The Twitter Credit Card…Don’t Surf the web without it!

I would like a social media credit card. Faceboook $fbook should have one, Twitter $twit should have one and maybe Stocktwits $stwit should have one too. There is one company I know working around the edges of this named Klout, but there will be many more. There should be rewards for great messaging (Follows, Retweets) because [...]

Rosh Rewind: In Case You Missed It

After a nice lift straight out of the gates on a better-than-expected initial jobless claims number, I'd be looking for a lot of nothing today.  The markets will likely be semi-comatose as our Jewish friends and colleagues observe the New Year's celebration.

A quick primer on Rosh Hashanah:

Rosh Hashanah 2010 is the anniversary of the creation of the world. The Jewish calendar adds to the Christian calendar another 3760 years. That is to say that the Jewish community will celebrate this evening the year 5771.

Anyway, below are a few of my personal favorite recent TRB posts in case you missed them.  Enjoy!  L'shanah tovah (for a good year)!

***

This post on why young people aren't going into the Financial Advisory business caused quite a stir.  Off the record, many industry participants got in touch to tell me how right I was based on their own experiences in recruitment and training.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/23/why-the-kids-dont-want-to-be-financial-advisors/

In Bring Out Your Dead I talked about the importance of using relief rallies to dump the corpses in your portfolio.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/26/bring-out-your-dead/

The biggest money on Wall Street has always been made with well-timed contrarian calls, much more so than with blind trend following.  With that in mind, here's my Minority Report - a look at what only a small percentage of investors currently think.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/23/minority-report/

A fellow financial advisor from Carolina sent me this slide that he uses to demonstrate the insanity of what passes for advice and guidance these days.  I loved it and you will too.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/24/whos-managing-your-money/

Welcome to the Jungle - an absolute monster of a post and a signal of my intentions to narrate the coming private vs public revolution in real-time.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/22/welcome-to-the-jungle/

How to tell the difference between a Venture Capital investment and a Private Placement?  My smartass guide here.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/09/04/venture-angel-or-private-placement-a-guide/

Finally, I offered some advice to Fox News on how to fix the show Bulls & Bears.  I've been a fan for ten years and I pointed out some very specific problems that could be addressed with minimal effort.  Of course, no one from the show responded to me, so you know they're just completely disconnected from their viewers and the blogosphere.  A shame.

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/08/14/how-to-fix-bulls-bears/

***

Markets should remain somewhat quiet through week's end, barring any global major catastrophes.  Make like Depeche Mode and Enjoy The Silence.


Hot Links: Get It How We Live It

Stuff I'm Reading this Morning...

Wall Street's consensus year-end S&P 500 target is now 1205.  Breakdown by firm here:  (Bespoke)

There was another one of those fruity conference calls between Bloggers and the White House econ team.  Really embarrassing at this point; Andrew Jackson would've cut my throat before reading my friggin' blog.  (NakedCapitalism)

The trouble with infrastructure stimulus spending may be that it hasn't been spent yet.  (CenterLane)

The hottest new trend in the restaurant biz?  Food trucks (back one up right to my face, please).  (LAT)

Jeff Miller: No, asset allocation is not "like poker", there is no "all in".  (ADashOfInsight)

David Merkel offers some common-sense financial advice around town.  (AlephBlog)

An urgent letter to President Obama on how to correct his economic failmachine.  (ZeroHedge)

Michael Shedlock: Chicago dodged a huge Olympics bullet, just look at Vancouver.  (Mish)

Eric Savitz on why many tech names are selling at 20-year low valuations.  Important.  (BarronsTechTrader)

The Weakonomist: "Blue Collar Recession My Ass".  (Weakonomics)


The Only Wall Street 2 Review You Need

So Dealbreaker's Bess Levin, hands down my favorite financial blogger extant, got to see a showing of Wall Street 2 last week.

And she murders it.  Hilarity (and some disappointment) ensues for me.  But mostly hilarity:  "It was like a bomb that just kept exploding."

