April 2008
April 30, 2008 –
Kraft had a 20% increase in sales but a 15% decline in profit? (702/608 - 1)*100%. [more]
April 30, 2008 –
Financial Times has a good post on the world food crisis. The article ties in how energy prices affect food, so with high energy prices food prices are likely to remain higher. [more]
April 29, 2008 –
Market Ticker has an interesting post about government bailouts for homeowners, and I make no claims about understanding what happening here. I don't know the details at all, and the post doesn't help me to understand the details. [more]
April 29, 2008 –
Wow, amazing really... [more]
April 29, 2008 –
Amazing, in the last quarter more than 0.5% of homes, 1 in 194, got foreclosure notices in this past quarter. [more]
April 28, 2008 –
Great, just great... A mouse ran under my bedroom door and apparently there are two wolves that have been seen around town and the bears will be coming out soon... [more]
April 28, 2008 –
Who remembers the story?
Mish has a post featuring it.
April 27, 2008 –
It looks like many brands are going to struggle with pricing power in this next round. The NYtimes has an article about recession pricing. Consumers are changing their behaviour in response to increasing costs, "more pasta and less red meat, more video rentals and fewer movie tickets." [more]
April 27, 2008 –
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RELATED TICKERS: ETFC
E-Trade is having major upper management turnover, no doubt over its almost bankrupcy and extreme challenges due to its involvement in the subprime mortgage mess. [more]
April 27, 2008 –
I am back to using docstoc for this post as it makes putting a table in much easier. The tables you've seen in previous posts have been very labour intensive to include. [more]
April 26, 2008 –
This Big Picture post has some good links about how UBS lost $37 billion. There is a 50 page report on this stuff and is recommended reading.
I found the comments quite an interesting read as well and I titled the post based on one of the comments.
April 26, 2008 –
Richard Beddard at Interactive Investor put me onto this one today. He did a post on Richard Pzena and had an interesting link to a Forbe's interview with Pzena. [more]
April 26, 2008 –
I've been saying that I think pension plans are going to take a huge hit from the deleveraging and, well, best to just quote part of the article... [more]
April 25, 2008 –
Big picture had a post on the global food crisis, but what got my attention was a San Diego Tribune post that put a picture of a graph using "Shadow Government Statistic." [more]
April 24, 2008 –
How's that for a prediction? Almost as good as the S&P's prediction that oil will be between $41 and $141 by the end of the year.
This predicting stuff is easy.
April 24, 2008 –
"Ford posted an unexpected quarterly profit on Thursday, led by strong results in Europe and South America and a narrowing loss in North America." [more]
April 24, 2008 –
Bespoke has a great post that truly shows the rising P/E of stocks. It looks like the trend is very clearly up. They also put a red dot on graphs to show when the market topped in the fall. The fact that P/E's are rising when the market has declined means that these graphs truly don't show the degree to which earnings have declined. [more]
April 23, 2008 –
It looks like financial companies should be hiring workers to deal with the workload from deliquent accounts, but as anyone who's been following the markets knows, the financial industry is laying off workers. What I found interesting in this article is how overworked those handling mortgages are and that there were 90,000 more deliquencies in a period they were able to handle 50,000. [more]
April 23, 2008 –
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RELATED TICKERS: WLP
, GSK
My thinking when I first started investing was that with an aging population anything to do with the types of services they would use would probably do well. I've rethought my thinking... [more]
April 22, 2008 –
Caps players have become very well educated about how over valued homebuilder's still are because of Floridabuilder's posts. [more]
April 21, 2008 –
I've been saying for some time that I expect interest rates to increase. Perhaps it would have been better to say borrowing rate. [more]
April 21, 2008 –
This link is a kind of cool interactive link about whether people are better off today or not.
I should count my blessings as I am much better off than 5 years ago.
