Newsletters

6/16/2010: Wall Street is Really Out to Get You! Most investors make a mistake using the same investment approach regardless of the type of market they are in. The biggest victims of this type of investment bias are buy and hold investors, and boy have they been ravaged over the last ten years. The buy and hold method is a terrific approach to use during a secular bull market, and that is exactly what we ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

6/03/2010: FINALLY, He Fesses-up!!! A former emperor with no clothes is finally telling the naked truth. His name: Alan Greenspan. His primary role in history: Chief architect of the boom-and-bust cycle that caused the fiscal madness he now condemns. His most recent act: To issue four warnings in the past Friday's Wall Street Journal that are precisely the same as those that were issued in Money and Markets months earlier ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

6/02/2010: GOLD and the Tax Ramifications Proper planning with your finances is incomplete until you consider the endgame consequences of your investment decisions today. So, what are the tax consequences of selling gold, gold ETF's, and gold stocks? There’s lots of conflicting and inaccurate tax information on the Internet about this. We know of one site that claims the sale of silver Eagles is exempt ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

6/01/2010: The TOBIN TAX German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out in favor of a "Tobin tax" - a small tax on financial transactions, proportionate to the size of the transaction. The Tobin tax idea also has been proposed by Britain's former prime minister, Gordon Brown, and was proposed in Congress by U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-OR. Now with all of those dubious recommendations...>>Full Article | Back to Top

June 2010

5/03/2010: SYSTEMS Galore! Let’s look at some of the major methods behind investing and see what they can tell us: - Trend following – If you buy what’s going up, it will probably continue. - Value Investing – Buy what’s undervalued; it will eventually become overvalued. - Seasonality – The market tends to show seasonal patterns that you can capitalize upon. ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

5/01/2010: The Case for Gold…AGAIN!!! Two big numbers made news yesterday as we approached the market close. No one, to our knowledge, made a connection between the two. But to us, the connection is screamingly obvious. And frankly, your financial future hinges on that connection. Here’s the first number: $82.7 billion. That’s the deficit the U.S. Treasury posted last month. That’s awful for April, which usually records a positive number ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

May 2010

4/30/2010: The Welfare State Meets Mathematics The simple matter is that many nations have been living beyond their means and investors are beginning to doubt governments are good credit risks. That’s saying something, when governments can simply confiscate from the public the money needed to pay bond holders. But debt-to-GDP levels are now so high across the Western world that bond investors (and ratings agencies) are having serious ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

4/22/2010: Transportation Conundrum We have written on several occasions concerning an indicator called the Baltic Dry Index as closely watched an indicator as any on Wall Street. In several instances in the recent past its predictive value has been nothing short of phenomenal. For those unaware, the BDI is an index that measures prices for ocean-going dry bulk carriers. In essence, it measures what it costs ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

4/20/2010: “401-k vs. IRAs” We continue to get questions concerning the viability of 401-ks vs. IRAs. Today I want to talk about how those two different accounts relate to each other. Let's start with a simple question ... Which Is Better — A 401(k) Plan or an Individual Retirement Account? We'll assume that your employer offers a 401(k) plan and that you also meet the income requirements ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

4/19/2010: “Seven Signs This Bull Market Could Continue” Alright already! I’ve searched high and low for a logical, believable dissertation concerning the continuation of this BULL MARKET that is 13 months old. This best we were able to find comes from Louis Basenese, Small Cap and Special Situations Expert from Investment U:“Last April, I insulted some people when I wrote a column, suggesting that we were at “the start of a new bull market ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

4/01/2010: “Derivatives” Is Not a Dirty Word Your average so-called investment advisor, has probably jumped on the band-wagon that contains most of the news media, nearly all of the politicians, and many marginal-experts trying to explain the 2007-2009 financial melt-down by trashing derivatives. Some people freak out when they hear the D-word. Yet derivatives are just a tool. Like all tools, they can be very useful if they're handled properly. If not, they can do a lot of damage just like ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

April 2010

3/29/2010: A “RAW” Look at Social Security! Alright! One of the “things” that has taken a backseat in our musings over the last year or so is that of Social Security. Recent statistics show that six out of every 10 people will rely on Social Security benefits for over half their retirement income. If you are a "Baby Boomer" between the ages of 46 and 64 . . . you will want to pay close attention to the THREE MAJOR PROBLEMS ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/22/2010: Mauldin’s “Muddle Through” Revisited AND Krugman the Clown! Over the past several years, John Mauldin has been one of the clearest thinkers we know on many topics…but especially the economies of the US and our trading partners. Here is his latest missive to us: “I have pretty well laid out over the past decade that I think the US will Muddle Through what promises to be a period of below-trend growth and a long-term secular bear market. It will not be pleasant or fun - there will be a lot of pain - ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/16/2010: PENSION CRISIS…An Example We wrote in the past about the perilous situation of public pension systems nationwide, and the Massachusetts state pension system is no exception. The severe problems Massachusetts faces - created by years of generous worker benefits and declining asset values - mirror challenges faced by many other ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/15/2010: The Greatest Business!...NOT!!! We have a major announcement to share with you! We are launching a very big new business – a bank. I'd always thought the investment advisory business was a great business... but I've found something else much, much better – banking! Banking will allow us to leverage our capital 15 to 20 times. It offers us guaranteed profit margins, thanks to the Fed's manipulation ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/14/2010: The Three BIGGEST Disasters of 2010-2012 Of all the major disasters and threats to your security ahead — and all the major profit opportunities — according to Sean Brodrick, of Money and Markets, three stand out as the most imminent of all: Disaster #1: America's Empire of Debt. If you think Americans are living a normal life, think again. Our entire consumer economy, lifestyle, livelihood — and nearly all or wealth — is predicated on one thing ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/13/2010: ETFs in 2009 John Gabriel, Morningstar Advisor gives us a complete analysis of “what happened” in the ETF markets over the last 12-14 months: The U.S. exchange-traded fund industry continues to evolve and attract assets. U.S. ETFs closed out 2009 with $785 billion in assets, up from roughly $533 billion at the end of 2008. In 2009, investors poured $104.1 billion in net new assets into ETFs, following a banner year in 2008 that saw ETFs draw some $156.6 billion ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/11/2010: The Case for Ending the FED The legal tender laws of the United States are found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and grant power to Congress to “coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.” Nothing more. In the Constitution’s Article I, Section 10, the states were restricted in regard to money: “No state shall ... coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/06/2010: Templeton Predicted Financial Chaos Will Last Many Years When Sir John Templeton passed away in July of 2008, we lost one of the greatest investment minds of our time. But with great lucidity, in June of 2005, Sir John penned a memorandum to friends and family that is uncanny and prophetic in its vision of what would happen to the U.S. and global economy. The first two words — so pithy yet so powerful — are bolded and highlighted on his original document. They read, simply: “Financial Chaos.” ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/05/2010: Don’t Bet It All on a Recovery It is astounding how many economists, government officials, and Wall Street strategists construe the current economic conditions as evidence of a bona fide recovery. It is a testament to the power of the rose-colored glasses handed out by our nation’s leading universities that such a feeling could be widely held despite the clear and present danger that ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/04/2010: “NEGATIVE DIVERGENCE” When price rises, but volume falls, it is called a negative volume divergence and non-confirmation price action. Now we know that’s a mouth full of gobbledygook, but it turns out to be a rather faithful indicator. This is bearish. In addition, we should see large bursts of volume accompany periods of declining volume (these are your optimal trading days). Investors should be ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/03/2010: HERE IT COMES…INFLATION! Inflationary periods share three major points: 1. They have taken place under fiat (paper) money. 2. They’re caused by huge public deficits, which are largely financed by money creation. 3. And oh yes, they are man made, always the result of deliberate political decisions ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

March 2010

2/25/2010: How About Those PE’s We have no idea where the markets will go... only an inkling of where they ought to go. And where they ought to go is back to the mean, as everything eventually does. Right now, the S&P goes for around 22-25 times earnings, considerably higher than the long-term mean, which Yale University’s Robert Shiller ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/22/2010: Banks Are Hindering the Recovery When U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled the $787 billion "stimulus" bill of extra spending and modest tax cuts last year, it became clear that the U.S. budget deficit was going to eclipse the 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) level for at least one year (and, as we now know, probably three ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/11/2010: SELL Bank Stocks NOW!!! Whoever said, “Opposites attract,” didn’t know what they were talking about...or maybe they did know and just didn’t provide all the details. The world around us provides ample evidence that opposites do, in fact, attract...but not always toward a favorable outcome. Sometimes ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/10/2010: Another One Down! Last Friday U.S. regulators shuttered 1st American State Bank of Minnesota in Hancock, pushing up U.S. bank failures to 16 so far in 2010. This compares to total number of bank failures of 140 in 2009, 25 in 2008 and only 3 in 2007. While we expect economic recovery to gain momentum soon, there remain lingering concerns in the banking ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/09/2010: The Case for Commodities in 2010 Tight production and huge demand growth from developing nations will keep the commodities super-cycle going in the years ahead. The biggest emerging economies have ambitious plans that require a greater share of the world's limited commodities. This trend is spurring profound and permanent disruptions in how these resources are allocated now and in the future. For investors, these disruptions ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/07/2010: Marc Faber’s GOLD! LONDON (Commodity Online): Global investing guru and publisher of the famous Gloom, Boom and Doom report Marc Faber says gold price may continue to drop as low as $950 to $1,050 an ounce, but that is not any reason to sell gold. “The dip in gold price is a correction and this should be taken ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/02/2010: This is THE REAL Story About AIG Just last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision to directly pay billions of dollars to banks as part of its scheme to bail out insurance giant ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

2/01/2010: INFLATION…What Is it Anyway? How do you define inflation? In some ways it’s a slippery thing, like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. One common definition amounts to “a general and sustained rise in the price of goods and services.” Another is “a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money.” Others argue that inflation is directly ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

February 2010

1/28/2010: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Buy Another Stock After looking like they wanted to move higher (early last week), the markets broke sharply at the end of the week on news of China's efforts to curtail bank lending. Not only have the major indexes broken below their 20- and now 50-day moving averages., but we've also seen the indexes break below their long-term uptrend lines that have been in place since the March 2009 ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/27/2010: The Banking System is What Needs REFORMING The real analysis can be had by reverting to America's Founding Fathers and how this Republic was constructed. In a nutshell, they were really afraid of any concentration of power…and rightly so! They were particularly afraid that banking interests could hijack our fledgling democracy. Just look at where all of the power now rests...Washington ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/20/2010: Cheap Oil is Gone, and That's Good News Over the next year or two, you will likely find yourself paying a LOT more at the gas pump. Big changes are taking place in the oil industry. With increased global demand and declining supply, easy oil is not so easy anymore. Everything is about to get more expensive. From gasoline to anti-freeze, life jackets to golf balls, and eye glasses ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/19/2010: MORE and MORE Taxes…Anyway Possible! Witness the Administration’s latest disincentive, the "financial crisis responsibility fee." Good grief! The new tax will force about 50 large financial institutions to pay the federal government a total of about $90 billion over 10 years. About 70% of the firms would be U.S. companies, with the rest ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/18/2010: The Biggest Financial Deception of the Decade What do you think? Enron? Bear Stearns? Bernie Madoff? They’re all big stories about big losses and have hurt a lot of employees and investors. But none come close to getting my vote for the decade’s most dastardly deception... First came Enron, with $65.5 billion in assets, going belly-up and becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time. Chairman Kenneth Lay said that Enron’s decision to file bankruptcy would “stabilize the company,” but ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/15/2010: Will China Supersede Saudi Arabia as the Key to U.S. Oil Prices? The signs are everywhere that oil is headed for stratospheric highs - $200, $250 or even $300 a barrel. Some of these signs are just plain obvious. But even the subtle indicators are telling us that some very expensive energy costs headed our way. Let me tell you about one such indicator that I came across over the New Year holiday. A tiny news item said that Saudi Arabian oil concern ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/14/2010: Six Months to Live James Howard Kunstler, of Whiskey & Gunpowder gives me his prescient analysis of what he expects over the year of 2010…or actually the next 6-months. The economy that is. Especially the part that consists of swapping paper certificates. That’s the buzz I’ve gotten the first two weeks of 2010, and forgive me for not presenting a sheaf of charts and graphs to make the case. Just about everybody else yakking about these things ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/12/2010: America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began. History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. The labor force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/06/2010: 2010 Outlook - Keep your Eye on the Dollar The 2008-2009 recession was not a normal, business led recession and the recovery from this recession will not be normal either. Statistics on past recoveries from normal, business led recessions are irrelevant and misleading; they give a false sense of security. Witter & Westlake believes ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/05/2010: The Truth About the Health Care Bills “Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

1/04/2010: WARNING! You May Not be Making as Much on Gold as You Think Millions of investors who bought gold in the last 12 months are undoubtedly very happy at the moment – considering that the yellow metal has risen 60% since November of ‘07to a recent close of $1,138.60 an ounce on Monday. But chances are good that many won’t be smiling when they discover just what the taxman has planned for their gains ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

January 2010

12/21/2009: Our Best Guess for 2010! To say the least, 2009 has been a wild year for the economy AND the markets. The stock market soared, but the U.S. economy was hampered by rising unemployment and tight credit markets. If you’ve been IN this market, you have an unmitigated penchant for RISK! And I bet you were also one of those who were “all-in” during 2008. Which means that you are STILL 20-30% UNDERWATER! ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

12/14/2009: FREE MONEY…the Best Kind! Spread the Word: 'Free Money' for homes is one of those “perks” from the recent Government “spending binge.” You may have no idea that "free money" is now available for the purchase of a home. We’re looking aggressively to develop a seminar series to present to you on “How to Take Advantage of the FREE Money” with a potential real estate professional and CPA. ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

