It was a typical fall day in San Francisco, the fog wafting in and out through the Golden Gate Bridge. I took the opportunity to attend a company sponsored rally of Nissan Leaf drivers on the Marina Green. These were the fanatics, the diehards, the truly devoted. These were people who were willing to bet
Boy, am I spoiled for choice on what to do this weekend. On the one hand, I have been invited to join the president on the reviewing stand for Monday?s inauguration in Washington DC. On the other, the Maverick?s World Surf competition near California?s Half Moon Bay is on the same day, which has not
Global Market Comments January 17, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trades: (APRIL 19 CHICAGO STRATEGY LUNCHEON) (MLP?S ARE ON FIRE), (CVRR), (SXCP), (AMJ), (EEP), (KMP), (TLP) (ALL I WANT TO DO IS RETIRE)
Master Limited Partnerships have been on fire since the beginning of the year. Once the deal on the ?Fiscal Cliff? was done, and these instruments? special tax treatment protected, it was off to the races. These unique and versatile instruments combine the tax benefits of a limited partnership with the liquidity of publicly traded securities.
I have always believed that if you don?t have a sense of humor, then you better get the hell out of this business. Below is a link to a YouTube video entitled ?All I Want to do is Retire? which covers the decline of the brokerage industry over the last 20 years. The video is
Global Market Comments January 16, 2013 Fiat Lux Featured Trades: (VIX), (VXX), (AAPL), (SPY), (IWM), (BA), (TLT), (USO), (FXY), (YCS), (FXE), (YCS), (EUO), (GLD), (SLV)
I?ll give myself a ?B? on this one. Sure, with the Trade Alert Service generating a 14.87% net profit for the year, I was able to bring in double the Dow average, and triple what most hedge funds delivered, including some of the biggest ones. But for once, I did not achieve true greatness. I
From time to time I receive an email from a subscriber telling me that they are unable to get executions on trade alerts that are as good as the ones I get. There are several possible reasons for this: 1) Markets move, sometimes quite dramatically so. 2) Your Trade Alert email was hung up on
I was in a huge hurry last week when I sent out a Trade Alert to buy insurance giant American International Group (AIG), operating from a Chicago hotel suite with a stock market that was flying. Now that I am home, and have single handedly brought Oakland?s crime wave to a juddering halt, I have
I have been relying on David Hale as my de facto global macro economist for decades, and I never miss an opportunity to get his updated views. The challenge is in writing down David?s eye popping, out of consensus ideas fast enough, because he spits them out in such a rapid-fire succession. Since David is
Global Market Comments January 7, 2013 Fiat Lux 2013 Annual Asset Class Review FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Featured Trades: (SPX), (QQQQ), (AAPL), (XLF), (BAC), (EEM),(EWZ), (RSX), (PIN), (FXI), (TUR), (EWY), (EWT), (IDX) (TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (PCY), (MUB), (HCP) (FXE), (EUO), (FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB) (FCX), (VALE), (MOO), (DBA), (MOS), (MON), (AGU), (POT),
I am writing this report from a first class sleeping cabin on Amtrak's California Zephyr. We are now pulling away from Chicago's Union Station, leaving its hurried commuters, buskers, panhandlers, and majestic great halls behind. I am headed for Emeryville, California, just across the bay from San Francisco. That gives me only 56 hours to
Given the sudden uptick in trade alerts I have been sending out to my Global Trading Dispatch subscribers, some 60 since August 10, I have been inundated with requests for how to execute these. So I thought I?d take some time today to expound on the basics of order execution 101. There are three basic
I can just imagine how Ben Bernanke?s announcement of QE3 went down at Mitt Romney?s campaign headquarters in Massachusetts last week. Doors slammed, heads pounded against walls, and hair was torn out. You can almost hear the whoosh of resume?s flying down to conservative think tanks on Washington DC?s ?K? street as campaign workers scramble
I received another one of those scratchy cell phone calls from my friend in the West Texas oil patch. You could almost feel the dust coming through the ether. He said that while Ben Bernanke his committed to buying $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities as part of QE3, he has not promised to
Those transfixed by gold blasting through the $1,750 level have been missing the real action in silver. The white metal has soared 34% to $34 since the beginning of the year, compared to only a 14% move for the barbaric relic, an outperformance of 2.4 to one. I have been a raging bull on the
Take a look at the 30 year chart of the S&P 500 below, and it?s clear that the market is approaching a critical juncture. With the closely watched index closing at 1,460 today, we are a mere 140 points from the iron ceiling that has been unassailable for the past 13 years. The chart is
Since Ben Bernanke?s announcement of QE3 last week, new forecasts for gold have been popping up like acne at a high school prom. They range from the conservative to the absurd, from $1,900 to $55,000. But they all have one thing in common: higher. Before you head down to the local coin store to load
In view of Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, yesterday: ?it is time to reassess one?s investment strategy. ?The former Princeton professor didn?t give us QE3, he gave us QE3 with a turbocharger, on steroids, with an extra dose of adrenaline. ?He could spend another $1 trillion before all is said and done. ?If ever an
The big surprise today was not that the Federal Reserve launched QE3, but the extent of it. ?For a start, they moved the ?low interest rate? target out to mid-2015. ?They left the commitment to bond-buying open-ended. ?The first-year commitment came in at $480 billion, in-line with previous efforts. Reading the statement from the Open