Guts, Tablets, Predictions, Rumors and other things every investor needs to know

Here are some important links and stories that every investor and trader should ponder today.

My Gut Feeling for Today, March 5, 2012 and Monday Morning Musings – Market’s down this morning, but is trying to bounce back from the lows. Path of least resistance is probably lower, at least for today though. Remember when the market was just about to break out a month ago and I wrote this one, by the way? How to trade the market as it’s about to break out (Updated). We are a long way from those levels now. I’m likely to raise some more cash here as we’ve had such a great run and I want to be disciplines and flexible as always.

Finding Your Book Interrupted … By the Tablet You Read It On – I had to turn off all the alerts on my iPads a long time ago because life’s too short to be buzzed every time my sister beats me on Scramble from Zynga and when the NYTimes publishes an article it thought I might care about. Just let me focus on the task at hand on my iPad at least, I’ve got my smartphone, my laptop, my landline, and my dog to distract already, you know? That said, tablets, as I’ve said since they got here, are a huge part of our digital future.

iPad 3 Predictions: Wired Handicaps Apple’s Grand Hardware Unveiling‎ and iPad Rumor Roundup: The Good, the Plausible and the rest… – Here comes iPad 3, can you feel the buzz? Feet to fire, I’d expect a small sell-the-news kind of reaction after the company has its big announcement on Wednesday, but that doesn’t really affect my long-held stance that Apple’s likely to get to $1000 by 2015 (How Apple gets to $1000 or Why Apple’s Going to $1000 by 2015 (Video)

Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid – For as long as I can remember, both conservatives and liberals have rationalized the concept that landowners get subsidized with welfare programs and mortgage write-offs and tax breaks by non-landowners. That is, we tax the renter to subsidize the landlord and all other homeowners/landowners and real estate investors/speculators. This article explains how the Republican/Democrat Regime’s latest supposed “fix the real estate economy” is to write welfare checks to banks who will agree to give welfare checks to anybody who owes more money than their real estate investment is worth — whether the person owns five investment properties or just one. We are literally taxing people renting hovels in Harlem to send welfare to people who own six investment properties in Vail now.

Why are Irish taxpayers bailing out unsecured bank creditors? – Ask this question instead as a US taxpayer: Why are renters in Harlem bailing out speculators in Vail? Here’s how Richard puts it in regards to Ireland bailing out bank investors and the same principles apply here in the US in regards to pretty much every single policy response and idea that the Republican/Democrat Regime has come up with since the crisis hit in 2008: “Politically, it seems nigh impossible to allow bondholders to take the haircuts they deserve. Nowhere is this happening now. Bond investors made calculated capital allocation decisions. They misjudged the risk and must face the consequences. To bail them out is a moral hazard which encourages the misallocation of capital. And in Ireland’s case, and in Europe more generally, there is the question of economic nationalism to boot because the periphery’s creditors are foreign institutions. It’s not like the Irish government bailing out Irish creditors or the Greek government bailing out Greek creditors but more Irish and Greek governments imposing depression and huge debt burdens on Irish people to bail out foreign creditors. That’s some seriously combustible stuff.”

On News Sources and The Small World of Scams – News gathering, news consumption is probably changing faster today than at any time in our lifetimes, including when the Internet first hit. There’s free distribution on the Internet via Google, Microsoft and even Apple. And people are finally figuring out that the alternative media and blogs and video sources and news aggregators are probably a much better source than say, your 5pm nightly newscast from GE’s/Comcast’s NBC News.

Egyptian Islamist Expelled in Nose Job Scandal – I don’t know what to say about this. Just amazing to me on so many levels.