Today’s must-reads (and don’t forget to meet me for today’s chat at 2pm EST)
Here’s what I was reading and thinking about when I wasn’t trying to stay out of the crazy March winds of the Sacramento Mountains in beautiful southeastern New Mexico (come see this country sometime!).
We’re all hooked on free money – Great article that nails a lot of important trends. I didn’t care much for his total debt to GDP analysis in the middle part of the article, but his conclusions after that are dead-on: “Savers are abandoning cash for any other kind of asset. Government bonds soar in value. Corporate bonds are becoming more and more popular as a way of obtaining at least some yield. Equities get propped up by investors looking for dividends. The gold price climbs steadily higher. The trouble is, none of this actually improves the efficiency with which capital is allocated. All it does is create a series of fresh bubbles.” And that’s a large part of why I’ve been preparing for and telling you guys to get ready for an echo-techo bubble that is indeed slowly but surely inflating right in front of our eyes. The time to sell equities is probably when you actually believe the free money train is going to end. And it will end, one way or another, the natural forces of a cost to money will come back.
Fed Weighs ‘Sterilized’ Bond Buying if It Acts – Seriously? As if they’re not doing enough damage as described above, they’re going to do more redistribution of wealth in the name of “fixing the economy”? STOP THE MADNESS, don’t create new ways of instilling madness like “sterilized bond buying”. Ugh.
Web Sites Shine Light on Petty Bribery Worldwide – The power of the Internet being harnessed for good. I used to call this “Little Brother is watching you” because Orwell had it wrong, at least in some regards — because this is a classic example of the oppressed shining a light on the darkness of government-enabled corruption.
Warren Buffett on how to con the media – Jon Friedman is a friend and one heckuva insightful writer. I’ve seen the inside of the mainstream media beast like few other people have, and I can tell you, he’s dead right when he writes: “The first thing to remember is that journalists are like children, and you must treat them as such. They are endlessly curious about rather mundane matters. And they are impatient. And they are often lazy. If you do the thinking for them, they’ll be secretly grateful.” That’s not to say that all journalists are as he describes…but a lot of ’em are.
Is The Correction Over? – Jordan’s had a very hot hand in navigating these markets and trading the wild volatility in Apple lately. His daily columns and his “Get Mental!” trading diary are daily must-reads for me and today is no exception.
Buy-and-Hold Can’t Die – David Merkel has been a big influence on both my approach to my personal life and especially on my investment life. His unique approach to investing and trading and analyzing the markets helps me think outside of the box.
California Judge “Nails” Dykstra for Grand Theft Auto – Back in 2005 or so, I once walked off a stage at a investor conference I was speaking at when Lenny Dykstra followed up my presentation by starting his own presentation with the very phrase, “Anybody who follows my approach will always make money and there’s no risk…” I literally interrupted him and told the audience, “That is nuts and I don’t want anything to do with this.” I had no idea how far he would fall. I feel terrible for all his victims.
End of an era: Peyton Manning – I simply typed “End of an era” into Google News without the words “Peyton” or Manning”, just “end of an era” and I got 2103 articles about Peyton Manning (see “lazy journalists” link above). $28 million dollars and the lack of a billionaire owner supported by the taxpayer welfare loans for his stadium and other subsidies not wanting to pay that to a Hall of Fame quarterback sure makes this a business story. My dad and I think it’s nuts for the Colts to give up on the quarterback whose absence fell them from Superbowl contenders to the utter basement of the NFL for an unproven kid. I’d rather have RGIII on my team than Andrew Luck anyway. If I were the Colts, I would have kept Manning and traded down for RGIII and groom him for a couple years under the legend. Anyway, end of an era.
Apple.com – The best source to find out exactly what Apple will announce today will be Apple.com where you’ll soon be able to see exactly what new products they’ve announced and probably place your order for them too. I’m not going to try to game how the stock might or might not react to whatever product might or might not be announced today with whatever features might or might not be included in that product and whether the market will immediately love the concept or hate it…Apple remains my biggest position and I’m willing to let it ride for now.
And don’t forget to meet me for today’s chat at 2pm EST at http://tradingwithcody.com/chat.
