Virtually every analyst has been puzzled by the seeming immunity of stock markets to soaring oil prices this year. In fact, stocks and crude have been tracking almost one to one on the upside. The charts below a friend at JP Morgan sent me a long way towards explaining this apparent dichotomy. The first shows
I am going to use the weakness in Bank of America shares today to cover my short position through selling my existing position in the (BAC) May, 2012 $7 puts at $0.24 cents or best. There is such minimal volatility in the market these days that when a little bit comes along, you have to
?What?s very different today is that when dividend yields are much higher than interest rates, you don?t need as much earnings growth and capital gains to have a great investment,? said professor Jeremy Siegel at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.
That is certainly the conclusion of the financial markets. When Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, failed to mention the magic words in his House Humphrey Hawkins testimony on Wednesday, risk assets were sent into a tailspin. Gold suffered a $100 move plunge in hours, the futures market seeing an almost instantaneous liquidation of $1.3 billion
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?If you?re not busy being born, you?re busy dying,? said folk singer, Bob Dillon.
Everyone knows how much I love Apple shares as an investment. For years now, my report forecasting that the stock would hit $1,000 someday has been circulating inside the company for a sought after weekend read. Just today, my old friend, co-founder Steve Wozniak, was quoting from it in making his own $1,000 prediction. I
I am a notorious seeker of great bargains. I buy sun hats in the winter, umbrellas in the summer, and Christmas ornaments in January when Costco sells them for ten cents on the dollar. I even go into the barrio to buy Japanese sake where no one knows what it is, and it is sometimes
?If I relied on my customers to tell me what they wanted, they?d ask for faster horses,? said Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors.
If you feel like this market has sucked you down a rabbit hole, you have plenty of company. I have never seen such a profusion of contrary cross market indicators. Traders are running up shares prices while companies are cutting earnings forecasts. Economists are raising GDP forecasts as rising energy prices are taking them the