It Appears that "Retail Therapy" is not Dead
on Nov 6, 2009 in consumer spending Despite being in "bunker mode," in which virtually all non-essential spending has been trimmed or eliminated, consumers have continued to buy shoes by the box loads (see "A Not-So-Guilty Pleasure"). The question begs to be asked: Why? The New York...

My New SFO Weekly Trade: Short the Euro
on Nov 2, 2009 in SFO contrarian investing My new trade recommendation in SFO Weekly is to Short the Euro.  Here is a snippet from the article: In perhaps the greatest contrarian signal we’ve seen to date concerning the dollar, Barron’s reported that several sovereign borrowers –...

New "Trade of the Month" in SFO Magazine
on Oct 26, 2009 in SFO My recommendation is the "trade of the month" in the November issue of Stocks, Futures, and Options Magazine: "Watch the Herd and Be Contrarian"Here's a snippet from the article:Traders and investors are well aware that the crowd is generally wrong.

November "Letter From America" in Investment International
on Oct 18, 2009 in Offshore finance Investment International G20 This month in Investment International, we critique the recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh and revisit our comments from April, when that organization originally laid out its ambitious agenda to "fix" the global economy.To view the article, follow this...

Excerpts from 3rd Quarter Letter to Investors
on Oct 14, 2009 in letter to investors contrarian investing Excerpts from Sizemore Capital Management 2009 Third Quarter Investment Outlook and CommentaryTo Our Investors,The rally that started near the end of March has continued strongly through the third quarter, and widespread fears of a September crash pr...

Talk Is Cheap. Skype Is Cheaper.
on Oct 8, 2009 in Technolgy Skype We've written before about how new technologies like mobile phones and, more recently, Skype are transforming the telecommunications industry and bringing the continued existence of the fixed-line phone company into question. (Click here for prior po...

New Article in SFO Weekly: Invest in India
on Oct 5, 2009 in India SFO As American consumers—led by the Baby Boomers—continue to pay off their debts and save, less money is flowing through the economy. We view this as a secular trend that is likely to last a decade or more. For growth, we have turned to emerging ma...

October "Letter From America" in Investment International
on Sep 27, 2009 in Lehman Brothers Investment International This month in Investment International, we consider the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the event that sent the housing bust into an outright panic.To view the article, follow this link: "An Anniversary We'd Like to Forget"Go...

The Economics of Japan's Naughty Old Men
on Sep 22, 2009 in luxury goods Japan You have to love the Japanese language -- they have a word for pretty much everything.A fine example is choiwaru oyaji -- defined as a middle-aged man who is "slightly bad," in a recent article.Everyone knows the type: the naughty old guy in the offi...

THIS is why health care is so expensive
on Sep 19, 2009 in Barack Obama health care In prior posts on the subject (see "US Government Already Spends..." and "ObamaCare: What's the Story"), I noted that health spending in the United States is vastly higher than anywhere else in the world. Our government, via Medicare and Medicaid, s...