April 21, 2008 –
Bespoken has a post on the negative growth of earnings that have been reported by the 20% of companies that have reported so far. Currently it is at -37% year over year. [more]
April 21, 2008 –
It takes work to figure out a gold stock has hedged production, contracts to sell gold at a set price. Barrack has quite a bit of hedge on production from mines not yet produced. They've put out specially worded press releases, "No Producing Mine Hedged," which easily misleads the average investor. [more]
April 21, 2008 –
I just came across this news article about Vancouver having the lowest inflation. [more]
April 19, 2008 –
So, I like the increase power and ease of being able to add tables, graphs and pictures with using docstoc.com. [more]
April 19, 2008 –
I like the personalized Avtar thing and TMFJake has offered to personalize your avtar for you if you are an allstar. [more]
April 18, 2008 –
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RELATED TICKERS: GOOG
To have had google options... [more]
April 17, 2008 –
More and more economist are forecasting more than a $1 trillion in losses in housing. Frank Veneroso has added his voice to the estimates, $2 trillion in his case. [more]
April 16, 2008 –
That's me....
April 16, 2008 –
Females go Ekkkk! I noticed Barry on Big Picture goes Urk, or something like that. [more]
April 16, 2008 –
I remember how expensive housing seemed when I was first shopping around. I knew where it had been, and there was no question that it was up. It took a while to accept what the prices were and I watched in disbelief prices go up an additional 20-25% before I jumped in. Prices did come down some, but I found that after I was in the market and had paid the outrageous price, I had a greater degree of "price acceptance," that home was worth $x and that one $y dollars and so on. But there was a period of price rejection in beliefs and before actually committing to buying. [more]
April 15, 2008 –
It seems there are lots of loophole in the law around the insurance. The law allows the FDIC to borrow money to cover losses should they exceed the reserves, which are only 1.22%, and only $52 billion.
I don't like this...
April 15, 2008 –
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RELATED TICKERS: CROX
Things about the market that get me is the degree to which it takes off without any fundamental support, like CROX taking off to $75/share... [more]
April 15, 2008 –
Read further down in this post on how changes to laws for retailers work. [more]
April 15, 2008 –
Food security has been making the news. [more]
April 14, 2008 –
I'm sick and going to lie down shortly here, but I just saw a post titled "1 in 5 communities vulnerable to population loss." It is a Canadian story, but what interested me about the story isn't where, but more the effects of population on the markets. [more]
April 14, 2008 –
My sister sent this to me... [more]
April 13, 2008 –
Every once in a while I check the LME commodity prices and warehouse levels. In today's market you simply are working in the dark as to the degree of metals that are out there that are not being delivered to the LME but will ultimately be on the market for sale again, so seeing a low level isn't necessarily an indication of a tight market. Hedge funds often buy up commodities these days and distort the historical data. [more]
April 13, 2008 –
This week should be interesting. Reporting later in the week are many of the troubled financial sector, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Washington Mutual, Bankcorp... It should be very interesting. [more]
April 13, 2008 –
Robert Reich has a piece that talks about how lowered standards of living and increased frustration leads to being able to rally people to the blame game. [more]
April 12, 2008 –
It was February 1985. I was 23 and I had just started at a job that I anticipated would be interesting, but problematic. I was planning on going back school in September so it really didn't matter. I only planned to be there for about 6 months. [more]
April 12, 2008 –
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RELATED TICKERS: IBM
The Dow is truly a crazy benchmark because it is only 30 stocks and the more a stock costs, the more weight in has in the performance, and if it splits, its weight declines to half. [more]
April 11, 2008 –
I was reading The Mogambo Guru and he challenged his readers to, well, here's his exact words: [more]
April 11, 2008 –
I noticed Linens'n Things is likely to file for bankrupcy protection. I noticed that it was in serious trouble a few days ago only I couldn't find a ticker to underperform, oh well. [more]
April 10, 2008 –
I like some surveys and I like to contrast them to myself. This one is about how people say they are doing compared to 5 years ago. [more]
April 10, 2008 –
Good morning. Yves describes this one as a critter crawling out from under a rock.. This garbage never ends. Lehman has some questionable accounting and it appear that the investment banks that are now allowed to borrow from the fed are "taking their hung leveraged buyout loans and bundling them into collatearlized loan obligations so they can use them as collateral for loans fromt the Fed." [more]
April 09, 2008 –
The WSJ blog tallies the buybacks for 2007 and financial stocks were at the top of the list for buybacks. [more]
April 09, 2008 –
How come it takes the IMF so long to predict a global economic slow down? [more]
April 08, 2008 –
Bespoken has a post on median analyst expectation on commodity prices. I am sure commodity bulls, and gold bugs will have something to say about it and I think this post will be an interesting one to check back on in a year.
