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yeah, thats my cousin, tellin.
Roger:
Are you in a buying mode yet?
News item:
Satire Courtesy of The Onion
@2 No, no, no! Of course, I can’t time markets — no one can — but I make educated guesses based on available information. Last I looked, the market was down between 175 – 225 Dow points a few minutes ago, despite better-than-expected unemployment data. I’ll explain why momentarily, but I want to get this comment up quickly.
Let’s see:
Republicans wasted a whole summer fighting with the White House and the Dems in the Senate over a debt ceiling increase.
Disapproval of Congress reaches a record 82 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08......html?_r=2
We gained 117,000 jobs but we need 120,000 jobs just to keep up with population growth.
The double dip recession may be finally here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08.....ng.html?hp
And of course right wingers are too stupid to do anything about it save cutting rich people’s taxes. Corporations? They barely contribute 8 percent to the federal coffers – that means companies pay that are too small or don’t yet have the loopholes that other companies use.
In the past we fought back against recessions. Right wingers would rather put plaques on federal buildings saying “In God We Trust”.
http://wonkette.com/441053/bud.....-buildings
The new noise will be over trade deals, Columbia, Korea – fat chance any jobs will come from that. There may be some economic nationalism over China’s currency manipulations, yeah, like there’s a lot to be gained by waging a trade cold war with China..
Thanks right wingers.
Read this article, it’ll give you a picture of what’s going on.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....wild-ride/
Here’s a summary of what it says:
1. The stock market has dropped about 10% and likely will correct 15% – 20% by the end of the summer, so stocks haven’t bottomed yet.
2. The U.S. economy is still in recession, and needs further government stimulus that won’t be forthcoming because of the political situation in D.C., so the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better.
3. The world’s financial markets are unimpressed with the U.S. debt deal, which they see as “smoke and mirrors.” Nearly everyone except congressional Republicans understands the U.S. can’t make a dent in its deficits without more revenues, but with Republicans digging in their heels against needed tax increases, the prospects of the U.S. getting its fiscal house in order aren’t good.
4. Job cuts are surging, which will take U.S. unemployment “much higher” from its current 9.1% level.
5. The situation in Europe is grim. “For anyone in the know, it’s a catastrophe in the making,” one investment expert says. “The European economy is collapsing.” And not only European banks, but also U.S. banks, are on the hook if it does.
6. Bubbles exist in China’s economy, and a likely slowdown there will lower demand for commodities, which will hurt emerging economies, and cause weaker demand for industrial and construction equipment, which would hurt the U.S. and European economies.
To the above, I would add these thoughts of my own:
(1) The strong stock market rally after mid-2009 was fueled by surging corporate profits that resulted mostly from one-time productivity gains that came from laying off workers during the recession and making remaining employees work harder. Everyone in the investment world understood that profit growth would be slower going forward, even if the economy continued to recover.
(2) Reputable economists are nearly unanimous that the 2009-2010 stimulus wasn’t large enough to kick the economy back into gear; but, succumbing to political pressures, Obama opted for half of a stimulus. With the effects of that stimulus now largely expended, the economy has stalled and is falling back into recession, which will drag down the corporate profits that drive stock prices.
(3) Although many quality stocks now look quite cheap against conventional measures such as P/Es, those measures are misleading and you should value stocks by assuming reduced earnings going forward, which has the effect of raising P/E multiples. In other words, look at profits a year from now, not this year’s EPS (earnings per share), and look at forward P/Es, not current P/Es, to figure out how the market is pricing stocks. If you do it this way, what looks like a bargain turns out to be fully priced in many cases.
(4) It’s impossible to time markets — nobody can do it — so how will I know when to spend my hoarded cash and buy stocks? There’s basically two ways to do this. One, ignore the macro market and just look at the numbers of the individual stocks and buy them when they seem to be a good deal. Two, instead of trying to buy near the bottom while the market is still going down, wait until the bottom has gone by (so you can see where it is) and start buying on the way back up — you’ll miss the lowest prices this way, but you’ll have the security of knowing you didn’t jump in too soon. My strategy is different for every market correction. (I typically stay fully invested during corrections and simply ride them out; this time, I liquidated about 30% of my portfolio in advance of the correction because it was so damned obvious it was coming.) For this correction, I’m using a combination of the two approaches outlined above.
