Markets analysis and must-reads

Markets feel heavy, like they want to fade lower today. I’m not a daytrader though, and I’m going to stick with my playbook, which has been one of betting on an overall bull market by buying pullbacks, getting aggressively long on panics, and trimming/hedging when we hit new highs. As we have been hitting new highs of late, I’ve been a trimmer/hedger, even as I’ve nibbled on opportunistic long trades like DDD and FB early last week. Anyway, no trades for me today as we’ve made our moves for these levels and I’m comfortable with my still net long, but not wildly aggressively so, positioning.

Here are some articles relevant to our stocks and the trends we’re investing in.

Michael Olenick: Textbooks – Predatory Business Practices, by the Book – Calls out Pearson, a company I once worked for as a columnist for the Financial Times, but am currently short the stock, by name. Collusion, gouging book prices, and more. This looks like one of those Revolutionary Investing set ups where a government-funded bubble is about to pop. Secondary education, along with the books that it’s taught from, is about to get much cheaper, one way or another.

JPM Faces Money Laundering Probe – Alternative title: “Teflon TBTF Bank headed by Obama’s good buddy probably committed some heinous and/or criminal acts, but please move along and let’s talk about Social Security and public employee pension costs please. Or gay marriage. Or abortion. Please move along.” That headline might be too long and too truthful though.

Blythe Masters Appointed to Regulatory Affairs In Addition To Rolling the Dice at JPM – JPM is rolling the dice with so many facets of their business, what’s another facet, this one Regulatory Affairs, matter?

Lanny Breuer Admits That Economists Have Convinced Him Not to Indict Corporations – I guess that the theory is that as I saw Jesse Cafe put it, “Force and Fraud will continue until Trust and Confidence are restored.”

World’s Oldest Message in a Bottle, Part of 1914 Citizen-Science Experiment – Social networking experiment in the name of scientific researching of ocean currents. Fascinating.

Anti-Japan protests spread across China, turn violent – I don’t think that this China/Japan dispute over land is likely to be a Black Swan event for the stock markets, but I do think it’s possible enough to be paying attention to.

Need a new pair of shoes? Print them and Print Journal: 3D–Printed Guns: Awesome or Scary? and 3D printers create edible objects – Our DDD long has been a big winner and I just recently added to it when it pulled back hard from its highs.

Forget the Bernanke Put – Interesting, compelling commentary from my friend, Robert Marcin.