I was just turned on to a PBS film called “Trader”. It was riveting. The film is a short documentary from 1987 that profiles a trader on Wall Street. It is really amazing how much certain films take from the real thing. The trader who is featured is Paul Tudor Jones. His firm was handling about $90 million at that time (1987). Paul is a little bit Gordon Gecko and a lot of Patrick Bateman.
Paul Tudor Jones has had a LOT of success since then. His net worth is now estimated at more than $3 billion and he made $750 million in 2006 alone! Paul’s firm found a very tight relation between the 20′s and the 80′s in the market and took advantage of that. History does repeat itself. The most compelling part of the film to me was the certainty that they had regarding the crash that was coming. My hunch is that they profited in a big way from that. They originally estimated that it would occur in March of 1988 (rather than October of 1987) but I would bet that they saw the signs when they came early (based on their model).
Take 45 minutes and watch all of the parts of this film. It is oddly inspiring.
Crude oil prices lost ground today (thank you!) to $66 a barrel. Crude oil needs to stay around this number if we have any chance of a sustained recovery. Manufacturing and the flow of goods depends on reasonable gas prices. This is not the environment where we can raise prices so gas has got to stay at this number or below.
This story, dated November 26, 2008 was promoting the ouster of Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup. It said, among other things, that calls for the head of Citi’s CEO are hitting a crescendo. This was November 2008. Things have only gotten worse and he still has his job. I don’t understand. I don’t whether Pandit will ultimately succeed or fail but change is needed. We might need to redefine what the word crescendo means.
A-Hole reporters are at it again. I really cannot stand how reporters report news. Look at the graph on this article. The red line is gas. It says in the gray box that oil is $2.67 a gallon yet the red line is up over $3 on the graph. Why is the red line up that high when the gray line is way under the $3 mark on the graph? There are three possible choices. The first reason is the reporter is an idiot. The second reason is because the reporter is a sensationalist idiot. The third reason is both the first and second reason. I’ll take the third reason.
I find myself sitting in a weird position. I am fully invested in a market that has run up significantly lately. I read in the paper this morning stocks tend to trade sideways during the summer. This is probably one of those summers. The paper also said trading sideways has a way of reducing the “overbought” condition of the markets. If we are past the worst part of the downturn (I HOPE), and the following factors play out, I don’t see any reason to change my positions just for the sake of doing so. Since I am a sucker for small business news and information, my guess is you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of these kinds of posts from me over the next several months. Have a great summer!
Another sign we are in for a rough road ahead if oil prices continue their rally. Jackasses on Wall Street should not be able to run up oil prices under the same conditions they are allowed to now. Yes, it’s a commodity. Yes its a limited resource. I’m not sure what to do. But I do know the economy is going to be in for a rough road if we cannot get a handle on oil speculation.
I hope the government has oil on its radar screen. The Europeans say we should stop complaining about high gas prices as they have been dealing with them for years. It doesn’t matter right now. If the US doesn’t find a way to deal with rising gas prices, our economic recovery is dead in the water. In my opinion, we’re in this mess because of oil prices last year. It was the little snowball that gained speed and turned into an avalanche. When gas prices went through the roof, Americans started getting squeezed on expenses. That led to homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments…and here we are.
We get tired of all of the retread marketing ideas out there. Every so often, someone comes up with a great “marketing” idea. The Potty Project by Pull-Ups diaper company is just such a marketing idea. They started the Potty Project to help parents through the potty training process. The “webisodes” are jammed with helpful information and a “we are all in this together attitude.” The results are listed in the article. They are seeing double the amount of visitors and customer response has been excellent. Great ideas usually get great results.
They are declaring bankruptcy today and will eventually emerge from bankruptcy. The plan is to emerge from bankruptcy with a better balance sheet and profitability if GM can sell 10,000,000 cars a year. Would you buy their stock? Knowing we (American Taxpayers) own GM, will you guy a GM product so we can get a return on our bail out money? If America gets behind GM, is Ford screwed because the Federal Government has a more vested interested in protecting their GM interests?
Will I eventually buy GM stock? hmmm…that’s a good question.
Crude oil prices lost ground today (thank you!) to $66 a barrel. Crude oil needs to stay around this number if we have any chance of a sustained recovery. Manufacturing and the flow of goods depends on reasonable gas prices. This is not the environment where we can raise prices so gas has got to stay at this number or below.