12/10/2009: FIAT Currency…the Scourge of Real Money It's a fraud because a fiat currency or paper money system allows politicians to create new money out of thin air. Historically, they typically created the most money to pay for wars or social giveaway programs. When they create money out of thin air, it dilutes the value of the existing money. It's a silent theft from ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

12/07/2009: The Global Warming Swindle REVISITED Some day in the future, human beings will likely colonize Mars. But if we suggested you invest in its colonization now, you’d rightly think we were a few cards short of a full deck. The same is true of much-ballyhooed “alternative energy” according to a recent ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

12/01/2009: US Bankruptcy Is All but Certain! This number is certainly beyond comprehension, it's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Get this, within the next 12 months; the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself,...>>Full Article | Back to Top

December 2009

11/30/2009: Platinum Investing Rules for You and Your Children 1) Save something every month. 2) Start young. 3) Invest consistently over time but beware of the fallacy of “dollar-cost averaging.” Averaging DOWN is folly! Just wait until the “down” is over and the “up” is underway. 4) Never commit to “Buy and Hold/Hope...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/17/2009: WARNING! You May Not be Making as Much on Gold as You Think Millions of investors who bought gold in the last 12 months are undoubtedly very happy at the moment – considering that the yellow metal has risen 60% since last November to a recent close of $1,138.60 an ounce on Monday. But chances are good that many ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/13/2009: Securitization Screwed It All Up Surprise, surprise!...Securitization – the product of the finest brains of Wall Street for more than two decades – doesn’t work as advertised. Historically, mortgage loans were made by small local institutions, which knew the borrowers personally and took the credit risk themselves. It’s the main driving force for us to have recommended ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/12/2009: INDIA, CHINA and GOLD Let’s review the big picture for gold. What’s going on? And what are people saying? For much of 2009, gold traded in the range of low-mid $900 per ounce. There was a dip over the summer, with a strong upswing starting in September. Gold is now trading well over $1,000 per ounce, in fact ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/09/2009: Bond ETFs and Their Problems A lot of noise has been made recently about the trouble that bond ETFs have been having when it comes to tracking their respective indexes. It takes two to create tracking error: an ETF and its index. So, how come all the focus...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/08/2009: A Message for Retirees Jeremy Grantham, president of investment management firm GMO LLC, has been getting a lot of press lately. At the market's top, he warned of an impending bear market. At the bottom in March, he forecast a historic rally. Today, he says the market is 25% overvalued. Should you be worried?...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/07/2009: Putting Your Food in Your Tank! British financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that food will never be so cheap again, and biofuels are at least partly to blame. Barack Obama has not reversed the Bush policy on biofuels, despite food riots in a string of poor countries last year and calls for a moratorium. The subsidy of ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/06/2009: CHINA and GOLD! The following essay by Jeff Clark of Casey Research is an incredible insight into the power and motivation of China along with its commitment to Gold Reserves. As you read this, the Chinese government is doing an extraordinary thing... something nearly unheard of in the ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/05/2009: The US’ Answer to “Peak Oil”! The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/04/2009: It Ain’t Easy Doin’ What We Do! In the Fall of 2007, we had a series of tense meetings on the state of the economy and how our investment process reacts to grief, agony, and miseration. We were convinced that the whole thing was about to come unglued. In fact, things looked so bad to us that we spent a good deal of time talki...>>Full Article | Back to Top

11/03/2009: Is the So-Called Housing Recovery on Hiatus? Real estate announcements dominated recent macroeconomic reports with what appeared to be disappointing housing starts and soaring existing home sales. After several months of steady increases, housing prices showed a modest 0.3% decline during ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

November 2009

10/30/2009: An Update on GOLD It looks like the smart money is going to be right again. And that's good news for anyone hoping to buy gold below $1,000 per ounce. A couple weeks I ago, I told you commercial gold ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/29/2009: It’s a Strong Dollar…It’s a Weak Dollar After a surge during the early stages of the financial crisis, the U.S. dollar has resumed its secular trend downward. Many applaud this dollar weakening as a way to spur exports and economic growth. Martin Feldstein, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/20/2009: An Update on Peak Oil As you know, if you’ve been following our missives over the years, we have been writing about the phenomenon of “Peak Oil” and how it will play-out during our lifetime. Byron King of Whiskey and Gunpowder quotes Marcio Mello, the former explorationist from Petrobras ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/19/2009: A “Roadblock” Guy? Jason Simpkins, Managing Editor of Money Morning recently proposed the question: “Is Timothy Geithner a Roadblock to reforming the financial system?” “Financial disclosure forms revealed last week that some of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/18/2009: The 401(k) Swindle Many people who are followers of our writings remember when we first introduced the “Global Warming Swindle” which totally repudiated all of the puffery of global warming including Al Gore’s flawed Nobel Prize-winning film! Wow, the Nobel-boys sure get it wrong time and time again....>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/17/2009: The FOUR Most Dangerous Words For as long as I have been in the business, people have been repeating Sir John Templeton's statement: The four most dangerous words in investing are "this time it's different." I think what he meant was that...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/16/2009: Here We Go AGAIN! The Federal Housing Administration, “appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24-36 months,” Edward Pinto said at a congressional hearing yesterday. As the former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae, he should know all about...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/15/2009: How Can Anyone Be A Conservative? By: Kendrick N. Mills, Jr. Senior Investment Advisor, Feddern Financial Consulting Group. If one considers that we are a nation created and established with Christian values, then obviously we are called to be charitable and...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/14/2009: Is the US on SALE? When more than $14 billion in merger-and-acquisition deals were announced in a single day two weeks ago, U.S. stock prices zoomed as investors embraced a suddenly more-bullish outlook. As the following Monday...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/13/2009: A “Dagger” in the Heart of Peak Oil? BP claims that there may be 200 billion barrels of oil and oil equivalents under the region above the Arctic Circle. Norway is exploring the area of its northern coast in the belief that a large portion of these fields belong to it. The BP estimate...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/12/2009: Consumer Restaurant Spending Report An Uptick in Restaurant Spending. Here is an in-depth report from our friends at ChangeWave Reports on the “situation” with restaurants. After four consecutive monthly surveys of virtually no change, we’re seeing an uptick in...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/11/2009: Harry Dent REBUFFED! Alexander Gant has the following poignant rebuttal of Harry Dent’s futuristic economic pronouncements. This is simply a rather logical look-back at Dent’s past projections versus his results. As they...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/09/2009: When Nothing is Something By Daniel Hannan. You may remember Daniel Hannan for his rather direct and brazenly eloquent critique of Gordon "The Devalued Prime Minister of a Devalued Government" Brown last spring. If not, it is quite easy to get...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/08/2009: China’s Status China is “movin’ on up…” Sixty years ago this past week, China began its communist experiment and slow rise as a world power. This anniversary was not left unnoted by the Red Nation, which staged a massive...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/06/2009: Social “InSecurity” Ethan Roberts, A contributing editor of The Tycoon Report has sent me a tremendous analysis of the pending Social Security debacle. Yes, we know…here comes more Gloom and Doom from those guys at Feddern Financial...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/05/2009: More on CRUDE We’ve been doing some additional, or should we say continuing work on Crude Oil, especially since our new Commodity Trader, Mike Harrison has begun to be very active in this area with a few of our accounts...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/04/2009: A Gold Fable What if everyone in the world wanted a one-ounce gold coin? If we’re right about where the price of gold is headed, the general public will someday clamor to buy all things gold. While gold stocks will be where the real leverage is, the rush will start with gold itself. As a gold editor, I have a very natural question: is there enough to go around?...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/03/2009: A “Cover-the-Waterfront” Diatribe As we write this missive, the third quarter has ended in what continues to be a most eventful year for the stock markets and the economy. It’s also one year since the weekend that shook the foundations of Wall Street and of the global financial system – when Lehman Brothers collapsed...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/02/2009: The Alphabet Soup of Recessions What will be our economic trajectory? How will we do as we come out of the recession of 2008-2009? There are those foolish optimists who predict that the recession is now OVER!...>>Full Article | Back to Top

10/01/2009: A “Disaster in Waiting”? At this point we should make something very, very clear. None of us in our shop thinks highly of the current rally in stock market. However, as Bill Clinton would say “it IS what it IS.” We certainly may have an ever-so-slightly playable portion of this up-cycle left (provided all of us are observant, nimble and cynical enough to be willing to hand off to a greater fool at the end), ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

October 2009

9/30/2009: John Maynard Keynes Most people know John Maynard Keynes as a famous British economist considered by some to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His ideas on “interventionist policies” have helped guide many governments...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/29/2009: ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) Revisited Exchange-traded funds, once the purview of retail and small institutional investors, are increasingly flowing into the investment portfolios of larger institutions globally...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/28/2009: The Fallacy of Math… When It comes to Investing Imagine this: Your brother Bill, a retired scientist and amateur investor, wants to go into publishing just the way he picks stocks: He would ask for authors' submissions, then let a computer pick the best manuscripts, based on the key factors that make a book into a bestseller...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/25/2009: SEX…or the Lack of It…Is There Another Bubble Brewing? Get used to it: Your house is just a home…not an investment! Governments and media are engaged in a full-blown campaign to punish the villains responsible for the global financial crisis spawned by the bursting of home price bubbles across most of the Western world...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/24/2009: Is There Another Bubble Brewing? A contributing writer for Money Morning, Shah Gilani, gives us an eye-opening analysis of yet another potential credit disaster. He begins with the question: “Is the government creating another subprime-mortgage bubble?”...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/23/2009: The Real Price of Gold Adrian Ash of Whiskey and Gunpowder gives us a thorough missive on one of the most outstanding commodities for our times. Two charts and three measures of gold’s “real” price today ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/22/2009: Oil Going to $30 THIS FALL? Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Oil traders are paying more than ever in the options market to protect against a plunge in crude prices. The gap between prices of options betting on a decline and those that would ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/21/2009: When Correlations Go to “1” When correlations go to “1” you and your traditionally trained financial advisor have egg all over the proverbial face of your portfolio. As a quick explanation: When correlations of investments are “1,” it means that they basically move up...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/20/2009: CHINA and GOLD The yellow stuff is now over $1,000. In fact, it looks like $1,000 could be a new support level for the metal - with most of the support coming from the Chinese. China has relatively little gold in its central bank. It must see what we see - the weakness...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/19/2009: Convoluted Education Part II Consider the question: What causes rain? Now get this: The answer now-a-days is wet walks”. We know this is true because every time the sidewalks are wet, we see rain! It is a common fallacy to “reverse causality” in ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/18/2009: Convoluted Education Part I Well…well. It’s really FALL! The leaves are changing and the kids have returned to school. For most of the life of the United States of America one of the biggest dreams was that the next generation would exceed what their parents had...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/15/2009: SIX Myths Concerning the 2008 Collapse Here it is, one year later, and we continue to hear an enormous amount of misinformation about the Credit Crisis: What were the actual causes, what could have been done, what should have been done. Lets consider the...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/14/2009: CHINA…One Man’s Opinion One of the “on the ground” analysts concerning China is Keith Fitz-Gerald, Investment Director of New China Trader. Keith has a real conviction about the opportunities in China…NOW! His report begins: “I'll tell you right up...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/11/2009: Broken China? Maybe NOT! We’re continuing our quest to better understand what’s happening in China. The reason being that THEY will probably be a key factor in the world-wide recovery…maybe! After nearly doubling in the first seven months of...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/10/2009: My Top 10 Reasons for a CHINA PULL-BACK #1: More Froth Than a Starbucks Cappuccino: To say Chinese stocks were slightly overvalued is… well, an understatement. Last fall, Chinese stocks traded at 12.9 times earnings. After just eight months, they rallied to...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/09/2009: An Interview with Jim Rogers Rogers is one of the most successful money managers in history. He made so much money investing and trading during the 1970s, he left the conventional side of work to travel and run his own money. You can read more about him in one of...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/08/2009: Australia vs. CHINA A $15 billion deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) involving Australia, China and global-oil heavyweight Exxon-Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) has prompted many investors to worry that China may be using its global-markets muscle to...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/04/2009: “Farewell America!” Have you ever read something that sent a shivery goose-pimple feeling up and down your spine? Well, here it is, even if you seldom succumb to delving into financial-type diatribes for fun and games like we do! This missive alerts you to...>>Full Article | Back to Top

9/03/2009: Ever Hear of the “Baltic Dry Index?” As the Baltic Dry Index (a global shipping "price" mechanism) works its way back to early May levels despite a "recovering global economy," one must ask what are the drivers? But as always with the stock market, news does not matter until...>>Full Article | Back to Top

September 2009

8/28/2009: HYSTERIA! "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming" The U.N. recently announced global warming is leading inexorably to global catastrophe. Al Gore won the "best documentary" Oscar for...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/26/2009: "and Forgive Us Our Debts" According to some, the United States is in the third and fatal stage of a great country’s life-cycle – the political stage. In this stage, money and power migrate from the financial community where its been for decades to the political community which certainly won’t last nearly that long. ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/24/2009: Recovery…Not Now…MAYBE NEVER! It’s obvious that we live in miraculous times! Communications with the likes of a tiny cell phone between two six-year olds and 50 CEOs on a conference call is nothing short of phenomenal. Using an Internet-based phone both groups...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/22/2009: More “funny stuff” with ETFs – from We’re often asked why we have not established a new ETF portfolio for our current 1%@Risk portfolio models. (Check out our website for the models: www.fedderngroup.com). The answer is simple but certainly not easy to...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/21/2009: How’s Real Estate REALLY Doin’? Good news has been swirling around the housing market lately. The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that sales of new U.S. homes surged 9.6% in July. A week before, the National Association of...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/20/2009: The China BUST! One of the academic and financial conundrums involves debating whether the recent rise in the Chinese stock market means there's a bubble -- and if so, when it's going to burst. Who cares? What happens to the broader Chinese...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/19/2009: Social Security? NOT In Rude Awakening, Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin had the following essay about Social Security and the fact that it’s main problem is not the benefits but the demographics behind the benefits! It follows right along with...>>Full Article | Back to Top

