When I first visited Calcutta in 1976, more than 800,000 people were sleeping on the sidewalks, I was hauled everywhere by a very lean, barefoot rickshaw driver, and drinking the water out of a tap was tantamount to committing suicide. Some 36 years later, and the subcontinent is poised to overtake China's white hot growth
I have spent many hours speaking at length with the generals who are running our wars in the Middle East, like David Petraeus, and James E. Cartwright. 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 language training
?Take 200 round trips to Australia, and you really start to rack up the miles,? said Tom Stoker, and automotive sales analyst who just surpassed 10 million frequent flier points on United Airlines. It makes my own 1 million miles seen puny by comparison.
For the past two years, I have maintained a GDP growth forecast for the US of 2% a year. I have not stuck with this figure because I am stubborn, obstinate, or too lazy to update my analysis of the future of the world?s largest economy. I have kept this number nailed to the mast
?For the president to not focus on the financial industry in the wake of a financial crisis, he would have to be blind,? said former Federal Reserve governor, Paul Volker
It was 3:30 am when one of my old staffers from Morgan Stanley in London called. He was now running a proprietary trading desk at Goldman Sachs, and I didn?t think he was rousing me out of a dead sleep to reminisce about the good old days. He told me that the firm?s research department
Paid up subscribers to Global Trading Dispatch and the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader newsletter are entitled to a password that gives them access to my premium content. Without it you will be unable to access the best parts of the new website, including my daily real time trading portfolio, trade alert tutorial
?Banks make money on a big fat yield spread. The Fed is killing that,? said Michael Pento of Pento Portfolio Strategies.
Global Trading Dispatch?s Trade Alert Service posted a new all-time high yesterday, clocking a 48% return since inception. That takes the average annualized return up to 30.3%, ranking it among the top five performing hedge funds in the world. Those happy subscribers who bought my service in early May reaped an instant 35% profit following
It?s always nice when intelligent people agree with you. That was my feeling after the Federal Reserve gave notice today that it was downgrading its forecast of US economic growth for 2012 from 2.6% to 2.15%. That is a major step down from the 3% and higher predictions they were hanging on to earlier. The