Rude Awakening Archives | Rude Awakening Archives - 2004 | January 2005 - Present | 12/30/05 - Cerebral Striptease, Part II
Edited By Eric J Fry "To judge from outward appearances, the American economy
still boasts an enviable physique. But perhaps this economic
supermodel is somewhat more feeble than appearances would
suggest." |
| 12/29/05 - Cerebral Striptease, Part I
Edited By Eric J Fry For more than three weeks, Chris Mayer (editor of Capital & Crisis),
Justice Litle (editor of Outstanding Investments), Dan
Denning (editor of Strategic Investments), Byron King
|(contributing editor of Whiskey and Gunpowder), William Bonner
(editor of the Daily Reckoning) and Addison Wiggin (co-editor of
the Daily Reckoning) have been debating the gravity and the
implications of America's titanic current account deficit. |
| 12/27/05 - The Value of Debate
By Joel Bowman History has seen the United States pull together in the
face of turmoil, both external and internal. Vigorous,
well-informed debate is the first step to determining what
direction is best for the country...your country, that is. |
| 12/23/05 - Intellectually Honest, Ethical and Loyal
By Eric J. Fry If you believe that war is simply the opposite of peace,
then you might also believe that short-selling is simply
the opposite of long-side investing. But, in fact, you
would be completely wrong on both counts. War has no
opposite and neither does short-selling. |
| 12/22/05 - Squirrel Investing
By James Boric For 26 years, the symbol for Ralph Wanger's small-cap Acorn
Fund - which averaged 17% from 1970 to 1996 - was a
squirrel. Seems odd at first. But after thinking about it,
it makes perfect sense. |
| 12/20/05 - Golden Targets
By Eric J. Fry We inquired...You replied.Last week, we asked you, the Rude Awakening
readers, to identify gold mining companies that you believed would be
attractive takeover candidates. You responded with a flood
of emails. |
| 12/16/05 - Jumping on Bunge
By Eric J. Fry Dan Denning likes Bunge Ltd., the largest oilseed processor
in the world. So does James Grant...and so do we. Yet,
despite this three-way love-fest for Bunge (NYSE: BG), the
stock has gone nowhere for more than a year. For all we
know, the stock will go nowhere in 2006. But it does not
lack for reasons to go up |
| 12/15/05 - The Perils of Hyperactivity
By Eric J. Fry Sometimes the very best trades are the ones you DON'T
make...especially in a bull market. "Gold is overbought," CNBC incessantly reminds us, which
means that the precious metal is supposed to "correct" for
a while...And so what? What's the smart trade to make in
this circumstance? Our guess: No trade at all. |
| 12/13/05 - Gold Crosses the Rhine
By Dan Denning When Allied soldiers charged the beaches of Normandy on
June 6, 1944, victory seemed very uncertain and, at best,
very distant. Nine months later, the Allies crossed the
Rhine into Germany. Gold's recent charge through $500 an
ounce will lead to a similarly decisive and shocking
victory in the monetary realm. |
| 12/09/05 - Protein-Powered Profits
By Dan Denning "Ninety-five percent of the nitrogenous fertilizers used in
America are made out of natural gas," observes Jim Kunstler
in his book, The Long Emergency, "and so it has become
indispensable to U.S. agriculture." What happens to global agricultural production, therefore,
when natural gas soars to an all-time high, like it did
yesterday? Let's query the experts... |
| 12/08/05 - The Hazards of Familiarity
By Eric J. Fry Familiarity breeds contempt...but not right away. In the
beginning, familiarity breeds desire, when then becomes
mere comfort, then only tolerance, then resignation...and
THEN contempt. |
| 12/06/05 - A Golden Tan
By Eric J. Fry "The bull market in gold is still young," declared Michael
Martin late last week. "I would be buying every dip on the
way up...just like tech stock investors did throughout the
1990s." |
| 12/02/05 - Gold is the New "Gold"
By Dan Denning How can the dollar strengthen, even while America's
monstrous deficits are growing? And how can the dollar
strengthen, even while gold is rallying? The readers of my
investment letter, Strategic Investments, have been asking
many questions like these over the last few weeks. |
| 11/30/05 - Golden Nematodes and "Active Adults"
By Dan Ferris As the largest consumer spending group - $900 billion a year,
boomers will control the vast majority of the nation's wealth
within the next 20 years."One likely beneficiary of all that
spending will be Levitt Corporation (NYSE: LEV), a builder of
"active-adult" communities. |
| 11/29/05 - Million-Dollar Magic
By James Boric Joel Greenblatt is not famous...He is merely rich.
