Category: Secular Market Trends

The FT: boom times ahead for picks & shovels plays on the mining industry

From today’s FT: “Boost for suppliers as miners dig deep”. Excerpt:
Samuel Brannan became the richest man in California during the state’s Gold Rush of 1849; although he never found a lump of bullion. He made his fortune selling shovels and picks to the gold-seekers.
Fast forward 150 years and the modern version of Mr Brannan – [...]

Another tech IPO boom?

Fred Wilson, who I think has taken more vacations in the last year than Michelle Obama (off the top of my head, for Fred: Buenos Aires, Vail, Paris, someplace in Italy), hopes the Skype IPO will be the one to “get things going again.” Maybe. But when early investors (the smart/lucky money) are selling, someone [...]

The neutral zone

In a post Thursday (“Road to Nowhere”), Tim Knight wrote,
With the exception of commissions-based brokers, it’s hard to believe there’s anyone out there who has really enjoyed the stock market over the past few months. I mean, just look at the ES [S&P e-mini futures] below.

Tim Knight still thinks the S&P’s going to decline to [...]

Dinosaurs choking on comet dust

A comment I left on Josh Brown’s post about value managers complaining about getting scalped by high frequency traders:
I suspect that HF traders overstate the extent to which their algorithmic trading provides any liquidity or price discovery benefits to the broader market. On the whole, it seems like an enterprise which throws a lot [...]

Hedging in a secular bear market

One problem with some of the conventional wisdom regarding investing is that it doesn’t distinguish between secular bull and bear markets. What makes sense in a secular bull market doesn’t necessarily make sense during secular bear markets.
Conventional wisdom says that long-term investors should generally eschew hedging, since the costs of hedging can lower long-term returns. [...]

Comparing secular bear markets

Via Tim Knight, interesting chart from Martin Pring:

The method to my madness

In the course of a conversation with Matt today about some upcoming projects, he asked, essentially, whether there was any rhyme or reason to the recent flurry of trades I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere. This post is my answer distilled.
The Big Picture:

– John Hussman, Vitaliy Katsenelson*, Jim Rogers, and Tim Knight all believe [...]

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