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Posted by Martin February 14, 2014
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Peter Schiff: “I think we’re in a depression”; Roberts, Admati and Whalen talk banking


 
Comcast is gobbling up its main competitor Time Warner Cable. The $45-billion-dollar deal gives Comcast the potential to completely reinvent the media landscape. By wiping out its major rival, Comcast would have 33 million cable subscribers, and just as many broadband users, giving it huge leeway in setting market prices, negotiating licensing fees, and deciding what shows you can watch. Erin Ade reports.

Afterwards, Peter Schiff is back on at Boom Bust. It’s no secret that investor and financial commentator Peter Schiff thinks the US Dollar is going to fall off a cliff and that he also thinks interest rates are going to skyrocket. But what does he make of the latest US economic figures? And what is his view on the outlook for the economy and investing? Schiff explains to Boom Bust’s Erin Ade.

Then, we give you a few of the best clips from this past week’s interviews, all of which concern banks. First is Paul Craig Roberts on bank bailouts, administered via quantitative easing. Then, Anat Admati gives a fresh take on the health of banks. And Chris Whalen finishes on how executives at large US banks have avoided accountability for the financial crisis.

Wrapping up with “In the Margins”, Erin Ade and Edward Harrison look at viewer feedback, answering questions from you, our viewers. We thank you for your comments and questions.
 
Boom Bust
 
 




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Last week markets performance – should we be worried?


SPY

 
Last week in Wall Street was somewhat stable and without any excessive hiccups. Yet it still was driven by fools. The recovery from the recent correction, if we can call it a correction, has been steady. As you can see in the chart above, we experienced a strong V shaped recovery.

A week ago, investors were selling stocks sharply and buying government bonds (as if they were supposed to save them) and this week they were selling bonds and buying stocks as they (probably) realized how foolish they were.

As Eric Jackson said in his interview for Breakout that what we just have experienced, was a great evidence of unreasonable irrationality of investors out there frantically selling one sort of assets and buying another sort of assets right after the storm and not prior to it. Dividend investors and value investors know this and they stay calm. They do not sell whenever a market shows a sign of weakness. On the contrary, many start buying.

It is a reason, why so many investors lose money at Wall Street rather than make them.

I must admit that in the past I acted the same way. Whenever a market coughed I started selling hoping to buy later at a lower price. Jesse Livermore, a legendary trader of the late 19th and early 20th century called such investors “suckers” and he happily deprived them from their money in bucket shops (small trading street brokers).

Other than that, markets were calmed down by Janet Yellen’s claim that she would continue in tapering of the QE. I think nobody believes it anymore; except talking heads. But will she really do it? Some commentators out there fail to acknowledge that she added a few conditions to tapering – positive data. Will we have positive data such as employment, GDP, etc.?

If you are a common citizen who live off his hard work, you know, how hard it is to make your living. If you are a politician, banker, an employee of a large brokerage as a trader, or a Hollywood star, you are probably out of touch of reality and do not understand, that we are far from recovery.

The markets are propped by QE and cheap money and not the real strong and sustainable economic data. And if QE ends, the rally dies with it. Should we be worried that something bigger is waiting just right behind the corner?

Once, I have heard that economic crisis come and go in cycles. We have circa 7 years of prosperity followed by 7 years of crisis, and so on. Where are we though? In which cycle?

The goal of every investor should be to make money, but also to protect them. Protect his gains and his principal. As a dividend investor my principal is not as important as my gains – dividends.

Make sure they are safe and you will prosper.

And what about my options? During falling markets, selling puts can be a bit of frustrating (worst case scenario, you will be assigned your long wanted dividend stocks). Lowering your strike price deeper out of the money can help you significantly in mitigating that frustration.

My accounts did very well last week and jumped up in value, check my charts on My Holdings page.

I have received nice dividends this week ($150.00 in all combined accounts) and next week we will be heading towards expiration Friday when two of my option contracts will expire worthless (unless a catastrophe happens). With that, I will be able to claim another $142.42 income from collected premium.

My all combined accounts are up by +7.41%

What about you? How do you protect your gains so you do not give them up when markets slump?
 
 




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Posted by Martin February 13, 2014
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Yellen’s plan for boosting the weak jobs market is no plan again


 
Our impotent government along with FED has been feeding us with fake job data since 2008. Everybody knows it, but nobody does anything about it.

Where are all those “shovel ready jobs” Obama was feeding the nation during 2012 election? Did he mean shovel ready hamburger flipping at McDonalds?

Our nation is suffering from goofed up recovery. We will pay a dire price for “too big to fail” theory and a fatal Keynesian misunderstanding of economy and beliefs that spending and increasing debt would improve our economy. Since when taking more debt to pay the old debt did ever help you or your family? What, then, makes our politicians to believe it will help the country?

