Monthly July, 2012
How Investors Buy Hype Rather Than Reality As each new hot stock goes to market, there is a rush of investors scrambling to buy IPO stock at the offering. The calls to brokers from their clients asking for an allotment rises and the brokers scramble to get an allotment themselves in order to fill the...
Market Darlings That Disappoint There is a lot of talk currently about Apple Computers whose shares reached an astonishing $644 in April 2012. Today they trade at $585 which is a 9% drop in value. It is reminiscent somewhat of the painful share performance of Research in Motion (RIMM) which reached an equally astonishing $148...
Investors Are Being Advised to Invest in Bonds or Dividends It is interesting how history repeats itself, yet few seem to understand this. Our economic world revolves in cycles, and each cycle is remarkably similar to the ones before and to the cycles that will be experienced in the future. As we near the bottom...
A Change in Regulations There is an uproar in the US currently. Buried in the House Farm Bill, approved by the House Agriculture Committee on Friday, is the agribusiness industry’s latest attempt to shed regulations restricting new genetically engineered (GE) crops. While the bill’s massive food stamps cuts elicited widespread outcry, the industry quietly inserted...
The Efficient Market Theory There is a long held belief that the stock market is the fore-teller of all that will happen. Somehow it is believed that the market can see into the future, and the rises or falls in the market foretell what will happen with some accuracy. Believers, which includes most people, ignore...
Cheap Energy and Higher Productivity In our June 27, 2012 Blog, we discussed how abundant newly recoverable supplies of shale gas, increased reserves in the ground in North America, and the retreat of the ice cap, would all contribute to a permanent lessening of energy prices. We further commented that lower energy prices would produce...
A Plague in the USA – Obesity As all the news channels tell us, and as all the TV doctors tell us, Americans are much too heavy. Pictures of overweight Americans are everywhere Medical reports attribute a dramatic rise in diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and illness as diverse as cancer and heart attacks...
A Liquidity Event Used to Mean Going Public A liquidity event used to have a very different meaning. In recent history there have been long stretches of time when the stock market moved modestly up or down. To ‘go public’ and become a Listed Issuer was an event. It was referred to as a liquidity...