April 08, 2008 –
Story today with Merrill warning investors that financials are a "value trap" in that they look like they are under valued but there is no catalzyt for them to turn around and people are just realising the problem isn't just a US problem but in markets around the world. I've been warning since January 07. [more]
April 08, 2008 –
This is just an anonymous quote a friend was saying about a meeting... [more]
April 08, 2008 –
I was amused when I read the news just a couple days ago where Sam Zell said he was viagra for business, but reading Mish today I don't think the viagra is working... It seems the bonds for the Tribune are selling at 37c on the dollar. [more]
April 06, 2008 –
Today I became the first generation in my family.
Yesterday I was still 3rd generation, but my grandmother passed away. She was the last... My mom was the first to go, in 1976, my first grandpa in 1977, my first grandmother in 1994, my last grandpa in 1999, my father in 2004 and now my last grandmother, in 2008.
April 06, 2008 –
As adults media -- newspaper, radio, TV and now internet -- are extremely important for how we learn new information about the world around us. Before the internet media has been narrowly owned and narrowly controlled. [more]
April 05, 2008 –
You know how the autofill shows titles you previously used... I already used "Changing the Rules..." [more]
April 05, 2008 –
I couldn't resist this one. I suppose metaphors for strong is virile and impotent for weak. Sam Zell takes those metaphors to a whole new level...
April 05, 2008 –
I have the best sources... [more]
April 04, 2008 –
Big Picture has a piece that suggests that the current foreclosure rate and problem is under reported because lenders do not have the man power to handle it, so they are looking the other when when home owners start to default and homes that should be under foreclosure are not. [more]
April 04, 2008 –
You know the economy is bad when a store, Family Dollar, attempting under $10 pricing is seeing earnings decline by almost 1/3rd over a year ago. [more]
April 04, 2008 –
Bespoken has a piece about the buyout where JP has disclosed buying 11 million Bear Stearn shares for $12.24/share. It looks like they plan to continue buying until they get 49.5%.
April 03, 2008 –
In the past I've looked into a number of gold stocks and I have consistently not liked them. The grade of gold being mined is so low, the costs are out rageous. When I was researching stocks, and many mining stocks, what I was noticing was the downward trend in grade. [more]
April 03, 2008 –
Mish does a very good job of putting pieces together. He has one that ends with questioning the legality of bailing out Bear Stearn. I've seen other references that say the fed used a clause that hasn't been used since the depression, but Hussman gives reasons why it isn't legal. [more]
April 02, 2008 –
People aren't reading the employment data correctly. This CNN article covers the many ways employment data is far worse that what is reported. [more]
April 02, 2008 –
This morning appears to be a slow news day after all the April Fools jokes of yesterday, perhaps the largest being the 3.59% rally for the day. As I predicted fairly close to the top in the fall that smart money was selling into the rallies, I doubt that few buying yesterday will end up happy with their purchases. [more]
April 01, 2008 –
I was just thinking here, all day I could not tell if something was serious or if it was April Fools. [more]
April 01, 2008 –
The Ontario Teacher's Pension has always been considered one of the richest, but it is short about 12% by recent calculations. [more]
April 01, 2008 –
Some of the headlines are claiming the write-downs and the end of the losses is near. Anyone that has looked at the graphs around the Alt-A paper knows that simply isn't true. [more]
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