Joshua M Brown

Apocalypse Detroit

Detroit is a scary city as evidenced by these incredible images by 7 contemporary photographers.  Mitch Cope has put together a masterpiece, a set of photographs of the city that capture the hopelessness and devastation in a way that 1000 newspaper and magazine articles never could.  In some of these pictures, Detroit looks almost like…

Experts Predict the Death of the Broker (Yeah, that old chestnut)

“Bill Singer foresees stock brokers not existing after this generation and instead the market will have commission-paid telephone operators who dole out information.” Forbes, August 2009 Another era, another article discussing the Death of the Broker.  My friend/buddy/pal Bill Singer, a maven on all subjects pertaining to the broker/dealer and regulatory world, is quoted in…

The Big BIG Winners of 2009

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a reason to speculate.  $1 stocks didn’t go to 50 cents and then zero automatically.. There was a time when little stocks could go a lot higher from the depths of obscurity, showing you 2x, 5x, even 10x your original investment.  And then the nuclear winter…

Will Explosive Taxation Derail the Recovery?

Clearly, there are some areas of the economy that are showing signs of a recovery.  What this may mean to stocks, bonds, real estate etc is not the subject of this post. Instead, let’s take a moment to ponder the new emerging headwind that could throw a serious monkey wrench in our recovery hopes for…

Breakfast Links: Post-Apocalyptic Disney

Stuff I’m Reading this Morning… JPMorgan almost bought Morgan Stanley at Paulson‘s request during the crisis.  (DealBook) SIA: 2nd quarter chip sales up 17% sequentially, 4 months of gains in a row.  (WSJ) Commercial RE loans blowing up faster than you thought.  (Clusterstock) Nouriel Roubini goes bullish on commodities.  (ResearchReloaded) A Swissman (is that a…

A Good Primer on the Rule of 72

Thought this was a pretty concise primer on the Rule of 72, one of the most important calculations a market pro can keep in the back of his/ her mind.  This is a highly useful tool, so I thought I’d pass on this version I found on GigaOM this morning: — The Rule of 72…

More Hot Links: Deflation, Trading & the LEAF

More Hot Links for Weekend Reading… Tadas frames the High Frequency Trading debate in Life (and trading) is Unfair.  Great post.  (Abnormal Returns) Pimco positioning for the Fed not raising rates until 2011!  Clearly, McCulley‘s in the Deflationista camp.  (Bloomberg) Scariest thing you’ll read all day:  1.5 million Americans running out of time on their…

Hot Links: The Pentatonic Scale

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.3090598&w=425&h=350&fv=] Hot Links for Weekend Reading… Jefferson County, Alabama: the brokest county in all the land.  (NYT) Barry Ritholtz does a killer guest post for Prieur‘s site discussing the analysts.  (Investment Postcards) China’s governments create a bottom in commercial real estate by intervention.  (FT) Speaking of China, Karabell looks at why their stimulus is…