Hollywood gets a lesson on doing business with China

The first Iron Man film from 2008 made $15 million at the Chinese box office. The new Iron Man 3, released this summer, did about $115 million. Clearly, Hollywood wants (needs) growth like that to continue. But it has to play by China’s censorship rules in order for that to happen. Brad Pitt’s latest big-budget…

Nine Surprising Things Jesse Livermore Said

There are those who would convince you that it is somehow smart or in your best interest to be manically switching your investments around, back and forth, long and short, on a daily basis. To pay attention to this kind of overstimulation is the height of madness, even for professional traders. The most storied and…

Today’s Comforting Stat: Hedge funds are a trillion dollars in debt

Bloomberg: The nation’s largest hedge funds had $1.47 trillion in net assets and more than $1 trillion in borrowings as of the fourth quarter, according to the first report compiled on confidential data they provided to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC’s Division of Investment Management issued the report to Congress last week using figures…

YTD Asset Class Returns Scorecard

Here’s where the major markets stand in 2013 through the end of July (via Bank of America Merrill Lynch). As you can see by the YTD column, hedging activity or diversification of any kind with either treasurys, gold or vix options has cost many portfolios quite a bit. The key is to remember that this…

(this is where my jobs report post would be)

This morning we learned that the US economy created only 162,000 jobs in July, but enough people were killed by drones or amusement park rides so that the unemployment rate actually ticked down to 7.4%. This number will be revised up and then revised down or in the reverse order at some point in the…