Free Republic

For a low-key money manager, John W. Rogers Jr. got awfully close to the national political spotlight during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Last week I was told that we were going to see more gold weakness in the days ahead because big money had to sell their positions. Folks, smart big-money traders don’t sell into weakness. These kinds of investors don’t think like the typical retail investor who's forever trying to avoid drawdowns. Big-money investors take positions based on fundamentals and then continually buy dips until the fundamentals reverse. The fundamentals haven’t reversed for gold so I’m confident in saying that smart money isn’t selling its gold, it's using this dip to accumulate. With that being said, there are times when big...

Bears Come Out In Final Hour, As Dow Plunges 104 Vince Veneziani Feb. 8, 2010, 4:00 PM The market was mixed on light volume until 3:00 PM. Then the Bears came out in full force. The Dow ended up dropping 104 points. The NASDAQ lost 15 and the S&P 500 lost 9.45. However, commodities had a great day. Oil ended up nearly one percent at $71.89 a barrel. Gold gained $12.40 to rise to $1065.20 an ounce. Silver gained $0.24, ending at $15.07 an ounce. Grains, Softs, and meats remain positive. Bonds, equities and energy are falling.

DOW BREAKS BELOW 10,000 Vince Veneziani Feb. 4, 2010, 4:01 PM The Dow plunged below 10,000 today, and at 4:00 PM it was at around 9999.84. But same late ticks appear to have put it over the top. The NASDAQ: Down 2.75% to 2130 after a 59 point loss. The S&P 2.75% as well, dropping 30 points to close at 1066. Crude oil took an enormous haircut of 5.26%, falling to $72.93 a barrel amid the turmoil. Gold lost $50 to plummet to $1063 an ounce. Silver los nearly 6%, falling to $15.36 an ounce. Why did everything go sour?[snip]

S&P Removes "One Click" P/E Gee, what are they trying to hide? As I have repeatedly shown there was has been a "one click" P/E available for the S&P 500 - from S&P - basically forever. Here's one (recent) example. Well that's no longer "easily findable." Indeed, now you have to compute it yourself, although they do make it somewhat easy - if you have Excel. You have to sign up for a (free) account now, and then you can download the spreadsheets with quarterly numbers. So I did. The interesting part of this exercise is that you get annualized...

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- It's nearly 2 a.m. and authorities have found the suspect in a string of break-ins into multimillion-dollar homes. His nose led him right to their trap - a cage filled with barbecue-scented cantaloupe and peaches. It's a 550-pound black bear....

“Gold stocks represent a great place to be. In any economy where the central banker is widely referred to as ‘Helicopter Ben’ you’d better own some gold,” Tice advised.

So far, the collapse of the world economy since mid-2008 has been worse than it was in the Great Depression. In fact, one glance at the fall world output, trade, and stock prices really puts the "green shoots" in perspective. The government policy response to the collapse, however, has been much more aggressive. Thus, we will soon collectively learn whether the economic historians are right that the original Great Depression was caused by "policy errors" after the collapse...or whether, as some suspect, there is simply no way to avoid catastrophe after a financial bubble the size of the one we...

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Never buy stocks. Never. Unless, of course, you love gambling (and losing) at the Wall Street casino. Or you don't mind making payments on your broker's BMW. Or you just joined a monastery and just took a vow of poverty. Otherwise, don't buy. Stocks are losers. At least that's the only rational investment strategy you'll come away with after reading economist and long-time Forbes columnist Gary Shilling's analysis of the miserable performance of stocks during Wall Street's recent bull/bear cycles, beginning with the election of President Reagan in the early 1980s. And it gets worse...

Scamalot: The Worst Con Jobs Are Yet To Come by Larry Edelson 03-12-09 I’m taking a different path in this issue. I’m going to discuss a few things that hardly anyone is warning you about. Yet, they’re so important, they simply cannot be overlooked. To do so would be foolhardy. /snip Most people think the era of scams in the markets and investments is over. Kaput. After all, from the tech bubble to Enron and WorldCom … from the real estate and mortgage train wreck, to Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme … we’ve seen every kind of scam possible, right?...