(5) Prior to the 2008 financial crisis and the 2009 stock market crash, I was heavily invested in energy, especially oilfield services stocks, and that was a winning strategy — some of those stocks tripled after I bought them. At the depth of the Great Recession, when oil prices were weak, I lightened up on energy stocks, then started moving back into them in mid-2009 as the strengthening economy pushed energy prices back up — for example, I made a fat profit on Arch Coal. By mid-2010, about the only reasonably priced energy stocks were the big integrated oils, and I bought Chevron and Exxon last year. As of this moment, I’ve sold off a third of my Chevron stock and all of my Exxon stock, and I’m in “underweight” mode on energy stocks again because if we fall back into recession that may drag oil prices down to the $40 – $60 range again.
(6) The stocks to emphasize right now, and for the next two or three years, are large-cap blue-chip companies with dividend yields in the 2.5% to 4% range that have strong records of reliably increasing their dividends. These stocks are found in several major sectors. Right now, the highest yields (around 5%) are in telecoms and tobacco. In telecoms, AT&T and Verizon are the best stocks, Vodafone is okay. In tobacco, I like Altria and Phillip Morris, but please understand that Big Tobacco is a no-growth industry and these are primarily yield plays. For long-term buy-and-hold, with an eye on total return from both capital gains and steady dividend growth, I’m looking at two sectors, food processing and household staples. As in any market sector, some stocks are better than others. My choices in these sectors are Campbell Soups, Heinz, General Mills (Kellogg’s is okay), Coca-Cola and Pepsi (between the two, I like Coca-Cola better, even though it’s a bit more expensive), Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, and Procter & Gamble. Wait for the market to bottom, and buy these companies after the correction has pounded their shares down, then plan to hold them at least two or three years — you won’t be sorry. When the economy has fully recovered and is growing strongly again, which may take 5 years or more, get out of these stodgy stocks and move your money into growth engines. This far ahead, I have no idea what those will be, except energy will always be a vital commodity and you can never go wrong by getting into the right energy stocks ahead of economic growth — you want to get into energy before demand and prices for oil, coal, and natural gas begin expanding.
So, to summarize, I’ve been focusing on large-cap blue-chip dividend-paying stocks since early 2009 and, in retrospect, market experts now say that was the top-performing category over the last two years. I’m convinced that’s still the place to have my money for at least the next 12 to 24 months. If you get into these stocks near the bottom of this correction, even if the economy slides back into recession, I think you can earn a portfolio yield of around 4% and a total return in the range of 8% to 10% over that time — that’s pretty damned decent in this zero-interest-rate environment.
I think owning any type of fixed-income investment, such as corporate or muni bonds, is foolhardy. Bond prices move opposite to interest rates, and when interest rates are zero, bonds earn nothing and there’s only one direction their prices can go — down. CDs and guaranteed bank savings aren’t much better, because we do have significant inflation, so you’re paying them to keep your money for you. If you want to play with gold or silver, fine, throw in some pork bellies and wheat futures while you’re at it; the only commodity I really understand is oil, so except for trading in and out of energy stocks, I don’t play commodities — and gold is a commodity. I don’t think you can go wrong by owning the type of stocks I mentioned above, but as I said, don’t buy them now.
Cash is king right now. Hold onto your cash, even if it’s in a zero-interest money market or bank deposit. Keep watching the market and be ready to get out of cash and back into stocks when this correction peters out. Nobody knows when that will be, but I’m guessing anywhere from early fall to late in the year. Keep your eyes glued to the European situation — it’s still under most people’s radar, and it’s much worse than most people think it is. We could get a major double-dip market correction if Europe implodes.
The Dow was down 175 points a few minutes ago, but incredibly, is now up 82 points.