8/18/2009: AUGUST 18, 2009 Indeed, at important turning points in economic history, the difference between success and failure is often just knowing whether the trend is moving up or down. If you miscalculate, based on wishful thinking or foolish delusion, you might never recover. We have already seen... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/17/2009: Some GDP “stuff” OTTO THIS IS UN-EDITED FROM JOHN MAULDIN (GAVCAL). We are hearing concerns, from some clients and friends, that the brutal corporate cost-cutting seen in the wake of the subprime crisis will delay the recovery, because this trend is killing the US consumer. In other words, how can one spend if he has lost his... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/16/2009: The Ultimate Bush Bash! We have never been in the camp of the Bush Bashers of yester-year. Actually they continue on to this day…and perhaps with some real credibility! He and his cronies will apparently get away scot-free with their crimes; better they had all been brought up before a tribunal and tried for crimes against humanity in... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/15/2009: So You Think it’s a HEALTHY STOCKMARKET? Think again! Look at the following piece done by Lon Witter of Witter and Westlake here in Louisville: A healthy stock market environment requires a healthy economy, which in turn requires a healthy consumer. The American consumer is the engine that drives 70% of our... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/15/2009: 7 TIME BOMBS for the Next 12-Months What if the worst happens? It’s no longer is a matter of “if.” Now it is a matter of “when.” Everyone needs to think about the unthinkable…and prepare! Our premise is and has always been NOT TO LOSE. It’s a strategy and methodology that we call 1%@Risk and it has worked spectacularly... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/14/2009: Remember “Peak-Oil?” We see more confirmation of “peak oil” theory along with two very interesting charts that confirm our long-term outlook on oil. We began looking at oil reserves many years ago with work done by Charlie Maxwell, the first “oil guru” that I ever knew. Not only is it obvious even to a layman that oil will not, indeed can not... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/13/2009: The Realities of the “Math of Demography” Here’s a dose of reality ONLY for those who really want to know how bad our situation is! Social Security? We don’t think so. For those of you who attend our monthly meetings of LUGs and AAII, you remember the Harry Dent presentation featuring the concepts in his books as regards to... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/12/2009: Land of the Lost Decades! Some gurus estimate that it would take 19 years for the economy to complete its de-leveraging or “correction phase.” It’s not a very scientific estimate. But total debt has gone down about $2 trillion over the last 24 months. So, if it continued at that rate, it would take about 19 years to erase the extraordinary... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/11/2009: Currencies: Why There’s ALWAYS Huge Opportunities The following piece from the folks at Taipan Publishing gives an analysis of currency markets that is woefully lacking most anywhere else. They begin their piece with: “If corporations were people, a good many of them would be psychopaths. That was the conclusion of a study... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/10/2009: The Hidden Risks of ETFs Over the last few years, we at FFCG have studied and analyzed the merits of including an ETF platform in our 1%@Risk. In fact, Kendrick developed a very diversified portfolio using his RS (Relative Strength) methodology. Back in the Fall of 2007, we actually began by owning about 20 ETFs and we applied our... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/08/2009: What’s a VAT? A value-added tax (VAT) is a fee that is assessed against businesses by a government at various points in the production of goods or services – usually any time a product is sold, resold, or value is added to it. For tax purposes, value is added whenever the value of a product increases as a result of the application of a company’s factors... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/07/2009: Adapt or DIE Jeff Clark, in Growth Stock Wire, gives us some new insights into what the markets are doing and most importantly WHY. “Darwin's theory of evolution applies equally as well to traders on Wall Street as it does to beasts in the jungle. The difference, though, is while it may take a lion dozens of generations to adapt to changes in his... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/06/2009: “HUNKY DORY” My father used the headline phrase with me when I was in trouble! Believe me when I say that phrase was truly feared with a fierce passion. Whenever the herd mentality lines up along a course leading to “permanent prosperity,” or a yellow brick road lined with green shoots, or something like that, we tend to see the edge of a cliff up ahead. The diminishing returns of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/05/2009: The Great “Reflation Experiment” of 2009 The whole thing appears to be run by rank amatures! How about a little history courtesy of John Mauldin in Dallas Texas concerning private sector credit AND debt? The origins of post-war inflation go back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, though some would take it back much further. In the 1960s, the US... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/04/2009: The “DOW Theory” You may have never heard of the Dow Theory; but surely you have at least heard of Charles Dow, the first editor of the Wall Street Journal and creator of the famous DOW Industrials and the DOW Transports. For those of you who have delved into our “1%@Risk” Risk Management techniques, realize that his historic Point... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/03/2009: More “Deficit Stuff” As it becomes increasingly clear to them that spending truly monstrous and mind-boggling quantities of your money – and the money of your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren – is producing no satisfactory result, except for propagating the problem, you can expect the government to expand its... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/02/2009: More “China Stuff” - Agriculture China leads the world in many things, including the amount of ground lost to desertification or ecological disaster. Maybe we could bus some our environmental activists to them! And believe it or not, at the same time, the Chinese are changing their... >>Full Article | Back to Top

8/01/2009: Welcome to “Pop-ville” Get ready! Here comes yet another “ready-for-the-pin” bubble! (Bloomberg) July 29: The Shanghai composite Index fell 5% as investors raised fears that Chinese authorities might tighten credit available through the banking system which has facilitated the increase in equity and property markets. The Index has... >>Full Article | Back to Top

August 2009

7/26/2009: Flaws in Case Shiller By Robert Huebscher, Advisor Perspectives To forecast economic growth, it’s essential to understand the trajectory of the housing market. Most observers rely on widely publicized data like the Case Shiller index, but those metrics can be very misleading if you don’t understand how they are calculated. If you don’t... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/25/2009: A President to Believe In… According to David Galland, Managing Director of Casey Research, LLC: “In the history of American presidential politics, there has rarely been one like him; a man of humble origins who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, with no serious chance of actually winning the presidency, but who won nonetheless. Perhaps his success... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/24/2009: The “Currency Effect” It's earnings season. And more and more companies are talking about currencies. The headlines read like this: "Alliance Data 2Q Profit Down 37 Percent, Hurt By Currency Headwinds" "McDonald's Profit Narrows By 8 Percent On Currency Exchange Impact" "Pepsi 2Q Down 2 Percent On Currency, North American Pressures"... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/23/2009: Charity? Humbug! by Doug Casey If Warren Buffett really wanted to be charitable with his billions, he would have concentrated on making billions more. Simply put, I don't believe in philanthropy or charitable giving — at least not the ordinary kind. Charitable giving and the concept of charity itself are among the stupidest and most destructive... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/22/2009: BEWARE of Enthusiasm of FOOLS! It all comes down to one thing… Make the right moves with your money right now and you’ll be set for life. That's not an exaggeration… But make just one wrong move, and your portfolio could take another 41% hit. That’s something few – if any – Americans can recover from… Ever… You see, the underbelly... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/21/2009: Would You Believe $23.7 TRILLION!!!! From: Newsmax WASHINGTON -- The federal government has devoted $4.7 trillion to help the financial sector through its crisis, a level of assistance equal to about one-third of the overall U.S. economy, a watchdog report said Monday. Under the worst of circumstances, the report said, the government's... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/20/2009: Looks Like LIFE-SUPPORT to Us Keep a close eye on earnings releases ... across all sectors and industries. That's because earnings results are an important yardstick for sizing up the overall health of the stock markets and the underlying economy. And equally important is the market's reaction to the earnings reports coming out. What we’re finding... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/19/2009: GOLDMAN SACHS-The Great American Bubble Machine From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and according to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine, “they're about to do it again.” Thanks to our office manager at FFCG, Debra Partin, for calling our... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/18/2009: Looks Like LIFE-SUPPORT to Us According to Bill Bonner at The Daily Reckoning, “Our faith is weakening. That is, our faith that the government will be able to cause inflation, sooner or later.” Let's review our own recent discussion: deflation now?, inflation later? It's very simple. Maybe too simple. After a half a century of credit expansion, we now have... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/17/2009: The Deflation vs. Inflation – PART II Could inflation be back already? Yesterday, the PPI reading came out. If you recall, producer inflation popped 1.8% in June, twice as much as Wall Street was expecting and the biggest monthly gain since late 2007. Today, it’s the same story for us lowly American consumers. The CPI rose 0.7% in June, says the Labor Department... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/16/2009: The Deflation vs. Inflation – PART I We have made the comment more than once that is it unusual for two major bubbles to burst (Real Estate and Credit) and for the conversation to be all about rising inflation and not a serious problem with deflation. As Niels Jensen pointed out last week in a piece in John Mauldin’s Outside the Box, the most important... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/15/2009: Where Oh Where Is Paul Volker by Justice Litle, Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group When it comes to the ups and downs of the economy, there is only one man who can claim to have seen it all – Paul Volcker. At six-foot-seven, Volcker towers over all other policy makers in both the literal and figurative sense. In a role that would later deem him... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/14/2009: What Happened YESTERDAY! By Adam Lass, Taipan Daily I may as well start the column with the question everyone is asking me. “If everything is as bad as you guys say, if the shoots are all shriveling, if banks are all screwed, if the technicals are calling for a whopping breakdown, why is the Dow breaking out?” Are things really better all around... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/13/2009: How GOOD or BAD Is it? This may be more than you want to know! According to Nouriel Roubini’s latest analysis in the RGE Alert, the “June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure.” The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/12/2009: All Right Pilgrims; Here’s How It Works Thanks to Dick Ernst from our AAII Chapter for this piece It is a slow day in the East Texas town of Madisonville. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich tourist from the East is driving through... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/11/2009: The Plunge Protection Team Material for this piece is from Steve Christ of Wealth Daily The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/09/2009: The California Debacle! Commentary by Kevin Hassett July 6 (Bloomberg) – “Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/08/2009: The Ultimate HALL OF SHAME! The folks at BillShrink at The Daily Crux sent us this piece. “Specialists play an important role in society, disseminating expert knowledge to those without time or inclination to become the same. There are gurus in all areas of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/06/2009: No Recovery in Sight…Call it What it Is By Bill Bonner at The Daily Reckoning We have spent the last few days holding back tears... Michael Jackson! Robert McNamara! And now our heart goes out to Nantucket Island. Word came this morning that the rich are not living it up like they used to. The New York Times reports that it's the slowest summer on... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/05/2009: WILL AMERICANS PUSH FOR THIS? The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota ; western South Dakota ; and extreme eastern Montana... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/03/2009: T. Boone Pickens Bites the Dust! On Tuesday, Texas oilman and energy security character T. Boone Pickens announced that he will delay, and likely permanently scuttle, plans for a 687 turbine wind project in the Texas panhandle. We warned you of this foolishness late last year when he first proposed this Don Quixote look alike project. We questioned... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/02/2009: Natural Gas Primer…and Just in Time! Chris Mayer from Rude Awakening has put together a dissertation on Natural Gas that everyone needs to heed. As most people know, our CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) based on the West Coast, Victor Lyons had a very profitable what he called “target trade” on Crude Oil earlier this past Spring. It was spot on... >>Full Article | Back to Top

7/01/2009: New Program: One on One by Lon Witter For over 30 years, I have been developing and researching investment programs. The quest has been to find the most reliable and consistent investment program that will earn 10-20% a year with the least amount of risk. If a program shows promise, Witter & Westlake runs a pilot program with our own money for... >>Full Article | Back to Top

