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Update on the Twin Debt Fears
The summer solstice of 2011 will be remembered by investors as the day that the world’s twin debt fears, those of the United States and Greece, subsided. What has changed? United States Tuesday saw U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner state that he was optimistic that the U.S. would avert a debt default. His confidence stemmed from an inside knowledge of the ongoing debt ceiling and budget negotiations taking place between Republicans and Democrats. Specific details are unknown, but broadly it is thought that $2-$2.5 trillion of...
read moreIndex of Leading Indicators Rises
Conference Board data show that their index of U.S. leading indicators for economic growth in the next 3 to 6 months rose in May by 0.8%. This compares to economist expectations of a rise of 0.3%. Analysis: Eight of the ten components that make up the index rose. Pundits tended to focus on two factors in particular. Increases in commodity prices are expected to peak and then fall. This includes the cost of fuel and food – two large components of consumer budgets. Auto industry supply chain bottlenecks caused by the Japanese...
read moreResearch In Motion, A Case Study Revisited
Yesterday I used Research In Motion as a case study for several of the tools I share in my book, The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth. But wait, there’s more! Specifically, I wanted to talk today about: How “the market” is often representative of the extreme inclinations of several investors, and not necessarily every single investor The asymmetry between market rises and market falls Let’s take these in turn. The “Market” Yesterday it was widely reported that Research In...
read moreResearch In Motion, Intuitive Investing Case Study
Research In Motion, the Canadian maker of Blackberry phones, serves as a very nice case study for many of the elements of my book, The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth. But today I want to focus on just several of those elements; specifically: Archetypes Are No Substitute For Analysis. In case you haven’t heard the firm has gone from hero to zero over the last year. In fact, since the beginning of the year shares of Research In Motion (ticker: RIMM) have fallen 39.8% = ($35.33 yesterday’s close ÷ $58.69...
read moreIntuitive Assessment of Greek Debt Crisis
There are currently two crisis pendulums swinging back and forth over the financial markets, threatening to drop the corpus into a deep pit of despair. The first is the U.S. debt crisis which has a certain deadline of 1 July, 2011. Whether that crisis is truly resolved or not I cannot say. The other large crisis is the Greek debt crisis. As I have done in the past, here is my intuitive assessment of the Greek debt crisis: Right now there is no clearly dominant force in the negotiations. Here I can identify multiple oppositional forces:...
read moreU.S. Military Spending Compared to Everyone Else
1 July, 2011 marks the deadline for the raising the debt ceiling in the United States. Republicans are wanting dramatic reductions in spending before they will agree to raise the debt limits. What you won’t hear is the United States could immediately cut its spending by cutting military budgets. Let’s take a look at U.S. military spending compared to everyone else. At the close of 2010, the United States alone accounts for 43% of total global military spending! The next closest country on the list also happens to be the...
read moreSocial Unrest in China On the Rise
In my “What My Intuition Tells Me Now” 2011 Predictions post of 13 December, 2010, I said that China was going to experience a lot of social unrest this year as they tried to reign in their overheated economy and inflated gross domestic product (GDP). Here specifically is what I said: “The Chinese are on the brink of two ugly things: massive asset inflation and the bursting of that bubble, and social unrest. Expect to see social protests in China as the haves and have nots gap widens. In typical authoritarian...
read moreDisappointing Supreme Court Ruling for Shareholders
News you aren’t likely to read anywhere else: this morning the U.S. Supreme Court disappointingly voted 5-4 against shareholders in a lawsuit brought against the Janus Funds. The lawsuit had been brought back in 2003 when shareholders in the Funds complained that Janus allowed certain shareholders (read: large) were allowed to make frequent, short-term trades in the funds. In other words, in exchange for lots of money Janus Funds granted those shareholders to engage in “market timing.” The result was that smaller...
read more11 June 2011: Jason Apollo Voss’ Interview with KRXA’s Good Vibrations Radio
Tune in to Jason Apollo Voss’ LIVE interview this evening with KRXA California’s Good Vibrations Radio at 6pm Pacific Daylight Time. The interview should run for approximately one hour – which is enough time to talk about The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth and other important issues in-depth. I am really looking forward to this!
read moreAn Idea That Might Just Improve Democracy
I normally don’t blog about politics except as it affects investing. I consider myself a lukewarm follower of the political scene – having given up on politics as the real source of power in the United States. One person = one vote, but one dollar = one vote; so businesses are the real source of power in our culture. However, as many of you who follow the blog know, I am simultaneously an arch-capitalist and a critic of capitalism. I feel that capitalism is a great good because it so efficiently organizes resources around the...
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