The Tasgall Group

Just read this great quote from Inside the House of Money (p. 205):

We are playing a variant of the Greater Fool theory which should be called the Slower Fool theory. According to the Greater Fool Theory, investors buy things [at inflated prices] on the hope that they can find a greater fool to sell to.

Following the Slower Fool Theory, …my plan …is to be faster than the other fools holding [similar positions] and liquidate before the oncoming Armageddon devastates them… To the extent that everyone believes the crisis is sometime in the future and somebody else’s crisis, the game is viable. (more…)

The old cliche is that Copper is the only metal with a PhD.? “Copper earned its useful nickname “Dr. Copper” over the years due to its ability to forecast the state of the economy and particularly the ebb and flow of the equity markets.”? (From the first hit I found on Google.)

Today it looks like it’s telling us something a bit worrysome… (more…)

In case anyone caught last night’s Daily Show, Samantha Bee interviewed a guy named Kevin Kerr in her segment called Hurri-Cash. She mocked Kerr (a commodities trader) and a guy who runs a gambling website for profiting and being excited when hurricanes hit and cause devistation.

To be honest, the piece didn’t mock Kerr as much as the situation in general. The funny thing is, I’ve read Kerr’s work in the past and he is (as portrayed) very market oriented… You can read The Daily Reckoning or Investment U, both of which he sporadically contributes to. (more…)

The Bernanke rally yesterday seems to have given REITs a bit of a push (today they gave back a little). They’re now within spitting distance of the highs set back in March. Breaking above the recent high would be a bullish technical indicator, and there are potential fundamental influences at work as well (inflation, rising rents, etc.).

For reference, I look at the Dow Jones REIT Index (DJR), the Real Estate iShares (IYR), and the ING Clarion Global Real Estate Income Fund (IGR) to monitor the REITs broadly. The first two are basically broad indexes, where IGR is a closed-end fund and currently trades at an 8% discount to NAV.

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A lot of people think that Japan has finally waken up from its long cold night, and has started a genuine long-term bull run.? With its currency still weak, the import business should continue to do well, and their central bank has a long way to go before interest rates become constrictive.

Right now the Nikkei is in a correction, which means it should be time to buy.? It’s testing the low of June, and if I’m wrong we’ll know very quickly (it will continue to go below the June low).? Now might be a good time to start buying some Japan weighted funds, I prefer EWJ or JOF. EWJ is an ETF that tracks the Nikkei 225.? JOF is a closed-end fund that focuses on Japanese small caps.? While it has typically traded at a premium to NAV, JOF is now at almost no premium (the NAV reporting is delayed, so it’s hard to know exactly).

My mortgage is a fixed loan at 5.375%, yet with the tax deductions that mortgage interest carries, my “adjusted” cost of the interest is equivalent to a 4.2% rate.

If we look at the highest yielding money market or CD rates, we can find some as high as 6%*. This means that I have a theoretical carry trade between my mortgage and a money market account. Wow, that’s pretty cool.

This means I am actually profiting if I choose to keep funds in a money market account instead of pre-paying the mortgage.

Now, unfortunately, this is all theoretical… my money market account only yields 4.35%, so I’m clearing my “adjusted” cost, but not the real cost. I’m also curious if money market and CD rates will stay at this level for more than a year or two.

* Ok, the 6% rate is a technicality — it’s an introductory rate, but you can find 5.5% or better for quite a few CDs.

Whether you use Yahoo Finance or MSN Money, you should know about the SEC’s Edgar website. It allows you to search for official SEC filings for companies including their earnings reports, insider transactions, and material agreements.

A couple of times I have seen the price of a stock move dramatically on no news… a quick check to the Edgar site revealed that there was some insider buying that wasn’t properly reported on Yahoo Finance and wasn’t picked up in any news. Relevant information, but I had to go find it for myself.? This happens most with small and mid-cap stocks that don’t get coverage from Wall Street.

Edgar is the source for many of the data points on Yahoo Finance, such as the insider transactions, balance sheets, cash flow, etc.

So, I’ve used BigCharts for over 9 years now, but I recently noticed a new feature. You can chart the P/E Ratio, Yield, Rolling EPS, and a few other fields below a price chart. (I’ve known since the beginning about the more traditional technical indicators that can be shown there.)

The data is a bit off in a few cases, but you can get some interesting little charts. (more…)

There is a guy that does a fairly interesting look at the official statistics released by the US Government over at Shadow Government Statistics. He has taken the official releases, documents, disclosures, and footnotes, and figured out what all the real values would be for the US economic statistics without the adjustments that have become common in the last 10 years. (Both hedonistic and opportunistic adjustments).

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There’s a great story about a famous local trader at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). One day, he was on the floor of the CBOT and a U.S. inflation number came out that was totally unexpected. Pure pandemonium ensued. When all the noise died down, he walked out of the pit having made $10 million and said, “By the way, what was the number?”

-Dr. John Porter, Barclays Capital

as quoted in Inside the House of Money, p. 133