Click over...

http://dealbreaker.com/2010/09/jess-and-bess-at-the-movies-money-never-sleeps/


The Game of Twitter…The Attention Exchange

Twitter $twit is a game. There is a LOT of money at stake. Twitter would get a lot more respect if the had more Customers, but they are not in the same rush as you or me. Twitter for now has chosen the biggest game of all, the media game. Lot’s of money [...]

Meaty With a Chance of Cloud Calls

And the winner is...Cloud!  The tech industry sub-sector with perhaps this year's meatiest move is undoubtedly cloud computing.  Names like Riverbed ($RVBD), Akamai ($AKAM) and 3Par ($PAR) have all been putting up insane numbers this year, performance-wise.

My awakening to the group's potential back in January came courtesy of a kickass cover story in Barron's (Sky's The Limit)- ever since then the cloud computing stocks mentioned (and some that were omitted) have been nothing but fire - in a market that is unchanged year-to-date.

Here's a peek at the majesty that is Cloud Stock-age thus far in the Twentyten:

Regular readers know that I've been hammering away at the cloud theme all year, even hoping for the advent of a Cloud Computing ETF at one point this past spring, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way (we still haven't gotten one).

What's next for the group?

* I have a hard time believing that Cisco has much interest in trailing behind Riverbed in market share for very much longer.  Riverbed's Steelhead product suite speeds up transmission of applications and data from the cloud to the end user, this is a corporate IT Holy Grail as it allows for the efficient decentralization that global entities need.  I could see Cisco or one of its rivals making a move for this name as this would give them the number one offering in this crucial space instantly.

* Akamai's global "private web" video serving solution will probably continue to be the delivery method of choice as Web TV becomes a reality and online streaming continues to be monetized.  The wake up call for me on Akamai was when I learned that it was their technology that was the backbone for NBC's serving of Winter Olympics video to everyone's mobile devices.

* The bidding war over 3Par (between Dell and H-P) kinda gilds Rackspace's ($RAX) lilly a bit when you think about it.  Rackspace took over an abandoned shopping mall in downtown San Antonio and built an amazingly scaled-up cloud hosting center.  Their fanatical reputation for customer service to their cloud hosted customers is the heart of their story, however - anyone can build a server farm.

* Microsoft's CEO Ballmer said a few months ago that he was "betting the whole company on the Cloud".  At the time, he told an audience at the University of Washington that 70% of Microsoft's engineers were working on cloud-related products.  Maybe he ought to start buying cloud products rather than burning cash in his labs.

All of these stories are showing what I call Oblivious Growth in an otherwise flat GDP environment.  Nice to get a whiff of the secular stuff every once in a while and see that winning stocks can still separate themselves from the hyper-correlation.


Swiss Franc: Slow Down Son, You Killin’ Em

The haven currencies and bunds and bonds are really making the most of the "risk off" days and from a longer-term trend perspective they've been unstoppable. 

The yen is making 15 year highs versus the US dollar.  US government bonds have seen yields driven down to an average of 3.68%, there are more stocks with higher dividend yields than at any time since the mid 90's .  German government bonds, considered the Treasuries of Europe, have also seen yields driven down relentlessly as capital seeks shelter from the palpable uncertainty.

But nothing exemplifies the haven trade better than what's happening in the Swiss franc - since the beginning of August it's just been tearing up the euro like there's no tomorrow...

So what's the story here?  We don't quite know yet, but the beginning of it certainly starts with the banks.  There's simply no love or trust for the financial institutions of Europe, this summer's stress tests notwhithstanding.  Cash is seeking gold-denominated currencies, reserve currencies, realism, safety of principle, politcally stable assets etc. 

The Swiss franc's buoyancy right now is the epitome of this theme.


Hot Links: When Irish Spreads Are Widening

Stuff I'm Reading this Morning...

