollar rewards amounting to 10%-30% of sanction amounts will drive a stampede of whistleblowers to their doors with evidence of malfeasance and fraud by their employers. If such rules were in [...]
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Suddenly Those Italian Lessons Are Paying Off
Welcome to the first black swan of 2013! You couldn’t mistake the meaning of the cries of topless female protesters as they flung themselves at police guarding Italian polling stations on Monday. Basta! Basta! Enough! Enough! The purpose of their demonstration was visibly scrawled in large letters across their nubile bodies in black ink for [...]
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New BOJ Governor Craters Yen
At long last, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has appointed a new governor to the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda. The foreign currency markets responded immediately, taking the Japanese yen down to ¥94.60, a new three year low. It also broke new ground in a range of currency crosses, including Euro/Yen, Ausie/Yen, and Kiwi/Yen. It [...]
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Peter F. Drucker on Management
If you have been living in a cave for the last 72 years and missed the work of management guru, Peter F. Drucker, here is your chance to catch up. I just finished reading The Essential Drucker, a weighty tome of 368 pages which summarized the high points and pearls of wisdom of the author’s [...]
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