July 2009

6/29/2009: The End of the Recession? From John Mauldin I walked into the office yesterday evening and there was someone on CNBC talking about how the 50-day moving average of the S&P 500 rising above the 200-day moving average was telling us the market was getting ready to rise and the recovery had started. I listened to his babbling for... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/28/2009: A Primmer on How Currencies Work by Bryan Rich, Money and Markets If you were to travel outside of your home country and encountered a McDonald's, would you pay more or less for a Big Mac? Well that depends ... You would likely notice a difference though. A major cause of this difference is the value of the local currency relative to your home country's... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/24/2009: Was Milton Friedman RIGHT? In 1961, the great free-market economist Milton Friedman wrote a paper called "The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy," wherein he discovered a six-to-nine month delay in how long it would take for a change in monetary policy to be felt in the economy and the stock market. Since then, it has been known... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/23/2009: A Jobless Recovery? Martin Hutchinson, Contributing Editor to Money Morning gives us the following grim picture: “When the Labor Department recently reported that U.S. payrolls fell by 345,000 jobs in May - the lowest total in eight months - commentators were suddenly spotting “green shoots” of economic recovery virtually everywhere... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/22/2009: CURRENCIES…A Little History for Your Consideration As regular readers of our Newsletters know, we are constantly searching for investment opportunities in non-correlated assets. Actually, this has only been the case for the last 18-20 months. It is during this period that our market indicators, which we developed over the past nine years, 2 began telling us... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/21/2009: The Doomsday for Business! This commentary is by Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. (Bloomberg) -- I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/20/2009: The Kiss of Death Is Upon Us! And no matter what your investment or political persuasion, there can be no question and no doubt that, with nearly $14 trillion spent, lent and guaranteed to bail out troubled banks, insurance companies, favored brokerages, GSE’s, auto companies, AND to generally stimulate the economy, Washington's... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/19/2009: Is INFLATION Really Coming On? You Bet-cha! It’s called the Law of Unintended Consequence. And according to Mike Lawson from Money and Markets it goes like this: “So let me see if I get this straight. From their recent lows ... Crude oil prices have more than doubled — to $72 a barrel from $33.55. Gasoline prices have surged 62 percent... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/17/2009: Obama vs. Israel! Amid the rhetoric of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech June 4 in Cairo, there was one substantial indication of change, not in the U.S. relationship to the Islamic world but in the U.S. relationship to Israel. This shift actually emerged prior to the speech, and the speech merely touched on it. But it is not a minor change and it must... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/15/2009: You Need to Know ALL of This About OIL…THIRD Ron Harwood is an old friend of Chick Lanphier (our convertible securities manager in Hawaii) (35+ years). Chick forwarded to me this diatribe on Oil which dovetails very nicely with our current missives on the subject. According to Chick, Ron has been associated with the oil and gas business from... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/14/2009: You Need to Know ALL of This About OIL…SECOND. Adam Lass, Senior Editor at WaveStrength Options Weekly send me this piece with a totally different tack on what’s really moving oil prices. His conclusion is basically the same as ours; however, “Peak Oil” that was in our previous piece has little to do with his reasoning. His basic conclusion... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/13/2009: You Need to Know ALL of This About OIL…FIRST. THIS IS AN URGENT WARNING: One famous expert warns, "There will be panic." Says CNN Money, "The cat is out of the bag... " Even the U.S. government admits this single seismic event may cost us over $4 trillion... And it's ALREADY HAPPENED... Are you relieved to see oil... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/12/2009: STUDENTS OF THE MARKETS!...Read This! Here is the scoop on how Fed is working in collusion with the Treasury to RUIN the US Dollar and to foist higher interest rates on all of us…BIG TIME! Lots of folks, including some of our readers, think the Federal Reserve is in control of the money supply. That simply ain’t true – not by a long shot. The main thing... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/11/2009: Buy ‘n Hold…YUCK! One of our most respected investment gurus is John Mauldin in Dallas Texas. His continuing insight over the last 3-4 years has been an incredible stabilizing force as we have navigated our client portfolios through the most difficult time period in our life-time. Julie Crawshaw of Newsmax has sent us a classic analysis of the follies of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/10/2009: Tim’s Embarrassing Trip to China We have to only guess that members of this administration are so full-of themselves that believe that jaw-boning foreign countries (Tim w/China), bowing to sheiks (Obama w/Saudis), and otherwise believing that we should depend on TALK and their gift of gab to vet our way through to a positive outcomes that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/08/2009: Does Your Financial Advisor Know ANYTHING? ANSWER: Probably NOT!!! Now before you get defensive with us about your current guy or gal, let’s get some perspective. Most people change “advisors” on somewhat of a regular basis for a myriad of reasons. Some of reasons are personal and emotion-based; others are because of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/07/2009: RISK and the Weather Until last fall, Pam Nintrup (this is a fictitious name) thought the financial adviser (not us!) she had hired two and a half years before was doing a good job. He'd consolidated her and her husband's scattered accounts onto one statement and run computer Monty Carlo simulations and scenarios to determine whether her goal... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/06/2009: More on the Latest Real Estate Figures We’re having a long-running disagreement with some of the pundits-talking heads about the direction of the national housing market. They call real estate "the investment of the century." We think it's more likely to be "the disappointment of the decade." Some say that housing prices are about to... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/05/2009: The Case for a Depression! (Edited by Leslie Adler of The Daily CRUX) NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technical analyst Robert Prechter on Monday said he sees the United States losing its top AAA credit rating by the end of 2010, as he stuck by a deeply bearish outlook on the U.S. economy and stock market. Prechter, known for predicting the 1987 stock... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/04/2009: OH!...the Poor Dollar! It seems to us that the US Dollar is poised for at least “difficulty” for at least an extended period of time. And it just may be the Chinese that are going to really call the shots. The Chinese can see that U.S. dollars – like all the rest of the world’s paper currencies – tend to lose value over time…lots of value. The Chinese can also see that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/03/2009: More EMA Confirmation As everyone knows who follow our “stuff” in these Newsletter, our final long-term indicator for market health and direction is our 40-week EMA (Exponential Moving Average). Now let’s not get into what the “exponential” math is: suffice it to say that this type of moving average weights the current data (in our case weeks) MORE than... >>Full Article | Back to Top

6/02/2009: Changes in the Mighty DOW Courtesy of Money and Markets The bankruptcy of General Motors isn't surprising ... in fact, Martin repeatedly warned Money & Markets readers — for years — that it was coming. Still, the effects of this bankruptcy will reach all corners of the U.S. economy. Common stock holders will likely get wiped out... >>Full Article | Back to Top

June 2009

5/26/2009: Good Grief!..RE Again! The following is a short excerpt from Dan Ferris at the S&A Digest: "Foreclosures were bad last year? It's going to get worse," University of Wisconsin professor Morris A. Davis told the New York Times. And this time, the problem lies within the more numerous and more creditworthy prime loans. Economists are referring to this... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/23/2009: And You Think the Fed is Your Friend Few people remember it today, but the Federal Reserve System was concocted on an island off the coast of Georgia under great secrecy. It had to be kept secret because most people of the day would have been furious at its hidden purpose: to control and inflate the U.S. dollar. Greg Dorsey of Real World Investing states... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/21/2009: How About Rescinding the Nobel Prize for Economics? “Throw the bums out!” The blame-game is always being played especially when things go wrong. The following diatribe is pretty much a self-analysis of the economists and why they certainly missed the ball on the current mess that has presented itself. “You may have noticed that the economy has... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/20/2009: Wharton School of Economics “Suggested Reading” Many of you have asked on numerous occasions about additional reading and research material on the various economic and market “situations.” The follow list is a plethora of topics from the Wharton School of Economics at Princeton. Great information and insights at... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/19/2009: Another Way to Look At It The attached chart was sent to us by Doug Wolford, Sales Manager of Niel Huffman Nissan, and a long-time follower of our “stuff.” As most of you probably know, 1955 was one of those “water-shed” dates when something REALLY CHANGED in the investment world. At that time the dividend yield on stocks began... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/18/2009: Money and Its “TRAVELING” Bill Bergman sent us the following graphs and commentary concerning the flow of money and how it impacts critical thinking about the banking system. In recent months, the currency component of M1--currency circulating outside of banks--has taken off like a banshee. In fact, since August 2008, just before... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/17/2009: And On it Goes… Just this past Friday, announcements about the TARP funds flowing to many more insurance companies in addition to AIG comes to hit us between the eyes! And these are some of the “stalwarts” of the industry: Allstate, Prudential, Ameriprise, Hartford Financial, Lincoln National and Principal Financial Prudential, and more. Good grief, when... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/16/2009: Be Careful What You Wish For… An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/15/2009: If it Ain’t Broke…BREAK IT! University of Chicago economist and Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman's view on the Great Depression holds that the stock market bubble of the Roaring 20s was not the reason for the Depression. Instead, it was the wrong fiscal and monetary policy in the years after the bubble had burst that caused the Depression. Ben Bernake... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/14/2009: U.S. Stocks vs. the DOLLAR In times of stress you can't rely on normal conditions to hold. In fact, reactions to stress can be quite the opposite ... completely unpredictable. It's no different in financial markets. During normal conditions, you have a good grasp on expectations of how markets relate to each other and how one market might respond to... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/13/2009: What REALLY Worries Us Whiskey & Gunpowder By May 8, 2009 Saratoga Springs, New York, U.S.A.Euphoria managed to out-run swine flu last week as the epidemic-du-jour, with “consumer” confidence jumping and the big bank stocks nudging up. The H1N1 virus fizzled for now, at least in terms of kill ratio, though we’re warned it might boomerang... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/12/2009: What REALLY Worries Us On a regular basis, we continue to get comments from investors, clients, prospects, and fiduciaries of Foundations and Endowments asking us “Do you see anything positive, especially since the markets have risen the past NINE weeks?” Perhaps they’re beginning to question our sanity, logic, and beliefs! Believe it…we question... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/11/2009: A Real Estate UPDATE As the markets continue their march upward AND our Real Estate SECTOR continues to flash BUYS both Short and Intermediate-term, it warrants a fresh look at the fundamentals. If you've been reading our pronouncements over the past two years, then you've been ahead of the real estate pack every... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/10/2009: 25 Warren Buffett Quotes On Investing 1. “Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.” 2. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” 3. “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” 4. “We simply attempt to be fearful... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/09/2009: The Chrysler Bankruptcy: What Does It Mean? Quoted from RGE Monitor “On April 30, Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection from its current creditors. As such, Chrysler will be able to operate as a going concern, while the company renegotiates its debt structure and other obligations. The U.S. government has described Chrysler’s action as... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/07/2009: Let’s Look at the Other Side of the Coin Stocks broke up through some major price-resistance areas last Friday, following a slew of positive economic developments. The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke above resistance at 8,200, while the S&P 500 Index penetrated resistance at the 870 level and the Nasdaq Composite Index broke above... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/06/2009: “PLAN A” Needs Major Revision See if you can guess if Plan A will work: Crooked bankers and brokers give crooked regulators advice on what to do with crooked assets. Talk about clueless! This is Plan A. Do you honestly believe the result will be either a) not crooked or b) crooked? Now we’re not in the camp that everything that comes out of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/05/2009: Look Out! Show Me the Money One question that has so far been avoided by practically all the commentators, talking heads, and well-wishers is this: where’s the money to come from? In the popular mind, if you can call it that, the government’s pockets are infinitely deep. Reach down far enough and you will pull up whatever... >>Full Article | Back to Top

5/01/2009: And You Wonder Why We’re UPSET? Now that the Chicago Tribune is in bankruptcy, this poignant cartoon from 1934 says it all! This telling cartoon could just as well been published TODAY for all that matters. It simply re-enforces that old adage of: “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn... >>Full Article | Back to Top