It is a great example showing that our country is led by dilettantes who have never held a job, created a job, or run a company.

As Peter Schiff says, “we didn’t undergo a real recovery, but only postponed the catastrophe”. We just kicked the can further down the street, took away a future from our kids and spent it today on something what will fail anyway. Well, not you or me, but our politicians.

If you think otherwise, then why the job participation is slumping? Why job creation is worse than mediocre? Why we have a hidden inflation (just compare prices of a gallon of milk now versus 3 years ago)? Or why housing prices are drifting lower or stagnating?

In the video above, Jim Rickards is right pointing out, that our job market has different problems and that Janet Yellen is again, like her predecessor, going to use a wrong cure.
 




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Posted by Martin February 13, 2014
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Caution ahead: Market bounce is breeding overconfidence


Today, I found an interesting video. It is not interesting because of the announced overconfidence on the markets that all the dividend growth and value investors probably know of, but there was one very interesting point about market participants’ behavior, which sparked my attention.

Many times, I was stunned by how irrational investors can be and how stupidly they can act when trading and investing in the markets.

If you ever wondered why sometimes markets react so wildly, Eric Jackson in this video explains it clearly. As he mentioned, last week investors were moving from the stock market into bonds, just to move back from bonds into stocks this week.

Such moves must be extremely expensive! Aren’t they? No wonder that investors usually lose money or are unable to beat S&P 500 index over time and their performance is mediocre.

So, the task is to act as a contrarian. Sometimes, you need to stomach those scary looking moves investors perform out there and stay calm, wait for them to stop overreacting, and then start buying your stocks.

I try doing it that way. When I see panic spreading around, I do not buy right away. I usually wait a few days. If you have time watching markets during the panic period, you will be able to notice and feel when the panic starts slowing down. Some other tools such as VIX index, or Greed & Fear index will help you to gauge the intensity of the fear and when it is slowing down. Then, I use my contingency orders to trail my stocks of interest down and buy at a major reversal from the bottom.

What about you? Do you watch market closely during panics out there to get best price and best value for your buck when buying stocks on sale or you do not care? Share with us your strategy.




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Posted by Martin February 11, 2014
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Paul Craig Roberts on the US economy and paper versus physical gold


In today’s headline story, all eyes were fixed on Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who delivered her first public remarks to the US House Financial-Services Committee. In addition, in a lawsuit filed on Monday, the non-profit group Better Markets has challenged the constitutionality of the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase mortgage settlement with the US Justice Department. And in Washington, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives agreed to advance legislation, raising Washington’s borrowing authority without conditions. Erin Ade reports.

Then, Erin conducts a wide-ranging interview with economist Paul Craig Roberts, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and a co-founder of Reaganomics. He has voiced his concerns about the strength of the US economy, US politics, and US civil liberties. Roberts also believes the US is playing fast and loose with the monetary system and the value of the dollar. He speculates that, as the German Bundesbank has begun repatriating its gold from overseas out of storage in places like the Federal Reserve, the Fed will not be able to make delivery because it doesn’t physically possess the gold. Similarly, Roberts does not believe Gold ETF funds have enough physical gold to back their exchange traded fund shares.

Wrapping up our money theme, in today’s “Big Deal”, Erin and Boom Bust producer Edward Harrison discuss the outlawing of Bitcoin wallet apps on iOS, Apple’s mobile platform, and the rise of ePayments in the mobile world.

BoomBust




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New Trade – Digital Dollars motif at Motif Investing


Today I bought another motif of my interest at Motif Investing – Digital Dollars.

This Motif was created by Motif Investing. Why I bought it? The reason is the exact same why I recently bought MasterCard to my ROTH IRA account.

We can see more and more people using different ways paying for their bills and shopping. We are now using plastic or online transactions more than cash. There are companies which will benefit from this transition as we already could see in previous years. The non-cash transactions reached $333 billion in 2012 and it is growing by 8% in average annually.

I believe, this is a growth industry as more online payment processing will become significant in other countries than the US itself.

If you like companies like Visa, MasterCard, Amex, or payment processor because of the way they make money, buying this motif is right for you. For a little cash you can own a fraction of those companies now and slowly build your portfolio all the way up and benefit from the growth of that industry right away. You do not have to wait for saving enough cash to buy just one company from this portfolio. You can buy them all with your first investment and add to it next time.

What is my next plan then?

