PrimoTenore's Blog : Latest entries

So home sales are up and consumer confidence is rising, yet we're down 100 points this morning. This can't all be Cisco, can it?

That was looking like a really solid ceiling at 8,000.

It put in a nice run as support, too. Back in December, and again in February, the index really held up just above 8,000 for a good stretch.

Now we've been flirting with busting through it to the upside for three weeks. Is today the day it finally breaks through? Or is this inertia at 8,000 in both directions an indication that this is where the market wants to stay for a while?

It looks like today's market is not nearly so enthusiastic.

It sounds great on the surface. Attract investors by offering limited insurance against the risks involved. But what is the chance these stinking piles of unregulated paper are really worth more than the wood pulp under the ink?

If I can buy a steaming pile of dung at 85% off, that doesn't make it smell like roses.

But then again, I'm not one of those fancy derivative-trading Wall Street types. They may relish the chance to jum…

Early last month, I noticed how one of my favorite stocks, DXPE was bouncing around like a jumping bean, outpacing the market in whichever direction it decided to travel.

This is a stock I'd like to hold through the recovery. I like it as a long term investment for a number of reasons. But I was getting tired of sitting here making no money while I wait for the market to recover. And I don't have time to be one of those eight screens up at once daytraders.

I wondered if I could put DXPE's …

Nice surprise in my real portfolio today. LDK solar (LDK) is up almost 10% on the day! It's great to see green pixels on the rate of return for one of my positions for once.

I don't see any news on the stock. Is it really just that good a day on the overall market? My other positions are up a bit, too, but none by 10%.

In spite of my own awesomeness at picking individual stocks, I'd still like to put a fair chunk of cash into mutual funds during this downturn and let someone else do some of the work.

But I'm wondering about timing this move a lot more than I'm wondering about when to buy stocks.

Karen Dolan at Morningstar writes today that the outflows from mutuals is still proceeding at a record pace. All this redemption is forcing fund managers to make some very tough and probably bad decisions because…

I'm no expert on commodities, but watching the price of oil plunge so far so quickly confirms my suspicion that its recent highs were nearly 100% attributable to speculative trading and market manipulation.

As money flees the market in bucketfuls, the price of black gold has collapsed like the froth on yesterday's cappuccino.

Not long ago, George Soros and a bunch of other guys whose IQ forms a significant multiple of my own testified before congress, saying:

"While much of the run-up i…

Since when do reporters from Rolling Stone have a better understanding of the economy than analysts from The National Review?

In this online conversation for New York Magazine, RS's MattTaibbi absolutely destroys Byron York from the NR.

Stupid TinyURL got hijacked. Here's the link

NYMag.com

And a sample, where Taibbi calls York on his ridiculous claim that minority home buyers and not Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are to blame:


M.T.: Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you exp…

OK, I'll admit I slept through most of Macroeconomics 201. So I'm no Krugman, but here's a serious question.

If the yields on the safest investments available are at an all time low, isn't it time to consider that check you write every month as an even safer investment?

Suppose you're paying 5 or even 6% on your mortgage. Doesn't a guaranteed 5% sound pretty great right now compared to the available alternatives?

Granted, this approach isn't for the high flyers on the leaderboard here w…

I'm sure these will be funnier when we're in full recovery.













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