May 2009

4/29/2009: The Next “Bubble” is Bursting! Alright folks! Get out of the way! The next popping sound that you will hear is bursting of the US Government Bond market! Yes, we know what you’e probably thinking, “What else can go wrong?” Last Fall investors chased long-term Treasury prices higher and higher. We were very leery of this process... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/28/2009: What is this “Carbon Cap ‘n Trade” Stuff? Now if you really, really, really want to know and understand what all the fuss is over “Carbon Cap ‘n Trade,” sit down in your favorite chair; get a really, really, really TALL goblet of your favorite libation; and send everyone out of the room as you turn off the TV! This puts you in a position... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/27/2009: SIX Lies! The truth hurts. But it also heals. That's the lesson of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the S&L disaster of the 1980s, the giant insurance failures of the 1990s, and the tech wreck of the early 2000s. As long as Wall Street and Washington hid the real facts and lied about their true consequences, the crisis lingered and deepened. It wasn't until they confessed to past blunders, flushed out the bad assets... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/26/2009: Unemployment! The MAIN Indicator. In an effort to be “fair and balanced” as they say. We are constantly reviewing the pros and cons of what is happening to our country, our economy, and our markets. As most of you know by the measly two or three Mutual Fund positions in our discressionary accounts, we see very little to be bullish (think POSITIVE) about. However, as we continue to monitor ALL... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/25/2009: The DEATH of Modern Portfolio Theory "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/24/2009: Signals from the Fed Model Michele Gambera has posted the following chart and analysis on the Morningstar Advisor site. The chart shows an evaluation of the so-called Fed model. We like these kinds of analysis because of the lack of emotional content. This model of tactical asset allocation suggests that an investor should invest in stocks ("be in the market") when the earnings yield of stocks... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/23/2009: Beware of All the “Green” Stuff Let’s all get real about the hoopla about alternative energy. You really have to agree with the process and premises of developing additional sources of energy or you’ll be laughed at for being naïve. But for cryin’ out loud lets be realistic in our expectations. It’s going to take a lot of money that we don’t have, in spite of the incredibly insane budget... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/22/2009: No Wonder Investors are “Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take It Anymore” Pension and Investments sent me this horrific analysis by Aaron Elstein of payscales from yet more in the financial world who continue to lose money for investors…BIG TIME! It looks as if the title of best-paid chief executive on Wall Street belongs to money manager Mario Gabelli, who took home an impressive... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/21/2009: The “Beige Book’s” Latest Positive Non-sense The “Beige Book” for those of you who wonder about it, is a written history of the last FOMC’s (Federal Open Market Committee) Meeting. Last week, Bernanke asserted that the U.S. economy's decline was slowing. The Fed released the results of its Beige Book, which (surprise, surprise) backed Big Ben's assessment. The business survey showed... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/20/2009: What About the Original Dow Jones 30 Stocks? By John Mauldin. The piece quoted here gives you some real details of the DOW’s history. It’s very interesting for those of you who follow such stuff! “The Dow Industrials was expanded to 30 names from 20 on October 1 of 1928. Today, only nine names of the original 30 remain in the Dow. The committee at Dow Jones has replaced... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/19/2009: How Influential is Goldman Sachs? In a nutshell socialism is simply the government running everything…at least everything that is important in our lives. Correct-thinking citizens say that they probably don’t want it. “Get real, pilgrim” as John Wayne was wont to say. We are really marching down that road! Most of us who worry and write about this stuff see our Government taking control... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/18/2009: Bear Market Rally OR Bull Market Start? Since sinking to a 12-year low of 676.53 on March 9, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index had risen about 24% — the best 6-week deal since 1933. But this isn’t 1933 and you shouldn’t trust the rally. Happy Days are NOT necessarily here again, at least not yet. Let’s look at the History of THEN and NOW according to... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/17/2009: An Unknown Wall Street SECRET! According to Keith Fitz-Gerald with the Money Map Report: “Studies show that most investors – even ultra-wealthy ones – lose money over time because they don’t, or can’t, stick to a well-defined set of rules. For some, this is driven by reckless personal behavior in search of profits. For others, it’s the constant... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/16/2009: Believe It or Not: Some Say the Bear Market Is DEAD! Based on the classic Wall Street definitions, we're in a new bull market. As of Friday April 4, all three major market indices recovered more than 20% from their March 9 lows. BE CAREFUL!...Of course, we've been here before. Or as Yogi Berra liked to say, "It's like déjà vu all over again." Recall, back in November of 2008 the markets... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/15/2009: Market Collapse and It’s Effect on 401-k’s The financial market collapse and its spread to the economy has resulted in tax code Section 401(k) plan balances dropping 30 percent of their value and employers cutting back on their matches, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College said in a report released March 3. According to the report, An Update on 401(k) Plans... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/14/2009: Fibonacci: Who is This Guy and Why Should You Care? We continue to look at additional indicators to help us navigate through the malaise of the current market situation. The Italian economist and mathematician Fibonacci invented a numbers-based projection system in the 13th century that attempts to measure “human behavior and how it will manifest itself going forward. Now if technical analysis is... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/13/2009: The Light at the End of the Tunnel Be careful! That light at the end of the tunnel could be a locomotive at full throttle. The G20 meeting is widely seen as a triumph. The money is flowing. Some people think we've seen the bottom. Jim Cramer, our favorite cartoon character says “the bottom has come and gone.” Well, well that's certainly all... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/12/2009: The ‘Skinny” on Unemployment Alright readers…Pay attention yet again as we discuss some bogus economic numbers. But we're not the only ones finding fatal flaws in official numbers and conclusions. John Williams of ShadowStats.com has been persistently doing so with the government's official data on inflation and unemployment, among other key measures. His latest estimate of the true March... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/10/2009: How to REALLY Run a Bank In order to correct and re-establish the voracity and credibility of the banking system a back-to-basics is the catalysts to make it happen. The following piece by Frank Shostak with the Mises Institute is precisely the “recipe” for real savings and lending and how it should work (and actually did work in the “olden-days”). “Consider John the baker who has produced... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/08/2009: Currencies and FOREX…”WHY?” Several days ago, we received a transcript of an interview with Marty Weiss, one our “deep thinking” individuals along with his incredibly insightful staff concerning currencies and the FOREX market and why this group of “alternatives” is a real opportunity to truly diversify a portfolio of stocks and bonds. Of course, it is even more useful to us... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/07/2009: Diversification Doesn’t Work…ANYMORE! Diversification has long been considered an essential tool for those seeking to minimize their risk in a volatile market. But a recent study presented to the CFA Institute shows diversification doesn’t accomplish its goals, working best in up markets when investors could use a little less of it and failing to protect them in down markets when... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/06/2009: Talk About “Fuzzy Math” Comprehend this massive missive from the Tycoon Report: “Right now, the FASB recommends a mark-to-market practice for a majority of financial assets. But Congress wants to mark to model — because that’s what ailing banks want. To see what marking to model looks like, let me give an example of how that would work for your 401(k) quarterly report. Each quarter... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/05/2009: “It Was the Best of Times. It Was the Worst of Times.” The headline topic above of course is the opening line from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities as he begins to immediately lead the reader into a comparison of London and Paris. We are in the same scenario with our tack on the current market situation. So, we have done some research on both sides of the question: Is this the beginning of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/04/2009: Get Ready to Reduce Your Standard of Living Our President is on his way to Europe where official hostility is rising against the Anglo-American method of shoveling monetary sand down the sink-holes of corrupt debt, bankrupt institutions, and bubble-inflated bonds. Our poised and charming leader may escape personal attack from the quaint old-world street folk, but most of the other... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/03/2009: Good God!...the BANKS Again! Marty Weiss has been the bright beacon of warning about this mess that we continue to find ourselves. He was almost a “lone wolf” when he, along with us, warned everyone about the collapse in banking and real estate in the Fall of 2007. If you have been readers of our missives like this AND perhaps attendees at our seminars, you have been way ahead... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/02/2009: CHINA: Friend or Foe? Just about everyone we know has some opinion of China. Looking into the details gives us a clearer picture of the options. As you probably know, you can hardly look at a clothing label without seeing “made in China.” Same for electronics, toys, furniture, hardware, kitchen utensils, you name it! When you think about, China has become VERY dependent on us, the US, for... >>Full Article | Back to Top

4/01/2009: The MESS: Some Details As we continue to “assess the mess” that our non-representative representatives in Washington continue to promote, we wonder WHEN and WHERE it will all end. Hopefully they will come to their senses before the coming revolution tears it all apart. Well maybe we are a bit over-reacting, but the facts are getting “in you face.” The St. Louis Federal Reserve Office has... >>Full Article | Back to Top

April 2009

3/31/2009: The MESS: What Happened and When June 7, 2007 Bear Stearns informs investors that it is suspending redemptions from its High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund. July 11, 2007 Standard and Poor’s places 612 securities backed by subprime residential mortgages on a credit watch. July 31, 2007 Bear Stearns liquidates two hedge funds that invested... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/30/2009: Definable and Provable INSANITY As we continue to get more and more “government solutions” to our economic problems, we tend to ask the obvious question: Why doesn’t our government do what it’s designed to do AND QUIT trying to re-invent the wheel? Yes, the administration has made a believer out of all of us in that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/28/2009: How to KILL a Few Banks How many times have you heard that “we’re in uncharted waters.” This “uncharted” stuff seems to give our government a blank check to do what ever they want in the name of BAILOUT. It looks like Geithner is about to kill some banks. Another question that will consistently be heard over... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/27/2009: Perpetual Motion: It Can’t Be Done Tell the truth: Does this whole Federal Reserve/Treasury note debacle have you a tad confused? Don’t feel too bad about it. Because you’ve got some 10 million fellow investors banging their heads on their desks right along with you. Most every financial editor and cable news... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/26/2009: A REAL Housing Solution Several years ago, I attended an investment advisor-type conference in La Jolla, CA sponsored and promoted by John Mauldin who is one of the brightest bulbs in the Newsletter business. John also has a company that evaluates CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors) for high net-worth individuals and institutions like... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/24/2009: Deflation: No Longer a Threat? Jeff Benjamin of Investment News recently wrote an interesting piece concerning deflation. We liberally quote from his piece: “By some measures, deflation is no longer a threat; it is a reality. The most obvious examples of deflationary trends can be found in the real estate and automobile sectors, where prices can't... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/23/2009: One More Pass at the AIG Thing "Give us back our money," yelled a protestor at Edward Liddy, AIG CEO, as he was entering the building for his NEXT hearing with the politicians.. The taxpayers are upset. The politicians are pretending to be upset. And the media thinks it has a hot story. But what is remarkable is... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/22/2009: How About This Simple Solution? Long time Money Morning subscriber Jerry Seapoff wrote with a great idea, "if California is issuing IOUs for tax refunds, why can't AIG issue IOUs for bonuses to be paid in arrears after the US taxpayers are made whole and the company becomes a viable entity?" As you know we’re not tax experts, but maybe... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/21/2009: GAMBLING: It Generally Doesn’t Work Even When You WIN! Good grief. As we have been know to say “If you want to gamble, go to the casino and at least have some fun losing your money.” But in reality, some people DO win at the casinos, lottery tickets, scratch-offs, etc! Over the weekend there was an article about a Colorado woman, Cathy Ortiz, who lost her job as... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/20/2009: “Blue Chip” Treasuries…NOT In the U.S. version of money creation, circa 2009, the Fed uses pieces of green paper called 'dollars' to buy up the government debt. Not exactly...where do the dollars come from? Oh, of course, they come from the same place that shares in the South Sea Company... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/19/2009: What Would You Do If You Owned a Bank? In an effort to promote liquidity and boost the economy, the Federal Reserve recently announced plans to grow the money supply by another 50 percent to 60 percent! This ignores the profound observation of Gen. George Patton: "You can't push a string." The economy just can’t... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/18/2009: China to Obama: “PAY ATTENTION!” Here’s an interesting proposal “What would happen if your boss cut your salary, you had no savings, and none of the banks or credit card companies would lend you any money? You'd be in some deep doo-doo, wouldn't you?” This is exactly the situation the U.S. is potentially staring at us if foreign governments (especially China and Japan) decide... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/17/2009: JOKE: “Bluest of the Blue Chips” We continue to be amazed at the likes of so-called wise, educated, and professional investment managers/idealogs. They continue to hold on to their failed ideology of the past! We just heard another utterance last week from a fiduciary of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/16/2009: Read This Carefully IF you Think Oil is Going Higher As you know, we have been looking for Crude Oil to rise at least to the “bounce-stage” of $67 since late last year. Not sure WHEN, but it does seem like a logical call at this point. Nobody…we repeat NOBODY knows the bottom of a bear market…especially one that’s as hateful as this one... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/14/2009: The “D-WORD” Raises It’s Ugly Head in Spades Rex Dwyer from Angora Financial states in his latest missive to us: “I’m throwing in the towel, calling a depression.” Yes, there could be a huge rally back up to 7,500 or 8,000 on the Dow. But the over the next six to nine months should still be down. Fundamentals have deteriorated further. Many Americans were looking at their retirement plans and realizing that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/13/2009: Where in the World Are WE? It's barely two months into the year, and 2009 will already go down in history as the worst start to the investment year ever in U.S. history. Nor have global markets fared any better. Only three markets in the world are in positive territory in 2009: China, Chile and Venezuela. As of last week, the U.S. markets are down 22%, while pan European (euro area) indices were down... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/12/2009: Let’s Not Kid Ourselves The horror of AIG is almost unbelievable when you dig into the details. The $162 billion bailout of AIG is a nontransparent, opaque and green eyeshades bailout of AIG’s buddies: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other domestic AND foreign financial institutions. So where does the buck stop when it comes to the financial crisis? Many people say that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/11/2009: Where’s the Bottom? The answer in a nut shell is: NOBODY KNOWS! And to here the media pundits and so-called government experts, (from the President on down) portend to give us the definitive answer to this moving target is most ludicrous. Now we hear that the Fed is proposing to bring ALL financial institutions under their dominance, purporting that they... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/10/2009: Are You CRAZY, SCARED, or JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION! Of course, if you’ve been reading and adapting these missives of ours over the last 18 months, your portfolios HAVE NOT LOST! If you’ve done anything else, your underwater to a breath-taking level. CRAZY: Regardless of whether or not you voted FOR or AGAINST the current Washington DC bozos, OR... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/09/2009: “THE STIMULUS IS A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION” Actually, we don’t even know Tom Coburn, or frankly what State he represents NOR is political party. What his speech DOES is expose what happening in Washington DC right before our eyes. You can challenge his politics, but the facts speak for themselves! In February Senator Coburn gave this speech... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/08/2009: The Faces of RISK and GOLD As we begin to have more and more meetings both here in the office AND in business offices in the THREE States (Ky-In-Tn), the overriding concern from the people that we converse is “How did all of this happen AND Is it over…yet?” Investors and Fiduciaries are not only weary but also... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/05/2009: Hey! Don’t You Guys at FFCG Know ANYTHING Positive? The standard tongue-in-cheek answer that we sometimes joke with you and others about is “Yes most certainly, we are VERY POSITIVE that your personal portfolio/IRA Rollover/401-k/Endowment- Foundation should have been mainly in CASH beginning November of 2007…“ >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/04/2009: BANKS: Do You Remember? It's not as if we're still worried that banks are going under. After all, the government has made it clear that the largest banks aren't going anywhere. Those that were already too big to fail only got bigger thanks to you and me and all of our heirs’ current and future tax money. For our Government to do “selective salvation”... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/03/2009: THREE Issues that Scream “It Ain’t Over ‘til Its OVER” As most of you know, we’re worriers by nature! We can't help it. Our job is to try to figure out what's happening NOW…not yesterday, everyone knows that; and certainly not tomorrow, no one knows that. And right now, according to Mike Lawson at Money and Markets there are three troubling developments... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/01/2009: 11 Years in the Wilderness – A New Look at BEAR MARKETS Well, we’ve wonder in the wilderness of the stock market for 11-years and we’re back to ground ZERO…can you believe it? The Taipan Daily gives us access to the chart on the next page so that you can look at all the bear markets (down markets) in history. What the chart shows is a combination of depth and duration for... >>Full Article | Back to Top