Looks like there’s a mini-buying spree going on. I’m not going to jump on it, though. There’s too much shit going on in the world for this to be the bottom.
Up about 100 points now. How to explain this kind of volatily — a 275-point swing in 10 minutes? Here’s my answer.
About three-quarters of all stocks are owned by mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, banks, hedge funds, sovereign funds, and other big institutional traders. In this market, trading is dominated by pre-programmed computers that buy or sell on signals or triggers that have been programmed into these computers. And computers can execute trades in nanoseconds. So you can get numerous institutional program trades executing at the same time, and because there’s so much similarity among the algorithms used by the people who set up these robotic traders, they all act in the same direction at the same time, which means they’re all trying to sell the same stocks or buy the same stocks simultaneously, and this has an instant effect on prices.
The other big thing going on in the market right now is that money is flooding out of stock mutual funds into bond funds as small retail investors spooked by the market selloff run for what they perceive as safety. What they’re doing is stupid and dangerous, but they’re doing it, and as people pull their cash out of stock mutual funds, the managers of those funds are forced to sell stocks at any price they can get to raise the cash they need to cover those withdrawals. I love this situation because it creates opportunities for speculators like me to buy good stocks at bargain prices.
You always want to do your buying when everyone else is dumping stocks because they’re scared to hell. The best time to buy stocks is always when everyone else thinks the world is coming to an end.
We’re up about 125 points now. I’ve just watched the market swing 300 points in 15 minutes. This has to be program trading by supercomputers. Nothing else could cause this.
At this moment (11 AM) the Dow is up about 137 points, and the uptrend has been holding up for over an hour now, so it looks like we’re headed for an “up” day on jobs data that wasn’t quite as awful as everyone anticipated.
MSNBC just provided some clarity about why the stock market turned around this morning.
Under the headline “No Double Dip Recession … For Now,” MSNBC reports:
The government’s monthly job report pointed to a surprise uptick in hiring in July. Payrolls expanded by 117,000, the Labor Department said on Friday, as private employers added 154,000 workers. … ‘This is a fabulous number,’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet, but this is a good sign that we are going to avoid recession.'”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....e_economy/
And in a separate story, MSNBC said:
“Wall Street turned positive on Friday in a volatile session that saw indexes swing sharply between gains and losses.
“The trading day began with a strong rally on optimism over an upbeat employment report. But traders gave way to fears of a recession and concern over Europe’s ongoing financial crisis.
“All three major indexes were experiencing volatile trading throughout the day.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....d_economy/
Breaking News — Mixed Verdict In Katrina Cop Killings
“A federal jury convicted five current or former police officers Friday of civil rights violations in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina, but decided they were not guilty of murder.
“All five officers were convicted Friday of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.
“However, the jury decided that neither fatal shooting was a murder.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....nd_courts/
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged a total of 20 New Orleans cops in the aftermath of Katrina. This was the first case to reach trial.
There is no way – repeat – no way I would ever fly Ryan Air. I know they have cheap flights – a fellow I know who is in the military and frequently deployed to Europe and “countries where there is a lot of sand” has used them for recreational travel all over Europe.
But this is the airline where the owner has tried to convince aircraft manufacturers to go to bat for him with regulatory agencies for him to sell standing-room only tickets, and install pay toilets (credit cards only, please). When flights were diverted to other airports due to weather or volcanic ash, the airline wouldn’t provide transportation to the original destination, hotel vouchers, or even bus or taxi service into town.
But this recent event takes the cake for poor customer service and, especially, poor training of the cabin crew.
Flying out of the U.K. (LHR?) to Sweden, a Swedish man goes into a cold sweat and stops breathing, in an apparant heart attack. His wife, who happens to be a nurse, calls out to see if there is a doctor on board, and asks the cabin attendents for oxygen.
The cabin attendants, who apparently felt that they knew more than the man’s wife and nurse, and didn’t need to even touch the patient to make a diagnosis, assured her that he was suffering only from low blood pressure, and offered him a sandwich and a soda. This, while his wife was pounding on his chest in what was ultimately a succesful effort to get his heart beating again.
