The Other Side Of The Story

I’m sure many of you have seen the Barron’s cover story this week [$], claiming that the commodities upside is driven mostly by speculators. On a basic level, this is true — all investors are basically “speculating.” But we know that’s not what the author meant.
I don’t mind if someone presents a bearish [...]

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Division In the Ranks?

As much as I’d love to tackle the infighting among the Democrats, I’m actually referring to the divergence among some prominent value investors. Whitney Tilson, of T2 Partners / Value Investing Insight / the Value Investing Congress / Financial Times, posted a piece on Seeking Alpha about a possible dead-cat bounce in financials. [...]

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It’s Official - The Commodities Bubble Has Popped!

I heard it on TV so it must be true.
All kidding aside, the last two days have been absolutely brutal for the commodities side of our portfolio and today, the energy stocks also got whacked. And I don’t know about you folks but I haven’t reached that zen, Buffett-like state where falling prices don’t [...]

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Good News — No Inflation in February!

Get the details here:
Inflation Flat in February
Supposedly, this gives the Fed room to cut. I guess all that talk about inflation being a lagging indicator goes out the window when sh*t hits the fan. Of course, the bad news at Bear Stearns isn’t a surprise — Msr. Merrano of Bear Stearns had said [...]

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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 [...]

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The True Wall of Worry Resides in Commodities, Not Equities

A few peculiarities I’ve noticed about mainstream financial media:
* Seemingly everyone is a contrarian. It doesn’t matter which argument, bull or bear, is being made, it is usually prefaced by “I’m a contrarian by nature” or some variation thereof. Obviously people don’t really know what that word means.
* No one is ever called [...]

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