News Posts

First of all, this occurred in relatively shallow waters, 80-110 meters in depth, completely dominated by Nato vessels. If the CIA and Howard Hughes could raise a Russian sub from ultra-deep waters in the Pacific thousands of miles from shore, do you think it’s credible that the U.S intelligence agencies don’t know who set off explosives in an area where Nato was recently conducting massive naval exercises? It was just in June that fourteen NATO allies along with two NATO partner nations, Finland and Sweden, were participating in the exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22) with over 45 ships, more than … Read more

November is done and it was one for the records, S&P 500 up 10.75%.  The stock market is now up over 12.10% not including dividends. It’s not official yet but it will be pretty darn close to it.  The Insiders Fund was up an astounding 42.96% in the month of November alone, and now up over 16% for the year before fees.  The last time we saw a month up 40% was October  2001 and ended the year up over 64.73%.  Stock picking and non-diversification helped greatly. Diversifying investments is prudent but at some point, you have to go back … Read more

… Utah. You might not end up there, but this new survey is a useful prod to plan for aging gracefully—and affordably—wherever you retire. Source: The Best and Worst States for Seniors, by Health Care and More – Bloomberg

The internet’s global expansion is entering a new phase, and it looks decidedly unlike the last one.Instead of typing searches and emails, a wave of newcomers—“the next billion,” the tech industry calls them—is avoiding text, using voice activation and communicating with images. They are a swath of the world’s less-educated, online for the first time thanks to low-end smartphones, cheap data plans and intuitive apps that let them navigate despite poor literacy.   Source: The End of Typing: The Next Billion Mobile Users Will Rely on Video and Voice – WSJ

If you think your hedge fund has been lagging the market, you’re not alone.  Apparently its gotten harder to beat the market.  Not that its ever been easy but this seems to bear out what I have always suspected.  Bull markets are a bitch for stock pickers.   By Dan McCrum Hedge funds have a performance problem. Since the turn of the decade, Wall Street’s master stock pickers have spectacularly failed to beat the market.The crisis of performance comes as the industry is under intense scrutiny over the source of past returns, with SAC Capital facing criminal insider trading charges … Read more

About an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City, lies Utah’s Powder Mountain. The once sleepy mountain town is about to be reinvigorated as a destination for the world’s most talented creators, artists, entrepreneurs, activists, philanthropists and musicians.After 5-years of hosting epic events for entrepreneurs including Summit Basecamp, Summit at Sea and DC10, The Summit Series team decided it was time to grow roots, and found its home in a place called Eden, Utah. Here, the 40-person Summit Series team, led by co-founders Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal and Jeremy Schwartz, is anything but “settling down.” Today, the team announces that after 20 months, it’s officially closed the $40 million … Read more

Courtesy of Business Insider The Worst Investment Strategy Of 2013.

China Passes U.S. to Become the World’s Biggest Trading Nation By Bloomberg News – Feb 9, 2013 6:26 AM MT China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports, ending the U.S. supremacy in global commerce that emerged after the end of World War II in 1945. U.S. exports and imports last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said yesterday. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s total trade in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion. China had a $231.1 billion annual trade surplus … Read more

In their efforts to block health care reform, politicians often claim that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world.  As such, we shouldnt tinker with it.The evidence, however, points to a different conclusion: the U.S. health care system provides less quality and less value compared to its international counterparts. The New York Times recently published an article that discusses the results of a comprehensive study convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council on mortality rates and other measures of health care.The expert panel concluded that there is a ‘U.S. health disadvantage,’ according to … Read more

Crony Capitalist Blowout In praising Congress’s huge new tax increase, President Obama said Tuesday that “millionaires and billionaires” will finally “pay their fair share.” That is, unless you are a Nascar track owner, a wind-energy company or the owners of StarKist Tuna, among many others who managed to get their taxes reduced in Congress’s New Year celebration. There’s plenty to lament about the capital and income tax hikes, but the bill’s seedier underside is the $40 billion or so in tax payoffs to every crony capitalist and special pleader with a lobbyist worth his million-dollar salary. Congress and the White … Read more

Everyone is anticipating and October surprise.  This could be it.  Markets have discounted an Obama win but not an end to gridlock. By Danny YadronGetty A majority of voters want one party to control Congress and the White House next year, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll, a remarkable opinion shift that suggests deep frustration with Washington gridlock.The Journal survey of registered voters, to be released in full at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday on WSJ.com, found 52% want effectively one party to rule Washington, with 39% wanting a divided government. It’s the first time a majority of voters … Read more

By MICHAEL BARBAROPublished: August 29, 2012 99 Not long after Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race in early 2008, a titan of New York finance, Julian H. Robertson, flew to Utah to deliver an eye-popping offer.   via Setback Leads Romney to Reinvention – NYTimes.com. On a personal note, this is why the NYT is really a far better paper than the WSJ.  This is a largely favorable article on Romney.  Can you imagine the WSJ doing the same for Obama?

What I got out of this piece from former Treasury Secretary is the shocking amount of money that will be spent on health care by the aging boomers.   By Lawrence Summers With the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, it is clear both political parties agree that the central issue in the presidential election will be the scale and scope of government involvement in the US economy. There will be disagreement over what constituted “normal” levels of spending in the past and indeed over what constitutes “spending”. But there is a widespread view in both parties … Read more

Global Hunter Securities We believe West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices could oversell potentially into the lower $70 range before rebounding to the $80 area, where we expect prices to consolidate. From a purely fundamental perspective, the over-production evidence is interesting, with total U.S. field production up by 12.4% year-over-year to 6.35 million barrels per day, against a declining consumption trend in the same period. The Cushing hub bottleneck bonanza has pushed Cushing stocks higher by 25.6% year-over-year to 47.8 million barrels, but this has not really moved the total crude stocks number out of whack, in our opinion. via … Read more