The crew either didn’t inform the pilot that there was a medical emergency on board, or the pilot decided not to divert to the first available airport, or the airline execs instructed the pilot to proceed with his scheduled flight anyway, regardless of the emergency. Upon arrival there was no ambulance waiting, the family had to drive him to the hospital from the airport.
After the man’s wife gets his heart beating again, the flight crew asks the wife to pay for the sandwich and soda.
RyanAir Gives Cardiac Arrest Passenger Sandwich, Charges Him For It
What does this tell you all? The message is simple from the markets:
WE’RE MORE AFRAID OF A DOUBLE-DIP RECESSION THAN RIGHT WING HALLUCINATIONS OF BANKRUPTCY OR INFLATION!
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbea....._news_blog
@16 Why would anyone lend money to a government run by those guys for only 2.47%? After all, these people have already demonstrated what they think of legal obligations by tearing up union contracts, bankrupting corporate pensions, and going around saying the government should break its promises to senior citizens by junking social security and medicare.
As far as I’m concerned, Tea Party Republicans who need credit can borrow from Mafia loan sharks, who are in a better position to collect their principal and interest than I am.
How Stupid Is The FCC?
Conservatives love to assert that government can’t do anything right. While I believe government does a lot of things right, they sometimes do have a point. For example,
“Though politically savvy, the FCC is not noted for having the sharpest technical knives in the drawer. According to Aviation International News, last year it accidentally sold the total block of frequencies reserved for the B-2 stealth bomber.”
And now, it seems, the FCC has licensed a private wireless company to build transmitters that are likely to black out GPS reception in much of the U.S.
http://www.economist.com/blogs.....gps-fiasco
# 17: A wise man once taught me that no contract in the world can protect you from someone who’s determined to swindle you. Sure, you can spend a lot of money and get a very long contract with a lot of legaleese which tries to protect you, but a determined scoundrel will find a loophole somewhere.
Between honest men acting in good faith, however, a contract helps to spell out the mutual obligations so there are no misunderstandings or hurt feelings.
So if you don’t trust someone, don’t do business with them. Period. If you do trust them, get it in writing anyway.
So why should we trust Republicans? They’ve broken every promise they’ve made! They promised that if we cut taxes, the benefits would “trickle down” to us. Of course, we only got “trickled upon”. They promised us that tax cuts were the key to job growth, then watched them ship our jobs overseas. They promised in the last election it was all about jobs, and as soon as they got into office it was all about tax cuts for the wealthy (again), union-busting, etc. They have broken their word with the American people so many times, we have not reason to expect otherwise.
It’s like the adulterous husband who gets caught (again), and still pleads for one more chance. And for some reason, some Americans give it to them. I guess they are like an abused spouse, they keep coming back for more punishment. What they (and we) should do is leave the SOB’s behind, in droves.
@20 If voters were rational the GOP would have ceased to exist after Watergate. It hasn’t improved an iota since.
# 19: Hmmm, the FAA was the biggest obsticle to the broadband signal licenses, in that it would interfere with aircraft GPS equipment which is currently the standard for navigation and safety equipment. The Republicans shut down the FAA for a couple of weeks, and then the application sails through? I smell a rat.
There was a lot of money at stake in that process, and somebody’s going to get some very big campaign donations. We should find out which Congressmen/women were leaning hard on the FCC over the last couple of weeks.
Amanda Knox may not be an economics professor, but she’ll understand this news tidbit:
“Italian prosecutors have raided the offices of Moody’s and S&P in relation to recent falls in Italian stock prices …”
http://www.economist.com/blogs.....s-plunging
Looks to me like Renton and Italian cops think a lot alike …
Here’s another interesting item (from the same article linked @23):
“The next big hope is that the Fed will unveil QE3 at its Jackson Hole meeting in late August. The analogy between the markets and Weekend at Bernie’s (credit to hedgefundguy) just gets stronger and stronger; if they don’t prop it up, it collapses. And QE3 looks like the only stimulus option left, now that fiscal policy has been ruled out.”