March 2009

2/28/2009: A NEW Look at China and the US The following commentary is from Larry Edelson, with Money and Markets. “Could the economy and the financial system get any worse than they already are? Absolutely! As I've often warned here in my Money and Markets columns, central banks and governments of the world will do anything and everything to try and prevent a meltdown of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/27/2009: Someone Else is using a EMA Chart Jeff Clark at the Growth Stock Wire has discovered the value of looking at the market (S&P 500) and comparing it to a 20-month EMA (Exponential Moving Average.) Now HOLD IT! For those of you relatively new to these missives of mine, it’s now nearly as complicated as it sounds. Just bare with this process for just a minute. It’s easy to understand that... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/26/2009: Deep Thinking…Internationally All right! If you really want to know what’s probably going to happen, you need to “suffer through” the reading and understanding of this piece. Nouriel Roubini has done some incredible work on the foreign market economies and how they will affect each other AND the rest of the world INCLUDING THE US. Get ready, you may want to do this in sections... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/25/2009: A Brief Discussion About GOLD Business was so good at a local pawn shop which is run by a long-time friend of mine, that they had to hire a security guard to handle the crowd in their shop. "We've been serving about 100 cups of coffee a day, going through three or four pounds daily," said an assistant, hurrying away to fill the empty pot. Of course, the above happened in 1980... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/24/2009: The Crazies Are Still There You’ve got to be careful about what you read AND more importantly, what you believe! Can you imagine the following statements from so-called authorities like the U.S. Federal Reserve, New York’s Conference Board and well-placed sources at several hedge funds saying: “All the secret signs say it’s a bottom. From here, things just start... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/23/2009: Einstein and Smith Have the Insight In one of his typically insightful statements Einstein stated “In the nuclear age, it is difficult to overstate the perils confronting the human race. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes . . . a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive.” Desperately Seeking Analogies... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/19/2009: How Did GM Get to This Stage? So, how was the trolley ride to work today? Were you able to get a seat, or did you have to hang onto a strap? What, there are no trolleys where you live? Instead, did you spend an hour grinding through gridlock in your car? That’s because there are virtually no trolley lines left. Seems that someone bought them up and scrapped them... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/18/2009: This Is Really Getting Ugly This is not the change “we can all believe in.” This is throwing money at something Washington doesn’t even begin to understand. The Obama Factor is not the beginning of the end of our problems, it is the end of the beginning of a major problem for everyone. All the charm, all the promises, all the intellect cannot disguise that iron fisted, blunt force that imposes this stimulus plan upon us... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/17/2009: Dow 3931 is “Fair Value!” The incredible “Shrinking” Dow: 16,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 We are really closing in on 7,000, and the next “stopping” point may just be 6,000! The question is: Where will this all end? And maybe more important is WHEN? It seems to us that the market will... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/16/2009: Be Careful with GOLD! Louis Basenese, Senior Analyst at The Oxford Club, gives us some pause to at least reconsider and re-evaluate our growing penchant for jumping on the Gold band wagon. As you known, we have always said that “in the final analysis, gold is money.” Our Gold internal indicators show... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/13/2009: Mr. Spock…A Little HELP, Please! President Obama says we have to act boldly to solve the financial crisis. On Tuesday, supposedly explaining the new and improved bank bailout plan, serial tax evader and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner added that we have to try things that have never been tried before. The Obama team wants to boldly take our economy... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/12/2009: Somebody’s Brilliant or Stupid! FIRST Example: We believe it was Winston Churchill that said “The only think we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history!” SECOND Example: And someone else said “Those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat those mistakes.” And here’s the ultimate Example... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/09/2009: A Battle Between the Market and the Meddlers! The ‘d’ word (depression) is beginning to be thrown around in the financial media quite a bit. What good is $1 trillion in boondoggle spending going to do anyway? Last Friday, the Dow was up 217 points. Oil held steady at $40. Gold didn’t move either; it remains at $914. But let’s take a quick look at the combatants... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/06/2009: A Real Shocker! Eric Fry, of Angora Financial, gives us and interesting look into the current Government Money/Taxpayer Money being “distributed” in various ways to various financial institutions. “Well, well, well, what a shock! Just like that, Morgan Stanley is feeling all better. The formerly ailing bank will repay, lickety-split, the $10 billion it borrowed from the government's ... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/05/2009: Psst…Could This Be Positive? A rare bit of good news: Can you believe it? The U.S. economy may have performed better than expected in January. Both the U.S. manufacturing and service sectors perked up during the month, the Institute for Supply Management reported this week. The ISM released its manufacturing survey... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/04/2009: Pork to the EXTREME! Last week, The New York Times posted a recipe for something called “the Bacon Explosion” that the Taipan Daily brought to our attention. Since we are an avid “avoider” of the Times, the recipe consists of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

2/03/2009: ANOTHER EXPERT HEARD FROM THIS YEAR MARKS SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the apotheosis of the Golden Age of Hollywood with the release of both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Don’t you long for those days. But the period isn't... >>Full Article | Back to Top

February 2009

1/31/2009: A Group of “B.S.ers” Meet in Switzerland Jeff Clark of the Growth Stock Wire gives us some unusual perspectives on the ‘world situation.’ His analysis of the Davos, Switzerlad so-called economic conference is very interesting. “Every year during the waning days of January and the early days of February, 2,500 business, political, religious, and community leaders gather... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/30/2009: “Banksters” is What They Are! Is there any worse of a low-down huckster than a Big Bank executive and his buddies in the top echelons of former respectable institutions like Bank-of- America, Citi Bank, etc. This group of crooks, along with the clueless Uncle Ben Bernake at the Fed and our new 4-year tax cheating-newly appointed head of the Treasury are getting ready for... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/29/2009: A Look at Some Retail Do you see any signs of improvement in our FOUR indicators of recovery listed above? Adam Lass, one of the Senior Editors at Taipan Daily has done an in-depth look some of the more interesting disasters in the Retail Sector. He is an options guru and edits one of their newsletters. Portions of his latest diatribe... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/28/2009: Europe & the UK: Worse than the U.S. According to The UK and the EU will experience a more difficult economic environment than the U.S. in 2009 with a recovery more likely in 2010. Economic growth has been lackluster coming into the current recession and will only get worse as Europe suffers from... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/27/2009: Some Random Thoughts The above four points will continue to be the headline of all future Newsletters until we see the promised recovery at least in its beginning stage. The United States remains the focal point of the global economy and prospects for a recovery remain tied to the U.S.’s ability to work its way out of the current recession. Some people are saying that the recession may turn out to be less severe... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/26/2009: 2009 Outlook 2009 begins with some cautious optimism and hope by some, resonating many of the words President Obama has repeated over the past 2 years of his campaign (which actually felt like a whole presidential term). But in our opinion, he is inheriting an economy with huge problems; and that “feel good” rhetoric will not solve them... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/21/2009: When Will This Be Over? We’ve just come from the monthly meeting of the Kentucky Chapter of the AAII (Am. Assoc. of Independent Investors). We had a presentation by a Vice President of Zacks Investment Research’s Wealth Management Division. Out of all of the “systems” of selecting stocks to Buy or Sell... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/20/2009: Happy Inauguration Day...MAYBE! Don't worry, we haven’t changed from our extremely cautions stance just because “Yes we can,” “Hope,” and “Change” are now the substitute rhetoric for sound economic and fiscal policy. But first we must say that now PRESIDENT Obama appears to be... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/19/2009: How Do “Things” Look NOW? How much is $1.186 trillion — or $1,186,000,000,000, written out the long way? According to the data compiled by Mike Lawson at Money and Markets: • It's more than the inflation-adjusted cost of the Vietnam ($698 billion) and Korean Wars ($454 billion). • It's more than the... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/18/2009: Before It Goes, A Look At the Dollar In order to really “read” this missive, you’ll need to pull-out a real dollar bill and have it in front of you. The information contained herein has never been changed during all of the various “re-designs” of our dollar bill throughout the past 200+ years. We know that the dollar... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/17/2009: The “American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009” GET READY! Here it comes in all of its “glory.” The bill calls for $825 billion in stimulus, of which roughly $550 billion is allocated for stimulus spending and $275 billion is for tax cuts. Notice how the word billion begins to simply roll-off the tongue with very little astonishment. This is mainly because the word TRILLION has... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/16/2009: The Cracked Foundation of Our Economy Now we get even more confirmed bad news on the housing and mortgage front. As you know, it is our opinion that this sector MUST show at least the beginning of a recovery. It’s undergoing its worst slump since the Great Depression. Single family home prices have already plunged... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/15/2009: We’re All Becoming Numb… The plethora of data that floods my in-box on a daily basis is over-whelming most days. The vast majority of all of this is extremely negative…almost fearful of the future, at least the near-term. Anytime we see one of the “gurus” with a nearpositive tack, they immediately become suspect and we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to glean WHERE THEY GOT THEIR INFORMATION that allows them to... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/14/2009: So what have we learned in 2 Millennia? "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/13/2009: Five Fearless 2009 Predictions By Tony Sagami 2008 has been a very difficult year for investors. And most are eager to put it behind them while hoping for a better 2009. I don't have a crystal ball. But I believe there are five powerful trends that can... >>Full Article | Back to Top

1/12/2009: Said the Joker to the Thief By Bill Bonner Bill Bonner, the editor of the Daily Reckoning, gives a tremendous accounting of the fools of 2008 and how pitiful their insight was. The year of our Lord 2008 died in disgrace. It was tossed in a hasty grave...and mud was thrown on its face as though on a dead dictator. ‘Good riddance’ says practically everyone. But here at The Daily Reckoning , we’re going to miss and mourn it. It may have been the worst year in stock market history, but we can’t remember when... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/11/2009: 12 Urgent Questions for 2009 By Marty Weiss Q - I: I see disturbing similarities between this crisis and The Great Depression. Both were triggered by the bursting of massive debt bubbles, for instance. But this time, the government is doing so much more to pump up the economy. So is it safe to assume that... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/10/2009: Another Voice Registers Concern Those investors, including market absolutists, who interpret the current economic state-of-things as just a typical downturn that a few tax cuts and some good, old-fashioned, free market-based supply side economics can solve, may want to... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/09/2009: What Do You Believe? If 2008 was the year of the black swan, what does that portend for 2009? The year of the phoenix? The golden goose? The dodo bird? Prognostications are rife at the start of the New Year, so we’re simply asking you the title question: Do You Believe That: 1. The world markets have begun a correction... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/08/2009: What a Difference a 100 Years Makes THE YEAR 1908 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1908. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some statistics for the Year 1908... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/07/2009: Millionaires Lose Trust in Advisors…No Joke! Charles Paikert of Investment News reports on a survey that makes logical sense to us. It simply confirms that the traditional, classically trained, so-called investment advisors simply don’t have a clue on how to protect the downside. They actually never consider anything other than... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/06/2009: Is the Worst Behind Us OR In Front of Us? The numbers tell us that the global financial system in 2008 experienced its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Major financial institutions went bust. Others were bought up on the cheap or... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/05/2009: The Next Bubble May Have Already Collapsed Treasury bond yields have been falling for 27 years. Eight weeks ago, they moved into the "blow off" stage. I use the 30-year Treasury bond as the benchmark for this market. On October 27, the 30-year bond closed with a yield of 4.37%. After eight straight weeks of declines... >> Full Article | Back to Top

1/01/2009: Musings on Residential Real Estate You're not going to believe this... But U.S. residential real estate is now more affordable (read “LOWER IN VALUE”) than it's been since 1973. Record low mortgage rates (Some local banks are offering 30-year fixed mortgages under 4.9%) and the median home price is down $50,000 on average nationwide according to the Case/Shiller Report... >> Full Article | Back to Top

January 2009

12/29/2008: It’s the End of the Year…Not the World Most people will be glad to see 2008 end and go forever into the record books. Actually, the only ones with this bias are those poor souls who have been and probably still are on the “Buy ‘n Hold” OR “Buy ‘n Hope” treadmill. We’ve been preaching for over a year that CASH is a viable asset class when... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/28/2008: The “Greatest” Scandal of All Time! Before the year-end, we just had to comment in some detailed way concerning the $50 Billion Ponzi scheme perpetrated on so-call unsuspecting investors by the former head of the NASDAQ! Bernie Madoff is his name, and his bilking of... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/27/2008: Welcome Back to the World-of-Negative! Ouch! Public sentiment toward the accelerating economic fiasco has shifted, seemingly overnight, from a mood of nauseated amazement to one of panicked grievance as the United States moves closer to an apparent... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/25/2008: Trying to Look for Something Positive! It’s a real stretch for us to assemble the enclosed ideas. However, there is some meager evidence mounting that we may be pulling away from the extremes. Among the gloomy picture drawn by us for the past 13 months (which by the way have certainly come home to roost); a few most recent economic numbers and... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/24/2008: A Key Interest-rate is now ZERO! The concept of interest rates at ZERO is truly a bizarre concept for our country. As you may know, Japan has had these rates for an incredibly long time…and their economy failed to respond. There’s more to it than just... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/19/2008: Merry Christmas to the Bail-out Boys Looks like Friday was the day for bailouts. First, the automakers finally got the money they had been begging for – to the tune of $17.4 billion. Second, Obama and Congressional democrats entered discussions on another economic stimulus bill (read: bailout) that could include... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/18/2008: What Do You Really Think is Happening? Have you had a chance to really talk to a small business owner, executive or even a neighbor/consumer during the past few months about the “situation” we’re facing... First, Lehman Brothers, a Federal Reserve primary dealer and Washington Mutual, one of the nation’s biggest banks, have both failed. Then, AIG, the world’s largest insurance... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/17/2008: Deflation is a Nightmare! Marty Weiss is quoted below from his latest letter to us. It’s all part our ongoing concern about you and your money. To do NOTHING is the greatest folly of all! At this juncture, moving to safety is not only prudent but absolutely critical. Most financial types... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/16/2008: Why CASH Is a Viable Asset Class In our opinion, the most successful investors in any market aren’t always invested. They’re only invested when the odds weigh heavily in their favor. It’s inconceivable for us to understand why anyone would go to... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/15/2008: Another Oil Visit The following report from Joel Bowman is a wonderful follow-up to a video that we shared with many of you earlier this year when Crude was $147 a barrel. It’s rather comforting to see what is happening to these characters now that the number is $44! If you don’t... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/14/2008: Did Congress Sell Out the U. S. Economy? According to the Tycoon report, there is a stink in the air, and it's coming from Washington! You just may not believe what the... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/13/2008: Another Look at History Some additional thoughts on the current and future condition of the US: In the twilight of the Bush days, in the twilight of the twilight season, a consensus has formed by many of us in this business that we are headed... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/12/2008: Another Look at Inflation Last week, the Fed took its first step in a new, more desperate tactic to fix the financial system... Up until last week, the Fed's operations since the beginning of the credit crunch had not created any real new money supply. It had been swapping troubled assets... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/11/2008: Another Look at Oil This past week crude suffered its biggest weekly drop since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The drop in the price of crude capped a bad week for energy, in which The International Energy Agency, The U.S. Energy Department and OPEC all lowered their forecasts for world oil demand, as the global recession... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/10/2008: Another Look at the Dollar In an effort to try to keep us on an “even keel,” we constantly try to assimilate as much information on the economy and the markets as possible. It does NOTHING to influence our decision-making process for our discressionary accounts. But it does tend to... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/09/2008: Another Look at Gold So you can see, trying to compare yesterday's gold price to today's — on an even basis— is like trying to compare apples and armadillos! Take a look at... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/05/2008: Hire a CEO for $1.00 – What a Deal! The labor situation has become so dire that you can now hire a US Blue Chip CEO for a buck – and a ride to work on a bus instead of a corporate jet! The old “former” Wall Street houses are forgoing bonuses this year for nearly everyone. Now we hear that GM’s Rick Wagoner and Ford’s Alan Mulally have cut themselves back to a mere dollar each for 2009. Isn’t that a wonderful gesture as they ask... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/04/2008: Just Trying to Figure It All Out Shopping: the patriotic duty of every American…but the recession actually began in December of 2007...The inevitable meltdown – just another process of capitalism... all the New York moneymen are just too smart for us simple folk...can someone explain how this all works? Why economists favor inflation over deflation... >> Full Article | Back to Top

