|
The Stock Room page 77
|
|
(Continued from page 76) RNC slams Obama Broadway date night - UPI.com If this President wanted to go on a ‘date night’ with his wife, then he could have taken her to somewhere in their DC neighborhood. I hear Red Lobster or the Olive Garden is nice. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 05/25/2009 @ 08:00 am EST:
The American Experience | Andrew Carnegie | The Steel Business I just spent a couple days there and my trip really was a true snapshot into what is wrong with our Country’s economy, and all of us along with it! I went on a road trip to attend the opening of the new Sands Casino | Bethlehem, PA. I had never been to Bethlehem before. WOW! I couldn’t believe the size and scope of those steel mills, and a lot of the buildings are still there. The casino itself is built right in the middle of those decaying monoliths and is made to look like an old steel foundry. Cute, but what does any of this have to do with our macro economy? Simple, instead of spending money to build a factory that would put people to work making something/anything, the State of Pennsylvania thought it better to spend millions to put up another monument to our excessive indulgencies and over spending… a CASINO! Ridiculous! What’s that old proverb? “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for life!” And don’t blame the great people of Pennsylvania, either. Even if they had built some kind of factory there instead of that casino, which one of us would have wanted to do that hard work and for little pay? The famous line from ‘Field of Dreams’, “If you build it, he will come!” doesn’t apply here. Even after all that has happened, it is still easier (and even more desirable) to send those kind of jobs elsewhere, so that we have the time to pull the handle on that slot machine. That kind of work we can handle! _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 05/19/2009 @ 07:00 pm EST:
In order to invest (note that I didn’t say trade) in this market you really need to ask yourself 1 question: “Is America, and the World as a whole, going to have a 2nd Great Depression that is so catastrophic that WW III will be the only way out?” Depending on how you answer that, you will have your answer on where this market goes from here. If you answered with a resounding yes, then you can expect the DOW to hit 5500 or less, and we all might as well just move to a commune and pray for the end to come quickly and painlessly. However, if as I believe that the past 9 months were an aberration forced upon us all by a few short sellers, well then step back and try to figure out what you think will result from all the current volatility and upset. If you look back at a chart for the DOW over the past 20 years, what you’ll see is that the last 9 months has basically brought us right back to 1998 levels. Exactly the time when all the lax regulations and insanity began. It really took off in the early part of this decade when Alan Greenspan decided everyone should own a home. All we have done is to violently decide that.. well they can’t! I again stand by my beliefs that we didn’t have to have so much pain in order to come to that realization, but those shorties wouldn’t allow anything but! Do your homework, but don’t chase anything. This market is still for traders only, and us investors need to be patient and cautious. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 05/09/2009 @ 10:00 am EST: I guess the recession is over. Well, at least the stock market wants us to believe that. Fine with me! I never thought we really even needed one in the 1st place. Some think that every 10 years or so we need a cleansing of our economy, and those in the middle need to get their finances purged in order to reestablish the flow upwards for the few at the top. Cynical? Maybe, but the truth hurts.. doesn’t it! Pile of Sand (!&?%) - CNBC.com So what if anything will allow this recession from rearing it’s ugly head back again? One word – OIL!!!! ‘Black Gold…Texas T’ It’s back over $60.00, and for no real reason. Sorry, there is a real reason and it’s the same as it was 1˝ years ago; and again one word – SPECULATORS!!!! There is no real increase in consumption, just more of the same. Mutual funds and pension funds are buying the oil ETF’s (USO, etc.) like crazy and in turn these ETF’s artificially drive up the real price oil is being traded at. Think about it! Do you really think that a pension fund like CalPERS is actually unloading that oil tanker at a port in California? Give me a break! All this artificial increase does is create an actual increase at the pump and therefore hurt the very people that need to be hurt the least right now. The really big question is: What will Obama do? The Obama Trade: Energy - CNBC.com If those guys are right, then Obama will do exactly the wrong thing. Supply is not the issue – stopping the speculators & limiting the ETF’s is. BUILD.. BUILD.. BUILD. JOBS.. JOBS.. JOBS. DRILL.. DRILL.. DRILL. _______________________________________ seeker’s take for 05/03/2009 @3:00 pm EST: seeker’s website: PointofLife.com
Host Name: Michael Levy Show Name: Point of Life Inspirational Show Date: 05/02/09 Power of Premonitions How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives By Larry Dossey, M.D.
