Dive into the archives.
- Inflection Point?
The dog woke me at dawn today. With lovely first light streaming in from the East, I fired up the ole computer to read what I take to be the first signs of a new inflection point in this months-long market chaos and my “passive research”. After 5 successive higher closes, the US equities markets [...]
- The Markets’ Increasing Dread
It has been a few weeks since the “resolution” of the US debt crisis. And there has been a cascading erosion of public confidence as unemployment, diminished growth and “Japanization” in Europe and the US, increasing dangers of Eurodebt sans Eurobonds have correlated with a 16% drop in the S&P ( a measure of convenience). [...]
- Case Study: Uncertainty and the Questionable Productivity of Certainty
Certainty is a momentary phenomenon of rootedness in the passing of time. The certain is the unchangeable, the fact of the present as it recedes into history. Beyond the unchangeable, looking forward, is the highly probable. Given what we know in the present, what do we see coming next? With slightly more uncertainty, we enter [...]
- Spinning the Wheel Faster
It is official. Deloitte reports that the return on assets at US companies has been in free-fall since 1965. Competition has tightened margins. Both consumers and valued employees have benefited as prices have dropped and salaries have increased. And the counterweight to the bottom line problem (at least at banks) has been increasing leverage. Leverage [...]
- Mister Market
Mr Market, goes the common wisdom, suffers from bipolar disorder. We join him in his enthusiasms—momentarily gratifying our greed and desire as we attempt to amplify wealth; and then our stomachs tighten and grip as his mood swing plummets to strip our dreams. We say the losses are on “paper”; but bitterly remember that the [...]