12/01/2008: Beware of the “Up Daze” We’ve listed on this page some of our immediate concerns that all of us need to ponder: There are always positive days during any Bear Market…they’re put there by the evil gods to fake you out … Brace yourself – this correction’s gonna hurt... >> Full Article | Back to Top

December 2008

Thanksgiving letter: All of our families and probably yours too, gather at the familiar places, for the traditional food stuffs and celebrations. You may have planned a grand feast...  >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/26/2008: The Half Empty, Half Full Glass Many readers of our near-daily Newsletters have been challenging us to “find something positive to say for a change.” The main positive thing that we can say at this point is that “we’re positive that the worst is yet to come.” The U.S. economy...   >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/25/2008: Even Some “EXPERTS” Don’t Get It The Old Dudes don't panic at all. They've experienced this type of thing many times in their investment careers. This panic hardly raises their pulse... except with excitement about the opportunities. Combined, these three Old Dudes have been investing for nearly 150 years. Two of them are self-made billionaires – and they got there by... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/24/2008: Even Some “EXPERTS” Don’t Get It Question: "It looks like you’re getting more interested in the markets?” is a comment we’re receiving now that some of our Mutual Funds are showing up in our discressionary accounts. Answer: “NO not really.” If you look closely at our BUYS over the last month or so, they are largely Inverse Funds... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/21/2008: Are you FOOLING Yourself? If you’re still in this market on the long side OR even if you’re looking for a bottom of the current malaise, you are really, really in extreme denial!... The back page of this missive is the daily chart of the 40 sectors of the markets that we follow on a daily...>> Full Article | Back to Top

11/20/2008: Consumer Spending Plans as of NOW! “Are we at the low-point of this market melt-down?” is a question that many people are asking. The pundits and talking heads AND MAYBE YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR are beginning to tout “searching for a bottom or searching for... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/19/2008: Real Estate: How About THIS Solution? One of the three or four deepest thinkers in the financial services arena is Lon Witter who is a money manager here in Louisville. The following piece is his solution to one of the “messes” that we frequently discuss in our Newsletters, that of the... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/18/2008: The Case for Inflation We have nearly daily discussions about the planned roll-out of our “ULTIMATE 401-k” in December. The basic concepts must be understandable to an eighth-grader. Not because everyone is simple-minded or childish, but because all our buzz-words and complicated processes tend to make things difficult to understand. Right now, EVERYONE’S 401-k has been... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/17/2008: Why we Are … like we Are Up until November 2007, we had a general optimism and usually sunny disposition. But then we became a renewed champion for depressing economic forecasts. We say renewed because... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/14/2008: Is the Bull Dead? We certainly hope that the Bull is not dead! But it certainly has very little possibility of charging-on anytime soon. The “long sleep” that is the first decade of this millennium shows no signs of ending. When you consider the stock market (S&P 500) performance... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/13/2008: Emerging Markets; Yea or Nay? We’re getting more questions on a daily basis about comparing our economic dilemmas here in the US with other countries…especially the emerging markets. The questions are “Are they in better or worse shape AND are they...” >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/12/2008: Crash and Burn! When The Stock Market Crash of 1987 occurred it was about a 1,000 point down move on the Dow. If that was a crash then what's happening to this stock... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/11/2008: WHAT A MESS! Over the last 40 years or so, the American economy has evolved from a manufacturing-based economy, to a service economy, and now to a financial economy. All along the way, the levels of debt (personal, governmental and corporate) have continued to grow as... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/05/2008: Now What? Twenty-five years ago we began working in the financial services business as a traditional broker with a small regional firm named J. C. Bradford. Looking back at those early days, life seemed simpler and much... >> Full Article | Back to Top

11/04/2008: FINALLY OVER! Do you know the greatest thing about this election? It is that, its, finally OVER! As a nation we have been under siege by all sides. We’ve heard endless talk about the “undecideds,” but frankly, we’ve never met one! Everyone seemed to have their candidate on the radar... >>Full Article | Back to Top

November 2008

10/31/2008: Comparison: NOW vs. The Great Depression One advantage we have over the folks of 1930: we know this song. The response of government leaders since the crisis started in December 2006 (when the mortgage brokers began collapsing) has been slow, reactive, and... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/30/2008: Is This YOU…or Someone That You Know? And we’re not talking about tomorrow’s Trick-or-Treat Halloween! This painting called “The Scream” by Edward Munch, fits very well into the current mind-set that many people have. They were certainly screamin’ during the recent collapse… >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/27/2008: The World is Ending…RIGHT? Well, not necessarily. At least after the last four weeks of market action its easy to go down that road. Perhaps its time to step back and take a deep breath. Time to focus and time to remain calm, especially if you have been in cash (Treasury Money Markets and Inverse Funds). It’s amazing how your perspective changes... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/26/2008: Is it Inflationary or Deflationary? The Government printing press must be running at full speed…full time. The inflationary expectations are rampant in nearly all circles. Fiat Currencies (those backed only by paper) are perceived by many to be at risk... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/24/2008: Is There a “PLAN B?” We, here at FFCG, are really enthused about our new “ultimate” 401-k platform that we hope to launch next month. The details of assembling all the various pieces into a well-oiled machine has been a daunting task for the last TWO years... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/23/2008(a): New Retail Sales Report…POOR! Last Wednesday came the release of September retail sales, which were down right horribly, and this before the big October... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/23/2008: The End of the Paper-Money Experiment? We’ve heard all these arguments many times. They almost always come from people who've worked in the financial industry. The truth is, gold is an incredibly useful commodity. Like any other commodity... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/22/2008: Is it Time to Think about Getting Back In? The question in the title comes up every time the markets have a large bounce up OR DOWN! It’s the age old futile game of... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/21/2008: An International Perspective This is a paper presented several weeks ago by Herb Meyer at a Davos, Switzerland meeting which was attended by most of the CEOs from all the major international corporations -- a very good summary of today’s key trends and... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/19/2008: Anything That CAN Go Wrong… Welcome to Murphy’s Market. If you followed our advice and sold out of the stock market last year — or even back in June or early July 2008 — you probably feel pretty good right now. And if you took the cash and put it in Treasury Money Markets, then ... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/16/2008: “Be Careful About Investing Advice” Regardless of which candidate you vote for in three weeks, our disastrous economic reality will not be washed away with the tide of the elections. Grotesquely high budget and trade deficits, obscene debt-levels led by off-the-chart consumer spending, low savings and impossible-to-obtain loans... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/15/2008: Food for Thought (the Process) Behavioral economist Barbara van Leeuwen completed a study in 1998 which highlights the human preference for instant gratification. She posed the following question to her subjects: If you were deciding today , would you choose fruit or chocolate for next week ? Result: 74% chose ... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/14/2008: Is There a September Jinx? There appears to be some sort of a September effect, as indicated by Figure 1, below. Since 1929, the worst-performing month on average, by far, is September, losing an average of -.8%... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/09/2008: This past April, life in the various stock markets began to be tedious and contentious. Actually, we identified a “problem” last November, 2007. Our piece about “The Lost Decade in Stock Markets” has only gotten more grievous since then. Unless something extremely positive... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/08/2008: What a mess. I like to use the "hangover analogy" to sometimes describe finance... You get drunk. Then, you get a hangover. After that, you feel better. That's the way finance works. You have a boom then a bust complete with a recession. The recession paves the way for a new... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/06/2008: This is Marty Weiss’ most recent analysis of our current situation “Recession Rapidly Going Into Depression” by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. Dear Otto, This is the crisis that will change the course of history. Even before ivory-tower theorists have gotten around to officially calling it a "recession," the U.S. economy is...>> Full Article | Back to Top

10/04/2008: Contagious Complexity and Breathtaking Insolvency   EVERY ONCE IN a while, a report comes out from a government agency that’s so unassumingly candid you’re forced to admit a mistake has been made and that the document was mistakenly leaked, or that its author will... >> Full Article | Back to Top

10/02/2008: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending By STEVEN A. HOLMES Notice the date that this article was published in the New York Times! Thanks to Dewey Walker. Published: September 30, 1999 “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program... >> Full Article | Back to Top

October 2008

9/26/2008: “The Fundamentals of the US Economy Are Strong”…NOT! Here we go again…trying to tell you the truth as we see and understand it. We do have to admit that the Washington DC-Brain Trust (as we affectionately call them), seems to have NOT A CLUE as to the gravity of the situation. Even the foreign economies are collapsing... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/23/2008: Pondering the Last Wrench in the Tool Kit Will RTC(B) contain CDS? We wonder. Michael Warren of GRYPHON FINANCIAL sends us his analysis/charts of the current situation. “It is our view today that the state of affairs hangs in a precarious balance. All eyes are on Washington...>> Full Article | Back to Top

9/22/2008: “I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take Anymore!” If the following information is correct, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t; this “mess of a hess” that we’re in with our government trying to manage the stock market, is in our opinion inexcusable. Using THE TAXPAYERS as the source of all things great and wonderful for not only the irresponsible banks but also the marginal.... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/19/2008: A New Idea for Those of Us in DENIAL Alright! Most readers have no idea what Brixton Brick is! We’ll get to it in just a few lines. Bear (no pun intended) with us. This is something for those of us who continue to be confounded by the level of “rescue” (read “interference’) that our... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/16/2008: The Ultimate Wall Street Nightmare by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. Dear Otto, In the wake of Lehman's demise, Fed Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson will try to put out the word that it's no great trauma. But it's a bluff and they know it... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/11/2008: “The Real Story About OIL…WILD CARDS!” The great oil hoax. What George Bush was told behind closed doors. Discover the biggest lie of the last 30 years... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/10/2008: From the Frying Pan into the Fire Our environmentalist friends have been sending us wonderful new research about the forth-coming “electric-plug in” cars and how they will be the salvation from our dependence on imported oil, carbon footprints, carbon credits, global... >> Full Article | Back to Top

9/03/2008: A Case for Our ETF Platform The oil industry along the Louisiana coast got off lightly from Hurricane Gustav. While 1.3 million barrels of oil and seven billion cubic feet of natural gas per day stopped pumping temporarily, most of the oil infrastructure escaped harm. And oil prices...>> Full Article | Back to Top

9/01/2008: Exports - Is There Hope for the Economy? Since the start of the U.S. housing downturn we've been told that consumers were in trouble. After the subprime market shakeout we were told our economy was in trouble. And after credit tightened up we were told to expect an inevitable... >> Full Article | Back to Top

September 2008

8/28/2008 b: Latest FDIC Report Reads Like a Horror Novel by Mike Larson Every three months the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) puts out "Quarterly Banking Profiles." Most investors have never heard of them. The mainstream press has largely ignored them... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/28/2008 a: “The Current Discourse Needs to Eliminate this Word” We usually stay away from politics here at our shop; however, occasionally though, seismic regulatory shifts come from Washington that command our attention... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/26/2008: “Inflation’s Effect” Tobin Smith at ChangeWave sent me this interesting chart of consumer sentiment and how it’s changed here in 2008... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/21/2008 b: “The Worst Case Scenario” FOUR FINANCIAL PANICS for 2008 FINANCIAL PANIC #1: “YOU WILL PAY $8 A GALLON FOR GAS— almost as much as you will pay for…a loaf of bread! Your spending habits are about to undergo such a change... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/21/2008 a: Rotary Endowment Committee Meeting ALTERNATIVES: What are they? 1. Basically ANY investment vehicle that is NOT... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/15/2008: The REAL Numbers on the Credit Crunch Recently we gave you several real-world examples of lenders who were refusing to take the Federal Reserve's "bait."... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/13/2008: The "Pickens Plan" Alright! We keep hearing about T. Boone Pickens and his recently revealed plan that he believes could be the only real solution to reducing our dependence on foreign oil. That's a pretty bold statement to make. But this is T. Boone Pickens we're talking about... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/12/2008: Interesting News About Oil Here’s an interesting take on Crude Oil from our friend Ian Davis at Daily Wealth. Its on our must-reads on a daily basis. "It's official... Crude oil has entered a bear market. OK, I know... filling up the SUV will still shrink the wallet. And I know the long-term... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/11/2008: The "X" List: The Next Big Failures (Edited Transcript of First Half of Program)Martin Weiss: Big banks and brokers have announced massive losses, with much more to come. But government regulators generally make it difficult for average citizens to figure out which banks or brokers are the weakest and which are the strongest ... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/09/2008: What the Fed wants ... and what the Fed is getting Here’s a new piece from Mike Larson that really nails what is happening with the Fed, the Banks, and the general security... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/08/2008: The “Big Mac” Index for 2008 It's the 23rd year running that the Economist has published its famed Big Mac Index -- a tongue and cheek way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) -- that is, the relative over and undervaluation of the world's currencies... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/06/2008: He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. - Aristotle We just ran across this piece sent to us by Dewey Walker, long-time client. It features a poignant piece from Charlie Reese and wanted to share it with you. It has nothing to do with whether you are a democrat, republican or independent, these are interesting observations on how we should expect politicians to operate and make them work for us.  Its time that THEY have to live by the rules that they set for us... >> Full Article | Back to Top

