I always pay attention when mega hedge fund manger, David Tepper, speaks. The trading legend is able to use his gritty, Pittsburgh roots to distill down massively complicated global macro trends into a few simple truths, and make a fortune trading off them. In 2010, his comments triggered the “Tepper Rally”, which my readers and [...]

I have always been an aviation enthusiast, flying every rare, antique plane I could get my hands on over the last 40 years. My adventures have taken me from flying a 1929 Norwegian spruce and Irish linen constructed Belgian Stampe to a MIG-25 Soviet fighter to the edge of space at 90,000 feet (check out [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, delivered a real blockbuster yesterday in the aftermath of the final Open Market Committee meeting of 2012 – looks like he really wants to end the year with a bang. Not only will the Fed continue with $40 billion-a-month worth of mortgage-backed securities to supercharge the housing market, it will [...]

Avoiding emerging markets generally, and China specifically, has been one of my more prescient market calls this year. I never believed in the hard landing scenario proffered by uber bear, Jim Chanos, for two seconds, betting instead that the Middle Kingdom would settle down to a more sedentary 6-7% GDP growth rate. Once a new [...]

Apple has been the lead stock for the market for most of 2012. But if you depended on Steve Jobs’ creation for market direction this week you would have absolutely had your head handed to you. Apple plunged a mind numbing 24%, cutting an eye popping $140 billion of its market capitalization, while the S&P [...]

I have been following Freeport McMoRan (FCX) for about 30 years now, and it has long been one of my favorite companies, as it is one of the world’s purest plays on copper. I followed it during the dark days when the red metal was trading in the basement at $0.70/pound, and liked it just [...]

In view of the gut churning $37.05 plunge in Apple’s share price today, I was hot on the phone to my contacts in Cupertino to learn what was going on. It was the worst performance in four years in percentage terms. There were unsubstantiated rumors that Q4 smartphone sales would be flat. Was there anything [...]

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 for at least another 10 years. I have been using the US Census Bureau’s population pyramids as a long leading [...]

I am convinced that the risk markets put in a six-month bottom on November 16. The only question from here is whether we chop sideways for the rest of the year, or keep drifting up. If I see a good entry point, I will shoot out an urgent trade alert on this as fast as [...]

Every trader in the oil market is fascinated by the recent price action. The last few months have seen an onslaught of negative news developments that should have sent the price of Texas tea to the moon. Instead, it has fallen, from a high of $110 in February to as low as $84 last week. [...]

We are now deep into the fiscal cliff negotiations, which you can expect to be a total nightmare from a trading point of view. You can expect dueling headlines for the next month from both parties. One day they will be on, then off, then on again. There will be tons of posturing. A “light [...]

It was after midnight Florida time when my call finally got through to my friend in Cupertino, a senior manager at Apple (AAPL). I asked, what gives? The stock is off 24% from its September peak, fresh on the heels of its wildly-successful iPhone 5 launch. Is there something going on with the company that [...]

Analysts were stunned by Friday’s October nonfarm payroll, which came in at a solid 171,000, vastly better than the 30,000-150,000 that the trading community expected. The headline unemployment rate edged up to 7.9%.  More importantly, August and September were revised up by 84,000. It all makes the conspiracy theories offered up to explain last month’s [...]