"Sometimes the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid." - Warren Buffett
This is what I think of when I look at metal/mining stocks. Some of them are trading at multi-year lows while their underlying metals have more than doubled. I wish I had a better reason to explain it. I think it's manipulation, plain and simple. In this current market, if you fall out of favor, you get hammered. Fundamentals don't really matter. However, I will use another Buffett quote to how I am looking at these investments.
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I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years. If the business does well, the stock eventually follows."
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This leads me to this daily discussion about Europe. How do you think they are going to get out of this mess? PRINT MONEY! They aren't suddenly going to find a way to bring in more revenues. Here is some info from Stansberry Research. It was written a month ago.
[T]he European situation is still deteriorating daily. Late yesterday, Standard & Poor's downgraded Italy's credit rating from single-A-plus to single-A. And the agency maintained a negative outlook on the debt. On cue, the European Central Bank stepped into the market today to buy Italian bonds. (It's been buying Spanish and Italian debt for weeks.) The yield on 10-year Italian government debt dropped to 5.603% in early trading today, down from an earlier high of 5.67%. Despite the government intervention, credit default swaps on Italian government debts are at all-time highs.
There's simply no way Italy can finance its debts… It must refinance 192 billion euro this year, 168 billion euro next year, and another 100 billion euro in 2013. Italy is the world's third-largest sovereign borrower with public debt of 1.7 trillion euro. And it runs a 3.9% annual GDP deficit. While it's not as far gone as Greece, Italy's time is nigh… And the ECB will continue pumping cash to delay the problems. That's why we're still bullish on gold and silver (and hedging our portfolio with short sales)
There were multiple downgrades on debt about the same time this was written. As we all know, once the downgrades come, it's already to late.
Yesterday, Germany tried to sell 5 billion euros worth of bonds, but only received 4.5 billion in bids. The market is worried and it should be. The bailout of the Euro falls squarely on Germany. They are the only ones with any money left. You know where it falls next? The US Federal Reserve...
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We should all be rooting for the Cardinals. Every time the Cardinals have won the World Series, the market has been up an average of 13% the next calendar year. That's better than any other team in baseball.
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This is wild. They couldn't live without each other.
Married Couple of 72 Years Die an Hour Apart
On the day she graduated from high school, Norma Stock promised to spend forever with Gordon Yeager. The couple got married on May 26, 1939 in State Center.
"They're very old-fashioned. They believed in marriage til death do you part," said son Dennis Yeager.Dennis Yeager was the youngest of four children born to the couple. His sister Donna was first born."Staying together for 72 years is good, I'd say that's exceptional," said daughter Donna Sheets.The way the kids tell it, dad was the life of the party while mom kept everything together.
 Yeager Family |
"Anybody come over -- she was the hostess with the mostest. She just seriously -- the more she did -- the more she smiled," said Dennis Yeager. "Dad would be the center of attention, like, 'Weee look at me,' and mom was like 'get him away from me!' You know we even got a picture like that." (picture, right)Norma didn't really want the distance, and family said she hardly left Gordon's side for 72 years."They just loved being together. Everybody argues once in awhile, but they still, he said 'I have to stick around. I can't go until she does because I have to stay here for her and she would say the same thing,'" said Dennis Yeager.Dennis Yeager said the couple left home last Wednesday to go into town, but they didn't make it.At the intersection of Highway 30 and Jessup Avenue just west of Marshalltown, state troopers said Gordon pulled in front of an oncoming car. The Iowa State Patrol crash report said the other driver attempted to avoid the crash but was unable to stop in time."I rushed from Des Moines where I was working and saw them in the hospital," said Dennis Yeager.
 Yeager Family |
In the intensive care unit of Marshalltown's hospital, nurses knew not to separate Gordon and Norma."They brought them in the same room in intensive care and put them together -- and they were holding hands in ICU. They were not really responsive," said Dennis Yeager.Gordon died at 3:38 p.m. holding hands with his wife as the family they built surrounded them."It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn't figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going," said Dennis Yeager. "But we were like, he isn't breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that's because they were holding hands and it's going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up.""They were still getting her heartbeat through him," said Donna Sheets.At 4:38 p.m., exactly one hour after Gordon died, Norma passed too.
 Yeager Family |
"Neither one of them would've wanted to be without each other. I couldn't figure out how it was going to work," said Donna Sheets. "We were very blessed, honestly, that they went this way.""They just loved being together," said Dennis Yeager.At their funeral on Monday, Norma and Gordon held hands in their casket. Family said they will be cremated and their ashes mixed together.
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Unemployment numbers don't really factor in the underemployed.
While the number of unemployed workers has held steady at around 14 million in recent months, another telling measure of frustration in the labor market—the number of underemployed individuals—rose for a third consecutive month in September, by almost a half of a million people. Almost 9.3 million Americans are considered underemployed, defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as working part-time for economic reasons, such as unfavorable business conditions or seasonal declines in demand.
That's up from just over 8 million in July, but down from a peak of about 9.5 million in September 2010. In addition, about 2.5 million individuals are considered "marginally attached to the labor force," meaning they were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. (They are not counted as unemployed because they had not looked for a job in the past four weeks prior to the survey.)
Put together, almost 26 million Americans are either unemployed, marginally attached to the labor force, or involuntarily working part-time—a number experts say is unprecedented.
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