The American Dream
“In 1923, seven men who had made it to the top of the financial success pyramid met together at the Edgewater Hotel in Chicago. Collectively, they controlled more wealth than the entire United States Treasury, and for years the media had held them up as examples of success. Who were they? Charles M. Schwab, president of the world’s largest steel company; Arthur Cutten, the greatest wheat speculator of his day; Richard Whitney, president of the [...]
A Story About Short Selling
Back in 1999, there was an Internet company called CMGI. For those of you who remember, the stock was INSANE! Split adjusted, it went from 0.30 cents to $120. After this happened, I spoke to a very sharp friend of mine who was managing a $2 Billion hedge fund. His exact words were: "Joe, this stock is a piece of shit and it's going back to $1." He was dead right! The only problem is...the [...]
Stories From 1999
I recently wrote a blog post titled "This is NOT a Bubble!" At the end of the post, I said I would tell a few stories from 1999 to emphasize my point that we are NOWHERE CLOSE to the bubble and the euphoria we saw back then. Enjoy! - Back in 1999, many of the companies that were trading at $100-$1000 had earnings of less than 0.50 cents per share. Some had no earnings and [...]
The Market’s Pattern This Year
Here is a pattern I have noticed in the market about 6 or 7 times this year: 1) The market goes on a 3-6 week run. 2) The run usually stalls when we get extended from the moving averages, bullishness increases (based on many sentiment measures), and active investment managers are aggressively long the market (based on the NAAIM survey). 3) Leaders start to break down, the market starts to correct down to (or below) [...]
No Taper For a While
I recently gave a presentation at the Traders Expo. After my talk, someone came up to me and said: Back in August, you were the only person I know who said there would be no Fed taper in September. How did you know? He said everyone in the financial media said there would be a taper and it negatively affected his trading. My answer was simple. Bernanke has made it clear that there will be no taper [...]
Thankful For My New York Family
In the past month, I've had 3 people close to me pass away. The main positive I can take away from this is that you have to let your family and friends know how much you appreciate them every opportunity you get. I moved to New York over a year ago and I didn't know anyone. One thing I did know was that I had to surround myself with great people. There are close to [...]