Last week, I discovered why he is so rich. My discovery
could easily put a few extra dollar bills in your pocket as
well...Maybe even millions of dollar bills. |
| 11/25/05 - Dead President Bounce, Redux By Eric J Fry "Eric, I'm about to do something stupid. Please talk me out
of it," one of your editor's colleagues pleaded recently,
"I'm thinking about selling my gold coins and buying a U.S.
dollar CD. What d'ya think?" |
| 11/24/05 - Nothing About Turkey or Pumpkin Pie By Eric J Fry Today marks the 18th Thanksgiving of Alan Greenspan's reign
at the Federal Reserve. This day also coincides with an 18-
year high in the price of gold. Perhaps there's a
connection |
| 11/23/05 - Torture, Abuse & Deception
By Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin Quack economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics do to numbers what guards
at Guantanamo did to prisoners. They rough them up so badly, they are ready to
say anything...This abuse of statistics is what allows Americans to deceive themselves
about their own economy. |
| 11/22/05 - Eternal Sunshine of the Thoughtless Mind
By Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin
Let us take a moment to stand back and gaze at America's great Empire of Debt.
It is the largest edifice of debt ever put up. It sustains the most magnificent world
economy ever assembled It supports more people in better style than any system
ever before devised... |
| 11/18/05 - The Quest for 12%
By Craig Walters Urea ammonium nitrate is not a chemical weapon...nor is it a homeopathic
dietary supplement. It is North America's most versatile nitrogen fertilizer...
and Terra Nitrogen Co. L.P., manufactures more of it than anyone else in the
world.
| 11/17/05 - Why Trust a Canadian
By Craig Walters The 12% Letter's portfolio is made up of twelve income-generating stocks.
Some of them are real estate investment trusts (REITs), some are business
development/registered investment companies (BDC/RICs), and some are just
ordinary common stocks. There are two stocks in the portfolio that I think are
typically less understood than all of the rest. |
| 11/16/05 - God Is, or He is Not
By Justice Litle "The big oilmen recently gave testimony in Washington. Their multibillion-dollar
profits have ruffled feathers, and the dubious notion of a "windfall profits tax" has
risen on a current of hot air to top the agenda." | 11/15/05 - Ka-Ching...Love That Sound!
By Chris Mayer
American consumers may be strapped for cash, but American corporations are
loaded. Just look at the companies in the S&P 500 Index (generally representative
of the market as a whole). Corporate coffers hold in excess of $2 trillion, a
staggering amount of dough, and an all time high. For perspective, it's 3.5 times
more than in 1993. This little-noticed fact could create great opportunities for
value investors like ourselves.
| 11/11/05 - Exxon's Shopping List
By Eric J Fry "In boom times, oil companies are supposed to be out in the field, drilling for oil & gas.
But when oil companies actually make some money in the biz, the folks on Capitol Hill
believe that they should be drilling the oil companies. It is all politics, if not showmanship.
And you know the script. Haul the big-shot execs up to the long green table in some
dark-wooded chamber, and rip them apart for the benefit of the unblinking cameras. It's
the American way. So what is a prosperous oil man to do? Stash the cash, of course.
But first, we have to study a bit of history."
| 11/10/05 - Kissin' Cousins
By Eric J Fry "For the last couple of years, the prospect of a housing bust seemed purely
theoretical. But now it seems all too real. Suddenly, the worst-case scenarios
seem uncomfortably plausible. And even the best-case scenarios don't look that
great." | 11/09/05 - Yield Curvese...That's Hot!
By Eric J Fry "Your New York editor didn't want to write about bonds again today, but Merrill Lynch made him do it...Actually, Merrill Lynch, Eaton Vance, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and CIBC World Markets all teamed up together to make him do it. This esteemed cluster of investment banks simultaneously downgraded bonds." | 11/08/05 - What's Yours is Mine
By Eric J Fry
| "Out here in the real world, we refer to the fruits of our labor as "earnings." But up on Capitol Hill, politicians recognize these same fruits as "taxable gains." We believe we deserve our earnings, by virtue of the fact that we worked hard to produce them. But the politicians believe that they deserve our earnings, by virtue of the fact that they have already spent them." | | 11/04/2005 - Chihuahuas of the Serengeti | By Eric J Fry "Asset bubbles are never merely financial; they are the love-children of leveraged speculation and warped perception. Sadly, even though these offspring seem so full of life in the flower of their youth, they cannot survive adversity...especially the sort of adversity that includes rising interest rates." | | 11/03/2005 - Oil, The New Reserve Currency | By Chris Mayer "I borrowed the title of today's column from Robert Friend, the successful international investor at Recon Capital. At last week's Grant's Investment Conference, Friend used this title to provide a context for his bullish remarks about oil and oil stocks. " | | 11/02/2005 - The Next Enron | By Chris Mayer "From the podium of the posh St. Regis Hotel ballroom, Chanos identified the likely victims of this seismic shift. The attendees seemed to hang on his every word. Chanos, is afterall, the most famous short-seller in the land…and for good reason. He rose to celebrity as the "Man Who Called Enron." That is, Chanos publicly identified Enron as a questionable operating enterprise – and therefore took a very large shot position in the company's stock – months BEFORE Enron's fraudulent activities cratered its share price and forced the company into bankruptcy." |
| 11/01/2005 -Scary Stuff | By Eric J Fry "We are not sure we believe in the housing bubble either, but neither are we sure we don't. At a minimum, we believe in the housing market's vulnerability. We also believe that bad things happen to leveraged speculators...and the housing market has become a vast national repository of leveraged speculation, masquerading behind the innocent façade of "home-buying." |
| 10/28/2005 - A Four-Letter Investment | By Justice Litle "Gold has been irrelevant for so long that most investors ignore it completely. That's unfortunate. The precious metal's three-year advance from $265 an ounce to $470 is no accident. Against a backdrop of catastrophic fiscal imbalances, gold's strength is a logical outcome. Its rising price, in dollars, reflects the severity of America's fiscal imbalances. The dollar remains the world's reserve currency...but only to a point, and only for so long." Read on as heavy hitting macro-expert, Justice Litle, breaks the situation down."