As stocks on Friday meandered to another month of losses, investors were especially focused on the S&P 500 Index and whether the broad market gauge would close above or below its November lows, with a finish above 740 to 750 seen as a victory of sorts After the worst January performance in its 113-year history, the Dow industrials were on track for a February decline of more than 900 points or 11.3%. As things stood with 30 minutes to go before the closing bell, the Dow was on track for its worst February point drop ever, and its second-worst percentage...

This is not the kind of stimulus our economy needs to get back on its feet when our banks still struggle with solvency. The new spending pathetically "repeats the mistakes that got us here," says Robert Albertson, a principal at Sandler O'Neill and a former Goldman Sachs. Only private businesses create job multiplication and true future spending power," says Albertson. "That requires a savings and investment program, not a doomed spending program. The latter tact ate up the resource base for six years during the 1930s Depression, with little or no effect on unemployment."

Intermission BY TIM W. WOOD Major stock averages have retested their 2002 lows, oil hits the 40 dollar mark and the dollar weakens. Does this now mean that it’s over? Has the bear market run its course? Is a new bull market on the horizon? Will oil go back to 140? Will the new administration fix everything? Will 2009 bring in more of the glory days? /snip Anyway, I don’t think the bear market is over or that a new bull market has begun and I can virtually assure you that the new administration cannot “fix” the mess we are...

When measured in ounces of Gold, the DOW has been in a secular bear market since peaking in late 1999. Back in 1999, it took 45 ounces of gold to buy the DJIA. Today it only takes 12.33 ounces of gold to buy the DOW! Cutting the Fed Funds target rate from 6.50% in January 2001 to 1.0% in June 2003 may have inflated the US stock market out of its bear market when priced in dollars but it had consequences that we are feeling today.

IT'S OFFICIAL: THE BEAR HAS ARRIVED. The Dow Jones Industrial Average last week qualified for the widely accepted definition of a bear market of a 20% drop from the highs. The good news is that once the decline reaches that arbitrary 20% mark, based on history, the market has suffered most of its losses. The bad news is that the decline typically drags on for some time, and time may be the worst enemy. Investors may initially try to grab erstwhile highfliers that have crashed and burned but rarely regain their former status. And as the decline wears down investors'...

Dow Jones becomes a bear market A bear market is commonly defined as one that is 20% below its peak The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed more than 20% below its October 2007 peak on Wednesday, meaning it is officially a bear market. The blue-chip index fell 166.8 points or 1.46% to 11,215.5, which is 21.0% below its 14,198.1 close on 11 October. The biggest drag on the index was General Motors, which fell below $10 a share for the first time since September 1954. The S&P 500 index closed just shy of 20% below its peak levels.

The top ten likely effects as the bear market bites Patrick Hosking: Business Commentary There is now no doubt about it. Even the cheeriest of optimists would have to acknowledge that we are in the grip of a pronounced bear market. The FTSE 100 has slumped by more than 500 points in the past month and from the peak of last October is down by 18 per cent. At one point yesterday it dived to 5,470, close to the nadir of the Bear Stearns panic in March, although it managed a half-hearted rally at the end of the day. One...

Eight months after they peaked, stocks dropped to the threshold of a bear market, another signal of the mounting challenges that lie ahead for the economy, government and investors. Friday's 106.91-point drop left the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 11346.51, down 19.9% from its October record, after it had fallen as low as 11297.99 during the day. At the day's low the Dow was down 20.2% from October. Investors typically consider a decline of 20% or more the mark of a bear market. ...Historically, the stock market bottoms before economic activity bottoms," says Paul Kasriel, an economist at Northern Trust...

Well, here we are nearly 10 days post-Bear Stearns, and the markets are still very tenuous. We have yet to break decisively above major resistance on the Dow Industrials or the S&P 500, according to my Super Chart Keylines. Granted, we have broken above what is called the near-term resistance, but the major resistance levels are still higher on both charts. We are, however, closer to resistance levels on the Dow than the S&P. We have to ask what the charts are telling us at this point in order to get some clearer sense of what to expect and do...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of homes entering into some stage of foreclosure is surging, according to a survey released Wednesday. In August, 115,292 properties entered into foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure sales. That was 24 percent above the level in July and 53 percent higher than a year earlier. Where foreclosures are jumping Year over year gain in homes in foreclosure. Click for more stats on each state. Nevada: Up 255% California: Up 160% Florida: Up 62% It was the second highest monthly foreclosure total of the year; in February, 117,151 properties entered foreclosure....