August 28, 2012 - Quote of the Day
?The strength of the Army must be credible enough to keep the knuckleheads abroad from miscalculating and instigating conflicts which they can?t win,? said Army Chief of Staff, General Ray Odierno.
Entries by DougD
Gold is Just Getting Started
One of my best calls of the year was to plead with readers to avoid gold like the plague, periodically dipping in on the short side only. The barbarous relic has been in a bear market since it peaked at $1,922 an ounce at the end of August last year. Gold shares have fared much
How U.S. Job Losses Will End
I was researching comparative Asian wage data the other day and was astounded with what I found. Textile workers earn $2.99 an hour in India (PIN), $1.84 in China (FXI), and $0.49 in Vietnam (VNM). This is an 18-fold increase in labor costs from $0.10 an-hour since Chinese industrialization launched in 1978. This compares to
Options for the Beginner
I strongly urge readers of this letter to log on to Amazon and buy a copy of Options for the Beginner and Beyond by W. Edward Olmstead. Options contracts offer investors a wonderful instrument for minimizing risk, while maximizing the upside, and I am going to recommend many more such strategies in the future. So,
August 27, 2012 -- Quote of the Day
?There?s been a lot of lost face in asset allocation over the past five years. Who would have thought that government bond yields could have gone so low?? said Michael Turner, a strategist at Aberdeen Asset Management.
The ?Safe? Trade Beats All
I certainly hope you took my advice to load your portfolio with corn and gold and to dump your equities five years ago. What? You didn?t? Then you have almost certainly suffered on the performance front. According to data compiled by my former employer, the Financial Times, corn was the top performing asset class since
BHP Cut Bodes Ill for the Global Economy
The decision by BHP Billiton, one of the world?s largest producers of copper, to postpone its planned $20 billion expansion of its Olympic Dam mine is sounding alarms about the near term state of the global economy. It is telling us that China is slowing faster than we thought, that demand for base metals is
August 24, 2012 - Quote of the Day
?Right now, our politics are holding us back. It?s like being the children of permanently divorcing parents. The political environment is a real downer for a lot of people, and their holding back,? said New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, author of the book, That Used To Be US.
Reach for Yield With Sovereign Debt
During my recent meeting with the senior portfolio managers of the big Swiss banks, I kept hearing the same word over and over: yield, yield, yield! The search for yield by end investors has become so overwhelming that it now trumps all other considerations. So I am starting a series of major pieces on the
Why I Love/Hate the Oil Companies
With oil (USO) getting ready to take a run at $100 a barrel once again, the first thing I do when I get up every morning is to curse the oil companies as the blood sucking scourges of modern civilization. I then fall down on my knees and thank goodness that we have the oil