I have two thumbs up for the book "Reverse Mergers" by David N. Feldman, the second edition, published by Bloomberg. I read through this book in three days, in comparison to the three weeks for the first book I reviewed; I hope that means something. For those who don't know, a reverse merger is a technique to have companies go public without going through a formal IPO. Typically, a private company finds a public company as a shell and performs a merger, in which the shell company preserves and the private company morphs into a public company. Typically a small scale fund raising took place before, at or after the going public event. Complete Story »

  Howard Richman submits:According to rumors, President Obama will soon replace his treasury secretary Timothy Geithner with JP Morgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon.Perhaps Obama is not pleased with Geithner declaring on October 15, in a report to Congress, that China was not manipulating its currency. That statement undercut Obama's November calls for more balanced trade.Complete Story »

  Prieur du Plessis submits: Gold closed up $1.10 Tuesday to scale a fresh high of $1,165.80. Amazingly, this was the 14th higher close of the last 15 sessions.. It doesn’t take much analysis to conclude that gold is overbought, at least in the short term, but here is Richard Russel’s (Dow Theory Letters) answer to the question “Should I buy more gold here?”.Complete Story »

  Prieur du Plessis submits: Barry Ritholtz, writer of The Big Picture blog and author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy, last week addressed delegates at a CityWire event in Berlin. According to CityWire, he argued that we were in a secular bear market that began in 2000 and has some years to run. Ritholtz warns:Complete Story »

  Prieur du Plessis submits: Charlie Rose sits down with Barton Biggs, legendary investor, to discuss the challenges the President faces regarding the economy, as well as other related issues. A link to the transcript of the interview follows at the end of the post.Complete Story »

  Michael Johnston submits:Allstate Corp. (ALL), the largest publicly-traded insurer of homes and automobiles in the U.S., announced this week that it is making some major shifts in its investment portfolio that now exceeds $100 billion. The Northbrook, Illinois-based company announced that it is reducing its exposure to commercial real estate and municipal bonds in favor of corporate debt. After a disappointing performance in 2008, corporate bonds have delivered stellar returns in the six months, yielding 13% in the second quarter and more than 9% in the third quarter according to Merrill Lynch. Corporate bonds lost almost 11% in 2008.Complete Story »

  Although the release of the FOMC November meeting minutes weakened the dollar somewhat on Tuesday it was not until a new day was dawning in Asia that investors scrutinized the Fed’s assessment and concluded that a “disorderly” decline in the dollar might have further to run. As the American session gets underway the euro is trying to expand a vault above $1.50 – its first opening excursion north of the key resistance line in about two weeks. While the FOMC pre-empted Chinese and German concerns about the consequences of dollar weakness, the Fed sees the possibility of related bubbles as slim. The price action today leaves the door wide open for a Thanksgiving Day raid on the dollar for the remainder of the week with many American investors closing their books today until Monday. Complete Story »

  Market Folly submits:Raymond James chief investment strategist Jeffrey Saut is back with his weekly market commentary. This week he takes a look back at their call many weeks ago to be cautious in the markets given that they felt things were melting up and were due for a pullback. He questions that call and wonders if they made a bad decision. Saut then goes on to note that he thinks the upside in markets actually continues. In Saut's commentary last week, we noted hints of him 'giving in' to the rally and that many other portfolio managers were doing the same. Saut sticks with these thoughts again this week as he thinks the upside will be driven by a few factors. He mainly cites game theory in that under-invested portfolio managers have to get into the markets in order to catch up to their benchmarks before year end. Many managers right now have 'bonus risk,' and then ultimately 'job risk' as they can't be underperforming the markets after the large rally this year. So it seems he thinks the market melt up will continue based on performance chasing and cash on the sidelines coming back into the market.Complete Story »

  I’ve always been an admirer of the marketing prowess of salesforce.com… although it always drives me crazy to comply with the lower-case spelling of their name because it seems to genericize their value in my eyes. One of the specific aspects of the company’s marketing tactics which I’ve particularly liked is the way in which it continuously extends its brand identity by incrementally broadening and redefining its functional capabilities. This is a technique which I call “iterative marketing”.Complete Story »

  Bloomberg recently reported that John Paulson believes BAC still has a large potential upside. He expects the stock to double in the next two years from its current price of $16. Paulson is basing this on $3 per share earnings for 2011 and a 10X multiple which equals $30 per share. Below is some data detailing how Paulson got some of his numbers. I discovered a major flaw in the data Paulson used. Bank of America received $45 billion in TARP money from the government which it has not paid back yet. To pay this money back, Bank of America is going to have to raise $45 billion. To get completely out of the government's control Bank of America will have to buy back the warrants from the government. This company may have to raise slightly more tan $45 billion to accomplish this. This will be accomplished either through issuing new stock or issuing debt. I have compiled some data on several of the large banks that have repaid TARP so far.Complete Story »

  VFC submits: Shares of Cel Sci Corp. (CVM) continued to hover right around the $1.30 mark even after TheStreet.com's infamous biotech blogger thrust his most recent blogging salvo at Cel Sci in an attempt to keep his ongoing vendetta against the company alive - for reasons that are still yet to be known. We can only speculate as to why Feuerstein spends so much time attempting to attack Cel Sci, but in my opinion, the reasons range from hooking up his friends who are either short the stock and looking to cover and/or hooking up his boys that may want in on a good thing. Additionally, any article regarding Cel Sci will undoubtedly draw many 'hits' to his blog - and those hits are very important for advertising revenue when your living is blogging; hence the need to both stretch out one article over multiple pages (one reader then accounts for multiple hits) and the need to make sure that a Cel Sci article is somehow attached to another published article that has nothing to do with Cel Sci. Pretty slick, I guess the past few days will make up for the lost 'clicks' due to the Thanksgiving holiday.Complete Story »

  Michael Johnston submits:Boasting competitive cost structures, enhanced tax efficiencies, and improved liquidity features, ETFs have quickly become one of the most popular tools for all types of investors. But despite the rapid rise of the industry over the last five years, there are still countless investors, including many financial advisors, who are completely unaware of exchange-traded funds. Even among those who are relatively well educated on the basics of ETFs, confusion on the nuances of these products can run rampant. While the benefits and functions of ETFs are relatively simple to grasp, their are some complexities that have created confusion about these products. Below are a look at ten of the most common myths about ETF investing, along with some simple (and not-so-simple) truths. Complete Story »

  Below is a broad list of some well known as well as not so well known gold and silver miners, who have operations in different areas of the world. This is an attempt to bring up some miners that will help diversify geo-political risk. It also mentions some miners whose operations are in locations that tend to exceed expectations (regarding ore grade, reserve and resource base and life of mines), i.e. West Africa. North America:Complete Story »

  Jim Delaney submits: To say that the world is a different place than it was yesterday is a bit cliché; to say it is a different place than it was on Thanksgiving Day 2007 is the grossest of understatements. Having hopefully been through the worst of the back side of the most recent bubble, and not wanting to raise why we might not be on the eve of a holiday that is a time of giving thanks, I would like to wish every one reading this a good holiday. Taking a moment to be grateful that we’re still here (to lament and bemoan for some) is not a bad thing today, tomorrow and everyday.Complete Story »