To All, Barron's Review. So-So issue. 1. Abelson quotes "nonconformist economist" (he is not a lazy idiot, which is as nonconforming as you can get in that biz <g>) Robert Parks. Parks claims that the Fed has been wildly expansionary. Duh! He also thinks that private debt growing at 25% a year is a wee mite excessive. I agree, by about 22% a year. My old buddies at Comstock Partners draw some parallels between the market's lack of breadth and 1928-1929 and 1973. Yawn. Been there, done that.
2. Some guy likes oil service stocks. I like them, but I prefer the producers.
3. Gene Epstein pens a misleading article that earnings are actually better than reported. His main thesis boils down to the fact that since cos. don't really get much in the way of free cash flow, one-time restructuring charges and other merger related costs shouldn't count against them nor should depreciation. Totally nutso. At least the market agrees that no co. should have to pay for a myriad of past mistakes. <g>
4. A fairly tepid piece about asset inflation. The first letter to The Mailbag is much stronger and more coherent on the same subject.
5. A paean of praise for Hank Greenberg, who deserves it.
6. A repeat of the Barron's Online piece about "Is the Party Over for the Chip Equipment Makers." This is somewhat misleading, as the earnings have barely returned to levels of two or three years ago, so that isn't much of a party. Most of the partying has been in the stocks. I agree about the double ordering hurting the businesses going forward. I am not sure if the folks who buy these cyclical trading sardines are smart enough to know what that means.
7. A hedge fund guy in Dallas buys overpriced fluff, but makes up for it with some smart paired trades. So, I have mixed feelings about him. He is bright enough to recognize the power of paired trading, but dumb enough to say that Cisco is undervalued. Maybe there is something to this left brain, right brain, out to lunch brain stuff. <g>
8. In Market Watch, a grab bag of opinions. Comstock and the technical guru, Kirkpatrick are both saying we are in a bear market. Wells and Barrington sound like they are on the fence.
9. The Mailbag is loaded with goodies, by far the best part of the magazine. The first letter gives an outstanding Austrian view of asset inflation, much better than the featured article earlier in the rag. Several letters about the Dudack fan, including one from Rukeyser himself, who comes off as a total ASW. A letter from a really brilliant guy about the Microsoft monopoly. Another one talks about how the breakup of ATT saved him money, which the breakup of the Redmond Ripoffers would also do. And Tom McClellan is partially right, deflation is much more likely than inflation from the Fed's recklessness. But he is totally wrong to think that we should be happy to live in an era like the late 1920s. |
