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…You Might Be a Gold Bug.

Gold bugs have been around for over 100 years, lurking at the fringes of the investment community and singing the praises of the yellow metal to anyone who will listen. As a result of the plunging US dollar, apocalyptic drops in asset prices and the commodity’s eight year bull market, gold has attracted a huge…

Ultimi Barbarorum Exposes the Cisco Buyback Game

People dislike share buybacks because they often feel as though there are more productive uses for the company’s cash or they would prefer their capital back in the form of a dividend.  This is an argument that is open to debate as their are proponents on either side (cash payouts versus shrinking the float) with…

Forecasters See Recovery… Jobless Recovery

This came out from the Philly Fed on Friday night… The Third Quarter 2009 Survey of Professional Forecasters got a smaller response than normal (only 34 economists participated) but the results are interesting nonetheless. By no means do I endorse the reliability of what this group has to say.  On the panel, you have some…

Hewlett-Packard Printer Choreography

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.3211254&w=425&h=350&fv=] That was sick. Neatorama gives us the details of what we just saw: Who knows how much is paper and how much is special effects in this ad made in response to a challenge from Hewlett-Packard. The finished product, named “Invent” is impressive! Created by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth. Music by Round…

Halfway Through?

Click Image to Embiggen Doug Short‘s really done a fantastic job on this one…a chart comparing our current nasty bear market (summer rally notwithstanding) with both the 20 year bear market that followed the Crash of ’29 and the lost pair of decades for the Nikkei that began in 1989. The most important thing to…

More Hot Links: Weinstein, Buffett & the US Consumer

More Hot Links for Weekend Reading… Deconstructing Warren Buffett‘s latest 13F filing.  What’s the Oracle up to with his stocks?  (DividendGrowthInvestor) The rise and fall of the Weinstein brothers.  (NYT) This is the post of the weekend:  Tyler Durden takes a detailed look at the US Consumer (with a bit of help from McKinsey).  (ZeroHedge)…

TRB Interviewed on Behind The Spread

Haven’t had your fill of smart alecky Wall Street commentary from yours truly this week? I gave an interview to Hiro Takei of Behind The Spread, a great new site loaded with interviews of Wall Street personalities.  He asked some really interesting questions about being in the business and keeping up to speed with the…

Green Shoots in San Francisco

Believe me, I have no empirical evidence to share about a turnaround in the economy as it probably doesn’t exist just yet. But I do have a hopeful and interesting story to share about a tech startup taking over the abandoned space of a shuttered hedge fund and making cool, cutting edge stuff.  This is…