Commodities Bubble or A Wall of Worry?

John Authers of the Financial Times penned a decent article over the weekend on the possible explanations for the commodities “bubble.” It’s worth popping over there and reading the whole thing but he sums up his three explanations of the commodities run-up as follows:
If the “consumer demand” explanation is right, then you should not [...]

No Comments

Recovering From Surgery

Still recovering from surgery so sorry for the lack of updates over the last week or so. I haven’t been able to do any sustained research so mostly keeping up with the daily newspapers and reading some books.
Interesting to see the commodities market action. We constantly hear about the “wall of worry” that [...]

No Comments

No Value Added

I recently made a resolution to stop focusing so much on what delusional pundits, authorities, and the like say in the media. It’s not productive (except as a gauge on sentiment), my portfolio has performed quite well ignoring their hallucinatory ramblings and I’m not sure why I should get so riled up over mass [...]

1 Comment

Selling Naked Puts: Bad for Your Portfolio?

Maybe so, according to Steven Sears of Barron’s. He put out a piece last week on options strategies and how retail investors can be duped into risky strategies by shucksters. One of the strategies he implicitly poo-poohs is selling naked puts:
“It gets better. He said he even heard one claim a few years ago [...]

No Comments

Interesting article on the US$ reserve status

Nice little UBS research note published on Barron’s website discussing the dollar’s resemblance to the sliding sterling in the early 20th century.
I have to agree with this article for the most part. I haven’t discussed this aspect much lately but despite my bearishness regarding the US dollar, I do not expect the armageddon type [...]

2 Comments

The Futility of Financial News?

Here’s another humdinger: according to Bloomberg (via BTV), Rio’s rejection of BHP Billiton’s bid has led to speculation about other mining takeovers. The news anchor then cited the rise in other “takeover speculation” mining stocks like Barrick Gold, Newmont Mining, Goldcorp, Kinross Gold as evidence of this speculation.
Let’s be clear — BHP’s bid for [...]

No Comments

-->