Look Out!  Goldman:  "The market value of emerging-market stocks may surge more than fivefold to $80 trillion in two decades, overtaking developed nations."  (Bloomberg)

All hell breaks loose on the Emerald Isle overnight as Irish credit default swaps are blown out.  (WSJMarketBeat)

Your up-to-date guide to the Risk Off/Eurocrash and its implications for investment.  (MercenaryTrader)

The big debate: Is housing a staple item like food and clothing or more of a luxury?  (NYT)

Dividends are what's poppin' right now in the hood, they've made your year so far.  (CrossingWallStreet )

Felix on the absurdity of the Hewlett Packard/Oracle/Mark Hurd drama.  (Reuters)

The creator of one The Shield is back with a new show this fall.  (DailyBeast)

The truth is, under President Reagan government spending was above average and tax rates were not lower but in-line with the 40 year average.  (CNNMoney)

What was that Erin Burnett/Michael Pento dust-up all about yesterday?  (ZeroHedge)

No wonder none of us can think straight anymore - look at what journalism has done to the language!  (SimoleonSense)

Psst - Wanna see a goldfish that weighs as much as a 3-year-old?  (Gawker)


Market Folly’s Hedge Fund Wisdom – Like Playboy for Stockpickers

My pal Jay over at Market Folly just put me on to his latest project and it looks like he's created yet another incredible resource for all the stockpickers out there.  It will be a quarterly newsletter called Hedge Fund Wisdom.

The sample I just got is 16 pages (out of the full 75) and it's loaded with all the position updates of the top hedge fund managers that we get on MarketFolly.com.  Baupost, Soros, Appaloosa, Paulson, Tiger, Perry - everybody you'd want to follow is in there with a dedicated position sheet including detailed share amounts.

In HFW, it appears we will not only get the holdings of our favorite managers but also a bit more focus on some of these trades individually.  Having all the top managers and their stock holdings in one newsletter is a killer idea, I know lots of guys who will be printing this bad boy out each quarter as a desk reference.

We're talking some serious stockpicker porn, here.  For what's being offered, the price seems right and fans of the site know that they won't be disappointed with the  consistency of updates.

Hedge Fund Wisdom just launched on August 31st, click the link below if you're interested in checking it out:

http://www.marketfolly.com/2010/08/introducing-hedge-fund-wisdom-by-market.html


Night of the Living Deals

It's a bit early for a Halloween-themed post, but this New York Times article about the bottleneck of previously taken-private companies looking to re-IPO is enough to give you the willies!

Out of the 161 potential IPOs on file looking to raise a gut-busting $56 billion bucks right now, a big chunk of them turn out to be retreads, companies that had been LBO'd during the private equity bubble years.  The private equity shops are looking for exits.  Sold to you, I don't buy anything being sold to me by "the smartest man in the room".

From the NYT:

Today, many of the largest I.P.O.’s on the shelf are large, established companies taken private during the buyout boom of 2005 to 2007. These businesses are now poised to return to the public markets. The list includes Toys “R” Us, Nielsen and the consulting firm Booz Allen. The Hospital Corporation of America, which says it hopes to raise $4.6 billion, is among the biggest deals in the backlog.

And then of course there is the ultimate reanimated corpse, General Motors.  This is a deal that will happen by presidential decree as the Obama White House needs a victory of any kind to trumpet this fall -  "saving the American auto industry" certainly would do the trick.

The largest is expected be General Motors, which is 61 percent owned by the United States government. The outcome of G.M.’s offering stands as perhaps the biggest question looming over the I.P.O. landscape. The deal is set to hit the market in the fall and is poised to raise an estimated $15 billion. That would make it the second-largest I.P.O. in United States history, after the $19.7 billion offering of Visa in 2008.

Between LBO retreads and the previously bankrupt, it remains difficult to get excited about the Initial Public Offering dealflow, robust as the pipeline seems to be in dollar terms on the surface.

Source:

Glut of Pending IPOs (NYT)


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  • Anne Marie

    Anne-Marie earned a B.A. in Mathematics with a concentration in Econometrics and an M.S. in Mathematical Statistics with a concentration in Bio/Behavioral..More »

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