apppro’s take I am a very firm believer in ‘Practical Magic’. Not the movie, just that A causes B. How A gets to B is a mixture of talent, planning, and good fortune. You want to call it a premonition, that’s fine. You want to call it sheer luck, that's ok too. As long as your actions don't MAKE the upcoming events happen AGAINST other people's will and well being, it doesn't matter what you call it. My point has always been, is that what shorts did in this latest downturn was to CREATE this crisis by manufacturing scenarios that under normal conditions would not have occurred. In actuality, the doomsday consequences needed to fulfill those scenarios, still have NOT occurred; but people reacted to them nonetheless as if they had. You could say that Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini had the premonition of this recession and crisis. I personally think his ‘visions’ would not have occurred without his links to short sellers and their promotion of his doomsday scenarios. If you read back to my earlier blogs from 2007, I too predicted the same horrible results. The only difference was the reasons. Cause and effect! Cause and effect! Basically what I described in one of my blogs as: "The Butterfly Effect" in concert with "The Conspiracy Theory". Only history will tell us all what actually did occur and who/what caused it. Unfortunately by then we’ll all be long gone. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 05/02/2009 @ 9:00 am EST:
All I ever hear now is that this ‘market’ is for ‘traders’ and not for ‘investors’. Wait a minute.. isn’t the stock market supposed to be there so that companies can gain access to capital and that us normal people can INVEST in those companies; all with the end result of building our country and society? Isn’t that suppose to be the main reason, and not so that a few so-called ‘traders’ can buy and sell our National heritage every 5 minutes? Fine, I wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t give a hoot as long it only affects those a--wipes and leaves the rest of us out of it, but it doesn’t anymore. These same kind of traders caused the Great Crash and following Great Depression of the 1930’s. For over 70 years we were then able to escape their greed and shortcomings, while the rest of us were able to build our society and Nation. But for some reason, which I honestly don’t understand (and I think no one else truly does either), these traders succeeded in dragging the rest of us along into their slime over the past 10 to 12 months. Honestly ask yourself; “If the collapse of Lehman, etc. hadn’t been forced down your throat; what if anything would have changed in your life this past year?” Looking aside from this blogging and investing world I sometimes enter, my day job in retail only changed when everyone was so convinced of our collective, impending demise; that the powers to be cut back on hours out of fear. Those hours are now coming back, because people are realizing that this recession is like the Swine flu and a Shakespearean play, “Much Ado About Nothing”. For the people that really got sucked in and hurt by all of this, my heart and hopes go out to you; but if we allow this to continue, we will have no one else to blame but ourselves.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Never has it been so true!_______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/26/2009 @ 9:00 am EST: I am still having a very hard time understanding why there are still so many out there who are still trying to bring down our economy and basic way of life. That Rick Santelli is just out of control! Why is ‘The Shorting of America’ such an overwhelming drive in people’s lives? Oh, yeah I forgot - $$$$$$$$$$ We’re still in a total state of denial, and that’s not a river in Egypt. Out of sheer fear people are grasping for any reason except for the true underlying one for why we’re in this mess. I just read this blog and I ask myself, “Are we all just this naďve and blind?” Bank of America's Lewis Is Just Another Scapegoat -- Seeking Alpha Please! Stop looking in all the wrong places! The one and ONLY reason for this mess is short sellers. I will give you, as I have done before, that all of our collective piggishness and over-spending helped the shorties with their mission; BUT THIS SELL-OFF, FINANCIAL CRISIS, RECESSION, WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT… DIDN’T HAVE TO GET THIS BAD OR LAST THIS LONG!!!! We just allowed it to happen to ourselves, and for that I say, “Shame on all of us!” But why assign blame at all? Does it serve any good whatsoever? Yes, but only if: 1. It leads to a direct and correct realization of what and who actually caused the problems, and 2. That realization leads to concrete, proactive, and constructive solutions from which actions are taken to correct the underlying reasons so as to prevent them from