I haven’t written much for this blog lately (at all?), but I have been monitoring the market. Right now, I’m very bearish and am expecting a bear market to develop sometime within a year…perhaps as soon as next week. After the recent runup last week, sentiment has greatly improved (example: http://apps.thestreet.com/survey/results/rmBullsBearsBarometerPollResults.jsp?sid=40557&mode=pollresults). These types of results [...]
While you may not need to worry about stock fraud when trading for your own forex account, any investor or speculator in the financial markets would do well to at least have a basic familiarity of what is involved in a stock fraud. Unlike foreign currencies which trade in a huge, global marketplace, stocks of [...]
I had a good week in the markets this week. Treasuries were brutalized, while precious metals, especially silver, did well. I have been gradually pushing more portfolio in favor of commodities, especially silver, and betting against treasuries for a couple months now. I believe politics and government will affect the economy significantly. With our current [...]
I’ve personally had a pretty rough year so far, mainly because I’ve been long in this treacherous market. One bet though that I was spot on about was shorting oil. There was a huge commodities bubble that began to burst in the late summer. Oil, in particular, has fallen over 65% from its highs. Now, [...]
Whether its stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs, etc., there are many investment vehicles out there to put your money in. For the beginner or intermediate investor though, some of these options should just flat out be avoided. Unfortunately, people with a financial motive often try to dupe beginner investors into using some of these investments [...]
Right now, my largest stock position by far is in a Texas cafeteria chain called Luby’s. Unless you’re from Texas, you most likely have never heard of this company. Your average trader/investor on Wall Street certainly knows next to nothing about this company, which makes me feel like I have an advantage over the market. [...]
The 2008 election season has not fully started yet, but it is something to think about over the next few months. Depending on who you think will win, John McCain or Barack Obama, you may be more inclined to put money in the market or stay on the sidelines. It’s no secret that Republicans are [...]
Over the past year, oil (the commodity) has rocketed upwards. In 2008 alone, USO (an ETF that track’s oil’s price) is up 44%. Over the past 52 weeks, this ETF is up around 12%. Oil’s price increase, and the associated increase gas costs, are all over the networks and on television. It seems you can’t [...]
The classic tech behemoth, Microsoft, has both a consumer and business customers. Most of us are familiar with its consumer side, though its business side is actually which brings in most of its revenues. Most of my knowledge is about Microsoft’s consumer side, whose prospects are looking increasingly atrocious in my opinion. On the consumer [...]
The old stock market saying “buy low and sell high” is the opposite of what most individual investors do. While investors obviously want to see increasing returns, most inadvertently end up “buying high and selling low” instead. This is largely the result of human psychology and our tendency of wanting to chase yesterday’s hot returns. [...]
Going short, betting that a stock will go down, is something that only experienced investors should do. When you short a stock, you sell shares of the stock without actually owning them (your brokerage borrows the shares for you which enables you to sell them later). You later must purchase back the shares, which is [...]
One stock I bought during the March freefall was Google (GOOG). I bought some originally at around $520 and then after it dipped, some more in the $420-$450 range. After outperforming in its recent quarter, the stock is trading around $575 right now. I’ve taken a bit off the table, but I still have about [...]
