Chris Katje submits: November 10th marks the release of Activision's (ATVI) Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2.Activision, with its recent merger with Blizzard, holds the video game rights to Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. The company also produces video games based on movies under license.Complete Story »
Stocks discussed on Jim Cramer's Stop Trading! TV Segment, Monday October 19. BP (BP), National Oilwell Varco (NOV), Schlumberger (SLB), Exxon Mobil (XOM)Complete Story »
Jeff Nielson submits:It has gone from irritating to nauseating listening to media market-pumpers talking about an “U.S. economic recovery” which has supposedly already begun. Indeed, the hype has gone from a debate about whether the “recession” is over, to an inane debate about whether the U.S. is experiencing a “V-shaped recovery” or may suffer a “double-dip recession” or W-shaped “recovery”. In the real world, however, all that has occurred is that an U.S. economic collapse, which was in a near-vertical drop, has eased to a more moderate rate of decline. The “double-dip” talked about by some semi-realistic analysts is in fact nothing more than the ongoing collapse regaining downward momentum. There is no “debate” here. It is a matter of simple arithmetic that the U.S. economy cannot recover.Complete Story »
Andrew Horowitz submits: After the close on Monday, there was a shock to the Brazilian markets as an announcement was made that Brazil will be slowing foreign investment into the country. In as effort to cool the hot currency and speculation within the stock markets, they are reinstating policy from a few years ago. Brazil has been one of the countries that has been concerned about the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Obviously this is of importance as their country has both oil and commodities as a core export. With the U.S. dollar under fire (due to the systematic devaluation through debt monetization by the Fed) many countries are worried about a long, healthy and sustainable global recovery when relying on the U.S. dollar as the backbone currency.Complete Story »
Trader Mark submits:The continued fallout for our central banker's policy of making all our ills go away through a relentless push of US pesos out into the world continues to have far-reaching effects. When Ben Bernanke is not ruining Indian weddings, causing the Canadian central bank to consider a regime of quantitative easing to try to slow down their currency appreciation, he is busy causing consternation in Brazil. Much like Alan Greenspan, this guy is causing dislocations the world over.For American readers this is hard to comprehend, but other countries have to fight off the tsunami of little cute paper dollars surging into the global economic system; otherwise they will be facing rampant inflation themselves. To foreign readers... your welcome! With the Brazilian real up 35% year to date, the country has begun counter measures.Complete Story »
ETF Daily News submits:Apple Inc. (AAPL) the technology heavyweight, posted smashing revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.6 percent, up from 34.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue. “We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.”Complete Story »
Trader Mark submits:David Einhorn is one of the brighter minds in the hedge fund field - and unlike Mr. Rajaratnam at Galleon, seems to actually do his own homework. Below is the full text of his speech at the Value Investing Congress today - I was eagerly waiting to see what he had to say. (hat tip to Zerohedge)Regular FMMF readers will see Einhorn and a certain blog writer agree on many things. He talks about "short termism" - we've been discussing "kick the can" as American policy since day 1 of the blog. As we mentioned just weeks ago, we're not buying gold (silver) for inflation protection but to protect ourselves from the destructive behavior of the world's central bankers - most notably, America's.Complete Story »
Trader Mark submits:The market is on a torrid pace. As we flirt with S&P1100 and the money printing machines continue on overdrive to create prosperity for us all, we can now look in anticipation at new all-time highs on the S&P 500. They are not that far off, and with the Fed certainly in no rush to raise interest rates (I do not see them raising rates for all of 2010, worst case scenario fourth quarter '10) we can now build the 1999 NASDAQ model. Back then? A constant flood of money by Alan Greenspan to combat the ill effects of (what was then too big to fail) Long Term Capital hedge fund blowing up, along with a pre-emptive strike against year 2k. Everyone buying stocks was a genius, those who sounded caution were made to look like fools for months on end. You didn't dare short or else you got run over by the central bank printing press.These things should start to sound familiar - P-cubed (paper printing prosperity) is now the basis for American capitalism. [May 19, 2009: Paper Printing Prosperity Defined]Complete Story »
As of the beginning of September there were just 2.3MM job openings. This is equal to 2% of the total filled and unfilled positions – a record low. The ratio of unemployed to the number of job openings is now over 6. To give you some perspective on just how bad this is – the ratio was 1.5 in 2007 and peaked at 2.8 (less than HALF the current ratio) in 2003 when the jobs market was at its absolute worst. Complete Story »
Jim Delaney submits: For as many times as the pundits picked the bottom of the downward leg of what is yet to be determined as a “V”, “W”, “wwww” or “√“ in the stock market there have been those calling a top since the spring. These folks are now equally as frustrated their compatriots were trying to basket catch the low. For a bit of perspective, the last time there were gains of +50% in a major stock index in a single year was 1954 when the up move for the S&P 500 was 52.62%. The current record holder in this category was 1933 with a 53.97% mark according to Martin Fridson of Fridson Investment Advisors.Complete Story »
Trader Mark submits:As with gold 6 weeks ago, as with oil 2 days ago, now comes the liquidity chasing one of the few laggard areas... agriculture. Potash (POT) is breaking out in almost identical fashion to the other 2 commodities mentioned.Last Thursday we saw a story that potash inventories declined for a 3rd consecutive month, although still at 142% above the 5 year average. However, by the time they get closer to average - these stocks most likely will have run a long way.Complete Story »
That’s the conclusion that Ben R. Marshall, Rochester H. Cahan, and Jared M. Caha of New Zealand's Massey University have come to. They find that technical analysis, used on its own, is more profitable in some less efficient emerging markets, but overall has proven to be a waste of time.My personal take is that technical analysis is an excellent supplement to a broader approach. After all, technical analysis is nothing more than a visual representation of the PAST fundamental action of an asset. Therefore, technical analysts are really just another form of fundamental analysts. Using technical analysis alone is akin to a football team that watches lots of film, but doesn’t study the playbook at all. If you do that, you’re bound to look like my Washington Redskins, and that is nothing but bad.Complete Story »
Trader Mark submits:If one were to believe stocks could go down again for any sustainable period of time, and that the potential liability of insider trading charges against the head of a hedge fund could cause its investors to flee, here is a list of the top 10 holdings of the Galleon Group as of June 30th. It's actually a very liquid list of names that almost any large-cap oriented "growth" mutual fund would own; makes you wonder how Raj Rajaratnam was outperforming... err, well never mind on that point. Stock Symbol Mkt Value Ebay EBAY $116.1 Apple AAPL $78.3 Google GOOG $77.4 OSI Pharma OSIP $52.6 Bank of America BAC $42.9 JP Morgan JPM $41.9 Cisco Systems CSCO $38.6 SPDR Trust SPDR $34.4 Dell DELL $31.8 EMC EMC $29.6 Complete Story »
