Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Investing

Random Thoughts 05 31 2011

I hear a lot of ads advising investors to put gold in their IRAs or 401ks.  Seems like a terrible idea.  The big benefit if retirement accounts is to defer income. Gold generates no income, and actually incurs storage and

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Gold Risks

With the dollar weakening, debt growing, and the global and domestic economy still sluggish there is pressure driving up the price of gold, silver and industrial commodities.  Forgive me if it just seems too obvious.  Endless ads selling gold, and

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Avoiding Political Influence in your Investment Decisions.

While I share the great concern about her destructive economic policies of this administration, I am getting a contrarian tick about the dollar and gold. Every right wing talk show and business TV show is flooded with adds selling gold

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Investing Odds

Is this a good time to buy? Yes and no. The contrarians are salivating but one can not discount the real risk in this market. Obama’s policies are so radically different on so many different levels that there is a

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Contrarian Conflicts

Conversation is fluid between those who believe this is the best time to buy stocks and those who believe that it is the worst time. Pure contrarian thinking gets more excited about the possibilities the more negative the news gets.

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Madoff and Fannie Mae

It is amazing what intelligent people are willing to believe when paid enough money. So many of the rich and the elite willingly invested with Madoff in spite of suspiciously good returns. “I don’t know how he does it, he

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Beware of Market Forecasts

John Bogle writes in the Wall Street Journal Online- Beware of market forecasts, even by experts. As 2008 began, strategists from Wall Street’s 12 major firms forecast the end-of-the-year closing level and earnings of the Standard and Poor’s 500 Stock

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We are More….

from Ben Stein in the New York Times 12/26/08 They Told Me That Madoff Never Lost Money excerpt- see entire column here We are more than our investments. We are more than the year-to-year or day-by-day changes in our net

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A Contrarian View of the Market

We are entering the New Year with a lot of pessimism about the stock market and the economy. While I have strong concerns I am optimistic for several reasons. We have already had a strong move down with a nearly

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The Fairholme Fund

I have searched for a good Value manager, but many who claim to be are not. I have found a manager who is, but his minimums are high, a million dollars. Contact me if your are interested in reaching him.

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Projecting Reasonable Growth

The annual report of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. offers some of the best business reading available. It is as plain and unadorned as any other report of such a large company. The content is everything. Berkshire has averaged 21.1% annual gains

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The Presidential Cycle

One of the most studied cycles in stock market analysis is the presidential cycle. The stock market is more likely to perform better in the last two years than in the first two years of a presidential term. There are

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