reoccurring in the future. With this in mind, why do I find it so urgent to have the powers-to-be to realize why and who caused our present dilemma? Because, we all keep blaming every person, place, & thing except for the one true cause and without that cosmic realization we will never get out of this mess. Right now the shorts are running scared and we have a fantastic opportunity to institute some old & new regulations to limit short sellers (not eliminate them) and to redo the Ultra ETF’s that have caused a great deal of manipulation and abuse. Maybe, just maybe we could then see that: The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/17/2009 @ 9:00 am EST: So, do you like my 3/14 bottom call? It’s still holding! Actually, the markets have gone up much further then I anticipated. Good thing? Well, that is the debate, or should I say exercise in premature ejaculation. The entire thing comes back to short sellers and how much pain they suffered over the past few weeks, and whether they have finally given up. Come on people, if you think anything that has occurred in the past 9 months has anything really to do with actual economic fundamentals, then you need to get a better grip on reality. We have all allowed “The Shorting of America” to proceed with abandonment, and have allowed a few shorties to amass a fortune even beyond Warren Buffett’s imagination. All this while destroying many of our lives and our economy. Deplorable! Just deplorable! Fine, we did it to ourselves; but where is our regulators? I said in that 3/14 blog that we needed 2 things: FASB had to fix M2M and for the SEC to reinstate the ‘uptick rule’. FASB made some accounting changes and this is why our financial system has shown a great deal of stabilization. Banks no longer have to declare YOUR mortgage at $0.00, because a few shorts want to buy them up at $.20 cents on the dollar. However, what happened to just reinstating a simple computer controlled trading rule? Nothing.. nada.. zip! The CEO of New York Stock Exchange opened his big mouth
and came out with a depressing scenario on when the SEC might get its’ act together. I just have 1 question: WHY SO FRIGGEN’ LONG JUST TO PUT BACK SOMETHING THAT WORKED FOR OVER 70 YEARS? And that brings us to the rest of what he said, that this is a trader’s market and “Investors” should stay away. This is exactly the kind of talk that is killing us! OK, we don’t need cheerleaders, but to promote this entire trading mentality is no good either. These so-called traders are just one step above short sellers. They build nothing! They serve no real purpose, and their entire existence is based on buying and selling our National Heritage every 3 minutes. Enough! Even if we do have a few good, rational days in the stock market, we get pundits coming out of the woodwork to tell everyone that we must sell off again and nothing is what you want it to be. An old fart speaks!
Realistic view of things, or maybe just a highly promoted one-sided view of his positions? To me it all comes down to the eternal clash of “Good vs. Evil”, and we all know who the evil is – “SHORTS & TRADERS!” Just Listen to Cramer!
_______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/25/2009 @ 6:30 pm EST:
Lisa Myers asks a lot of good question in that piece, but she misses the point and some of the most important questions of all. Did these guys just profit from everyone else's misery OR did they use exaggerated financial scenarios and abused trading rules to CAUSE THE MISERY?
1. Who lobbied FASB to implement Mark to Market M2M, so that these short funds could rumorboard the mortgage industry into a state of chaos in order to cover their short positions on the underlying companies? 2. Who manipulated numbers so to convince everyone that 90% of all mortgages were failing when 92% are still good? 3. Who lobbied the SEC to get rid of the UPTICK rule, and who ran the so-called numbers to prove it was useless? 4. Who naked shorted many stocks with impunity? 5. Who abused newly formed Ultra ETF's and was able to manipulate stock prices at market closes? (As Jim Cramer has alleged.) 6. How can these same short funds that initiated the destruction of the mortgage CDO’s based on scenarios which claimed that those CDO’s were worthless; now get Government money in order to buy those same CDO’s at bargain basement prices and with little to no risk? 7. Who abused and manipulated our system and made these fortunes, then paid little to no taxes on their outlandish profits too boot?
Who HAS NOT asked the right questions? That answer I have: all of us! _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/23/2009 @ 8:30 am EST: We’re getting a new plan this morning to deal with the banking issues. It's amazing how all those 'Legacy' (I won't use the ‘T’ word) assets that were said to be worthless are now just worth_less!! (Continued on page 78) |