8/04/2008: You Won’t Believe All of This! If you’re not interested in reality… and don’t want to know… or simply can’t face anymore negative information about our “state of affairs,” then I suggest you toss this month’s Newsletter in the circular file and do not read any further... >> Full Article | Back to Top

August 2008

7/25/2008: UP and DOWN Again The recent “bounce up” in the stock market and “bounce down” in oil and some other commodities gives the un-aware investor a FALSE SENSE OF... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/22/1008: It’s ALL Negative to Us Alright! This is for all of the readers of these rants and raves who frequently ask “Why are you so negative on the economy, the stock markets, interest rates, the Fed, the Treasury Department, the politicians, the talking heads, etc. etc. etc.”... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/17/2008: The Classical “Dow Theory” Proven RIGHT Once Again As you probably know, we are great fans of Charles Dow and his Point-and-Figure charting which he developed back in the late 1800s. According to the founding fathers of Dow Theory, which include Charles H. Dow,... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/16/2008: The Great Financial Tsunami has BEGUN In our consulting practice here at FFCG, we never try to “predict” or even “forecast” the future. It’s difficult enough to get a handle on TODAY much less tomorrow or next week. As most of you know, our indicators are extremely negative and... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/11/2008: Hope is NOT a Strategy I have just received a mid-year report from my friend Lon Witter at Witter and Westlake Money Managers here in Louisville. Lon’s superb insights over... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/07/2008: One MAJOR Indicator Called EMA! We are frequently asked questions similar to “How have you been able to ‘time’ the markets so well?” Actually, we do not attempt to “time the markets” at all. However it is very important for us to know what we call the “health” of the markets... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/03/2008: 2008 Mid-year Review-Consumer Confidence! Would you look at ALL of the Consumer Confidence measurements of the U.S. that have been created BY AND OUTSIDE INDEPENDENT FIRM IN CANADA! We haven’t seen it this bad…and NO we don’t believe that this is a bottom in the Stock and Bond Markets!!... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/02/2008: 2008 Mid-year Review-Amplification of WW Markets THE FALL OF EUROPE... European markets have done even worse than the U.S. Of the three biggest countries there, the weakest have been France and Germany. Chart 1 shows the CAC-40 trading 28% off last year's high... >> Full Article | Back to Top

7/01/2008: 2008 Mid-year Review For those of you that communicated with us recently about our “Gloom and Doom” bias in our recent Newsletters, we encourage you to STOP READING this one and go back to doing what you were doing! This is NOT going to be pretty!! This last month was the worst June for the stock market since 1930!!!... >> Full Article | Back to Top

July 2008

6/19/2008: Could Oil be Headed for $50? Actually we doubt it. But some of the so-called pundits are talking like it may happen. Let’s put some history behind this and see indeed if... >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/17/2008: The Dollar MAY Be Showing Signs of Life Our thought-provoking analyst at Weiss Research, Jack Crooks offers an interesting commentary on the old “greenback.” The last few months have certainly left some currency traders scratching their heads... >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/16/2008: The Environmentalists and the Government vs. Us! Isn’t it interesting that our Government (read the Congress) has been so influenced by the Environmentalists and the UN that we are not allowed to explore and drill for oil and gas off our own shores.... >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/11/2008: The following “fictitious” letter was constructed by Porter Stansbury. His ire is focused on what we usually hear from top management of companies in trouble. It confirms the dire situation that some old-sage companies are having with our current economic situation... >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/09/2008: Oil Execs vs. Democrats The headline reads: “Oil Executives Try to Educate Senate Democrats, But Democrats Appear Hopeless.” One of the clear-cut issues that we face on the Crude Oil crisis is that there are no easy short-term fixes… >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/07/2008: Can You Spell “STAG-FLATION” ? Our worst fears are coming true! The unemployment rate yesterday; housing: bankruptcies’ huge increase! Amid the endless gasoline headlines crossing the news comes the headline from Germany that billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett sees the USA already in recession... >> Full Article | Back to Top

6/02/2008: Life Continues with Great Difficulty! One of the most insightful writers that we follow daily is Jeff Clark and the Growth Stock Wire. The basic content of this month’s What’s... >> Full Article | Back to Top

June 2008

5/17/2008: More Thoughts on…What Else…OIL! Congratulations to those of you who have taken our advice over the last two years and REALLY diversified by using ALTERNATIVES... >> Full Article | Back to Top

5/16/2008: What if We’re Wrong? As you probably know, we are expecting a “rough-row-to-hoe” for the economy for the rest of this year AND into 2009. Beyond that it looks even... >> Full Article | Back to Top

5/02/2008: More About “Same-o-Same-o” All right already! Some of you have called mentioning the 4-5% returns for some of the Stock Market Indices. Yes we are aware of this. Yes we still firmly believe your investments need to be focused NOT on the stock market but on... >> Full Article | Back to Top

5/01/2008: Housing Collapse Worse than Depression An influential economist who long predicted the housing market bubble, cautioned Tuesday that the slump in the U.S. housing market could cause prices to fall more than they did in the Great Depression and bailouts will be needed so... >> Full Article | Back to Top

May 2008

4/23/2008: Oil Tops $125! What's Next ... by Sean Brodrick Since trading as low as $50.53 early in 2007, oil prices have exploded higher, stunning the world. Just yesterday, crude jumped... >> Full Article | Back to Top

4/18/2008: Sean Brodrick with Marty Weiss’ Money and Markets has provided some very interesting and informative analysis of the FOOD situation worldwide. As some of you know, our ETF platform has had the agriculture fund DBA in it since we began last Fall... >> Full Article | Back to Top

4/16/2008: The LOST DECADE: It’s taken all the running the markets can do to stay in place! According to Tiburon’s Ron Surz, “Here we are, a little more than 8 years into the 21st Century, and stock market investors have barely broken even...” >> Full Article | Back to Top

4/11/2008: Kudlow: ‘Let’s Give Bernanke a Little Credit’ All right, some are saying that we are being too hard on “Uncle Ben” and the Federal Reserve. Maybe so, maybe not. Our good friend Kudlow from CNBC fame gives you the other side of what has become one of the most controversial... >> Full Article | Back to Top

4/08/2008: There's No Such Thing as a Gas or Oil Shortage First the good news: Automotive expert Ed Wallace says there's no gasoline or oil shortage in the U.S. today and near... >> Full Article | Back to Top

4/01/2008: We hope that you had a Happy Easter Day. We thought that we should begin to address the Recession that we’re obviously in and how it may possibly play out... >> Full Article | Back to Top

April 2008

3/24/2008: Rogers Blasts Treasury Secretary Paulson and the Bear Stearns Bailout You can add Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to the list of U.S. economic officials who... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/15/2008: WARNING: U.S. Headed for Japanese-Style Stagnation If the American economy was entering a normal downturn, a timely stimulus like the one devised by Washington might... >>Full Article | Back to Top

3/13/2008: Helicopter-Hovering Ben to the Rescue! In what some will call a final act of desperation, Helicopter-Hovering Ben Bernake has released the hounds and flooded the world with cheap cash. That gnashing and wailing you hear is the sound of the short sellers complaining...>>Full Article | Back to Top

3/01/2008: As we began preparing for this month’s newsletter, the economy and the markets continue to fall apart with haste. There are so many dichotomies facing the near-term outlook, that it is almost breath-taking. Marty Weiss’ latest newsletter began with “Most US Stocks falling! Home market crashing! Derivatives blowing up! Recession hitting...>>Full Article | Back to Top

March 2008

2/14/2008: “The Great Mortgage Meltdown of 2007-2008” One of my most respected “prognosticators” about the economy and the markets is Martin Weiss in New York. He has amassed a tremendous track-record in forecasting the comings-and-goings of…>> Full Article | Back to Top

2/01/2008: Well, well! Here we are at the beginning of February and its time for our monthly newsletter. It is our intention with these monthly missives to bring to your attention areas that we are thinking about and what we’re doing with your account(s) considering the current economic and market situations...>>Full Article | Back to Top

February 2008

none available for this month

January 2008

12/29/2007: “What Is Going On With the PPI?” Our previous White Paper 2007:4 dealt in great detail with the CPI and how it has actually become mangled in our opinion. However, there is another measure of price volatility that serves up another interesting challenge. Its called the Producer Price Index. In other words, WHOLESALE prices...>> Full Article | Back to Top

12/10/2007: “What Is Going On With the CPI?” One of the most critical indicators to nearly everyone, especially the Fed and it’s FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee), is the “infamous” CPI (Consumer Price Index). This one indicator, perhaps more than any other, is used for a myriad...>> Full Article | Back to Top

12/2007: You may remember that last month's newsletter was fearful that we would have a difficult end to 2007. Actually, I wish we were not so futuristic; because it doesn't get much worse than it is NOW. The Santa Clause rally is definitely being held at bay. As of this writing, all 40 of the Market...>> Full Article | Back to Top

December 2007

11/2007: Don't necessarily bet on a "year-end" rally. Yes, I know that we all expect the "Santa Claus Rally" to begin NOW and continue through the first of January. It usually does. Our CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor), Victor Lyons in San Diego who many of you have met, has made the observation...>>Full Article | Back to Top

November 2007

10/2007: ALRIGHT! The long-awaited BUY list for the new ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) AND the revised no-load Mutual Fund platforms were implemented last week... >>Full Article | Back to Top

October 2007

9/2007: The Cruise on the Captains Quarter's Yacht proved to be very successful. We received countless positive comments concerning our TWO proposals: 1. ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) in lieu of Mutual Funds) and 2. Victor Lyons our new CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) for 20% of... >> Full Article | Back to Top

September 2007

8/2007: By the time you receive this Newsletter, you should have received a very special invitation for our client "Cruise" on the Captains Quarter's Yacht on Sunday August 19 from 1:00 PM - ...>>Full Article | Back to Top

August 2007

7/2007: As we continue to migrate through our first year of service as an independent, SEC Registered, RIA (Registered Investment Advisor), it has come to mind that you may want to see in writing the principals that guide us through our process...>>Full Article | Back to Top

July 2007

6/2007: We have just past the milestone of 9-months being an independent RIA (Registered Investment Advisor). It has been a challenging and rewarding process that has involved some tremendous work and dedication from our entire team of professionals... >>Full Article | Back to Top

June 2007

5/2007: "How to Make THE PERFECT MINT JULEP" Just recently, I had the opportunity to be with my long-time friend Bill Samuels, CEO of Maker’s Mark. He shared with me his “secret” recipe and gave me permission to pass it along to you (there goes the secret.) Forget what you think you know about mint juleps and how they taste; this one will make a believer out of you AND all of your Derby guests...>>Full Article | Back to Top

5/01/2007: “The Dollar is Really WORTHLESS!” How often have we heard the phrase “The dollar sure doesn’t buy what it used to?” Yes, it’s obvious to all of us with at least a few gray hairs that the purchasing power of the dollar is not what it was...>> Full Article | Back to Top

May 2007

4/2007: We are asked on a regular basis “Why do your accounts have such a large position in cash?” I do believe the answer has become obvious over this last quarter. Regardless of the apparent expertise of any talking-head, futurist, economists, or newsletter/magazine writer…these markets are vicious and dangerous at this time…PERIOD!...>>Full Article | Back to Top

April 2007

3/2007: As we come to the office this morning (Thursday 3/1/2007), we're faced with everyone's obvious question of "What happened to the stock market day before yesterday?...and What does it mean to our portfolios?"... >>Full Article | Back to Top

March 2007

2/13/2007: “OIL: Both Sides of the Issue” Our Primary Goal in our consulting practice is to “keep from losing”. In order to do this we spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money just to try to get a handle on what’s happening TODAY…and should we recommend any changes to clients...>> Full Article | Back to Top

2/2007: According to David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the US, in his long-term budget outlook, our fiscal and financial condition is worse than advertised. The US budget deficit is out of control. Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than its income. The Treasury Department has to borrow money to meet Congress's appropriations. The total borrowed is more than $8 Trillion and...>>Full Article | Back to Top

February 2007

1/2007: Well it's a new year and the obligatory "News Years Resolutions" comes to the forefront: Losing 10 pounds comes to mind! Now that you've decided that "ain't gonna happen" lets discuss one that you can really commit to and really make happen. "Establish a WRITTEN budget and get...>>Full Article | Back to Top

January 2007

12/2006: We hate to bring up a “sore” point, but there are some tax considerations that we recommend that you address NOW along with some additional year end planning ideas. Be sure to call us if you have any questions or need our assistance on any of these matters. Remember, we are not...>> Full Article | Back to Top

December 2006