| | 10/27/2005 - We Just Got "Bernanke'd" | By Justice Litle "The big news this week: President Bush disappointed the wags by refusing to appoint his personal tax accountant to the Federal Reserve. Instead he chose Ben Bernanke, the renowned Princeton man. With a cheery glint in his eye, a pleasing teddy-bear persona, and solid real-world experience under his belt, Bernanke is well-respected on both sides of the aisle. He is a John Roberts, not a Harriet Miers. Thank goodness for that at least."
| | 10/26/2005 - Meet the Doctor - Part II | By Eric J Fry ""Dr. Kurt Richebacher's insights and opinions are suitable for mature audiences only. The following material may contain scenes, depictions and descriptions of graphic macro-economic content that may be very disturbing..." Eric Fry gets the bad news from the good doctor. Read on for all the you didn't want, but need to know about the abismal state of the U.S. economy. | | 10/25/2005 - Meet the Doctor - Part I | By Eric J Fry Part one of the much anticipated interview with one of the world's most respected economists shows a dire situation unfolding in the U.S. economy, both on a macro and a micro level. This interview comes with a warning: "Dr. Kurt Richebacher's insights and opinions are suitable for mature audiences only. The following material may contain scenes, depictions and descriptions of graphic macro-economic content that may be very disturbing..." | | 10/21/2005 - Buy Treasurys...For A Trade | By Eric J Fry “Yeah, it’s boring,” your editor admitted, “but I think you could make 15% on this trade in one year or less, with very little risk." "I love the 5-year Treasury right now," Eric declared to his colleagues yesterday during their monthly editorial meeting in Baltimore. "In fact, I like the entire yield curve, from three months out to 30 years." When Mr. Fry gets on a roll with his investment ideas, it's hard to contain his enthusiasm - even as the meeting draws to an end and we retire for drinks and poker, Eric will be pouring with more investment strategies. Here is but one...
| | 10/20/2005 - Betting on the "Almost Inevitable" | By Steve Sjuggerud Let me state categorically that [this] sequence is barely questionable, almost inevitable, 99% unavoidable, and in modern parlance - a "slam-dunk." Find out why Bill Gross, the "Bond King," is getting all excited. Rude favorite, Steve Sjuggerud stears us through a fascinating play on junk bonds in the wake of an iminent recession. Make sure you check out today's Rude reading.
| | 10/19/2005 - Let's Play Monopoly | By Chris Mayer The nature of Chris Mayer's investment philosophy affords him the opportunity to chase profits the world over. Today the quest for value plays has taken Chris down to the land of the long white cloud: New Zealand, and to friendly South Korea.Check out why Chris is getting all worked up about two monopoly companies set to turn some healthy gains. | | 10/18/2005 - Counterpoint | By Justice Litle "I'm firing off this response to my friend and colleague Chris Mayer's recent Rude Awakening essay, "The Other Oil Crisis." On bourbon we agree, on oil and energy, we do not." The fueding friends are at it again, this time Justice Litle rebutts Chris Mayer's oil missive from lasst week. | | 10/13/2005 - The Newest Bull Market...In Real Estate! | By Dan Ferris You heard it here first: the new bull market in residential real estate is under way. According to SNL Financial, apartment REITs are up 21% over the past 12 months. That's a little higher than the average REIT, and way above the S&P 500's 6.9% return in the same period. | | 10/12/2005 - Stinky Water, Sweet Oil...The Final Thought | By Dan Denning "Last week, I paid a visit to Royal Dutch Shell's oil shale project in Colorado. The visit left me with more questions than answers, but I came away from the place with the sense that this opportunity is very real...or, at least, it soon will be." |
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