I trust you’re all familiar with the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s”? If you haven’t see it, run, not walk to your nearest DVD rental kiosk and watch that movie TODAY! (But please have a 911 operator standing by, in case your crack your ribs laughing, and need an aid car.)
Anyway, the take-away here is that if the Federal Reserve doesn’t roll out a QE3 later this month, the financial markets may react negatively. Another reason why it’s not time to buy stocks yet.
This is GOLD….
Somebody linked Rick Perry’s college transcript at Texas A&M. It seems he wasn’t a very good student, getting mostly C’s and D’s.
Rick Perry’s Transcript
Funny. He got a D in what was essentially an introduction to economics class. That is NOT a hard course, you should at least get a B- by simply attending class and not sleeping through it. Yet Perry is determined to re-shape the Texas economics according to his world-view. I guess that explains a lot.
And, of course, Perry wants to tie the pay of professors in the University system to student evaluations. It figures. The easier the class, the better the evaluation, the more a frat party boy like Perry can slide right through without the inconvenience of actually doing – you know – work.
And as the article points out, it’s not like Texas A&M is an Ivy League school.
I can just see the TV ads now…
Picture of Rick Perry on screen. A big red “D” gets stamped on his face.
Announcer: This man wants to reform the American economic system. But he barely passed an introduction to economics class in college, earning a “D” grade. Should we trust America’s economy to someone who can’t even get an average grade in economics?
Actually, a bigger story than Rick Perry’s transcripts might be how they became public. School records such as this are supposed to be confidential. I suspect that the released transcript did not come from the school but from someone who would have a reason to have a copy of the transcript.
That person might well be a fellow Republican. Today AOG was headlining Rick Perry as “invincible” if he decides to seek the Republican nomination. A release of his college transcripts might be just what the doctor ordered to dissuade him from getting into the ring.
Standard and Poor’s Downgrades U.S. Debt
S&P today downgraded U.S. treasury debt from AAA to AA+ because, S&P said, Congress did not go far enough to stabilize America’s debt situation.
S&P also issued a “negative outlook,” which means it might downgrade U.S. debt further within the next 2 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....k2%7C84094
In the latest TSA outrage, a TSA security agent at Denver’s airport confiscated a pregnant woman’s insulin, even though the TSA website explicitly says insulin is allowed through security.
http://news.travel.aol.com/201.....k2%7C84100
Driving While Black Dep’t
A federal judge has ordered the City of Oakland to pay $100,000 each to three black men who were stopped by Oakland police and forced to stand naked in a busy street while the cops strip-searched them.
The judge, after finding the police had no reason to stop the men or search their vehicle, said, “Three black men in a moving vehicle does not create reasonable suspicion.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....19980.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: White cops in Oakland are racists? You don’t say! Who wudda thunk? And innocent taxpayers get to pay for this …
Bleeding Red Ink Dep’t
No, I’m not referring to the Seattle Times. This news story is about the Postal Service, which has lost $5.7 billion so far this year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....19971.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Why don’t they just charge Comcast what it actually costs to deliver their junk mail to my shredder?
(Full Disclosure: Roger Rabbit doesn’t subscribe to Comcast, and what’s more, never will.)
Cyclists Think They’re Invincible Dep’t
“Another scuffle happened in April due to hostility between the passengers in a car and a cyclist. Three men and the cyclist pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot to settle their road rage, where the suspects severely beat the 35-year-old Redwood City cyclist.”
http://redwoodcity.patch.com/a.....at-fault#c
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The cyclist probably was thinking he had them outnumbered at 1-to-3.
Enjoy! For leaders who cower behind legalism.
“Justice Department: State employees can legally implement medical marijuana programs”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....-programs/
Department of Justice tells AZ Gov. Brewer: “Dismiss your lawsuit, you have no case!”
http://blog.mpp.org/medical-ma...../08042011/
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