There are two more motifs I am interested in so far (it may change). One is a 3D printing motif which contains companies involved in 3D printing industry. Although 3D printing was developed in 1980, the latest industry is gaining steam as more adjacent industries such as aerospace & defense, automotive, education, or healthcare start seeing a great potential of cheaper manufacturing.

The second motif I am interested in is a collection of MLPs offering 7% + dividend yield.

At this point I am saving another cash amount to purchase the 3D printing motif and the MLPs motif. Once these two motifs will be purchased, I will start investing equally into all motifs I have and rotate my investments.

I will be buying:

 

 

What about you? Do you think it is a better idea to buy a whole bunch of stocks with one purchase and accumulate a bulk portfolio or would you rather stick to saving cash for each individual stock and build your portfolio slowly one stock at a time?

If you think investing into ideas via Motif Investing, support this blog by opening a new account via this Motif Investinglink. Thanks a lot!
 
 




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Posted by Martin February 09, 2014
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Milton Friedman – Lesson of the Pencil


I wish that many of the leftists watch this video, as today, so many are forgetting the principles of free market and think that any form of socialism, central control, or regulations is better.

Well, it is not.

 
 




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Posted by Martin February 08, 2014
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The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind – Hidden Secrets of Money





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Posted by Martin February 06, 2014
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New trade – MasterCard (MA) buy long stock – building my ROTH

New trade – MasterCard (MA) buy long stock – building my ROTH

Today I bought 16 shares of MasterCard (MA) stock. It was a long wanted trade, but I never did it. At first I bought Visa (V) a few days after IPO for $45 a share and a few months later I sold it for $55 a share.

 
(MORE: January Recap – Compounding Income)
 

I was a chicken. I didn’t understand Visa nor MasterCard and I sold. Now Visa is trading for circa $200 a share. Since my sell, I have been kicking my butt for selling.

MasterCard was selling for $840 a share and that was a bit discouraging. In January the company split the stock 10:1 and $84 a share was “affordable” for me. When the correction in Wall Street started, the stock dropped to $74 a share and even a bit lower. That was something which caught my attention.

 
(MORE: How To Establish A Circle of Wealth – Brick by Brick Investing)
 

MasterCard is not a dividend company I would normally buy. It’s yield is puny (only 0.60%), it’s dividend growth is 29%, but they only have 1 year dividend history.

So why I bought it?

It is the unique business model MasterCard and Visa use to make money. Many people fail to understand this model. The greatest example of that failure is when you saw credit card companies and banks falling during the credit crisis, or credit fees caps, Visa and MasterCard were falling too. But none of them are exposed to borrowers, none of them risk a loss of money unlike lenders. MasterCard and Visa make money on fees whenever you swipe your plastic, be it debit or credit card. That’s it. They do not lend money, they do not deal with delinquencies, nothing like that.

 
(MORE: The Elephant In My Portfolio – Retire before dad)
 

They are just a money processing gateway and they get always paid for it.

This makes them so unique and money cows which made me to correct my previous mistake and buy it. Both are loaded with cash and both have no or little debt.

What else you want?

 
(MORE: Is Anyone Really Surprised by The Recent Stock Market Sell Off?! – The Fast Weekly)
 

I believe, MasterCard will grow back to hundreds level again. I can’t say when that happen, but it will happen. And I want to ride that wave.

To buy MasterCard I used my contingency or conditional trigger order trade. Below see the list of the triggers I maintained for this stock. At the beginning I could buy only 15 shares of this stock, but over time as MA was falling, my buy order was trailing the price and I could buy 16 shares cheaper:

 

02/04/2014 20:02:24 If the last of MA is greater or equal to 75.94
Buy 15 MA at limit $75.94


02/05/2014 20:34:52 If the last of MA is greater or equal to 74.63
Buy 15 MA at limit $74.63


02/05/2014 22:20:39 If the last of MA is greater or equal to 74.27
Buy 15 MA at limit $74.27


02/06/2014 10:44:30 If the last of MA is greater or equal to 74.27
Buy 16 MA at limit $74.27

The last order was fired and executed.

 
(MORE: Value Investors Are Now Buying Apple – Dennismccain)
 

Of course I could buy cheaper if I bought yesterday when the price dropped to 72-ish level, but when using conditional order, you want to set up a bit higher price to give the stock a wiggling space. In that case you make sure you won’t get executed and the stock continues lower and making you a losing position. With higher strike price, there is a better chance that the stock reversal is not a fake and that the stock will continue up.

 
(MORE: January 2014 Net Worth Update – FI Fighter)
 

Of course, it is not bullet proof strategy, but it can save you a few buck by buying cheaper.

And of course, I released cash for this trade by selling my RWX commission free savings as you can read about here. At first I had a dilemma which stock to buy, you can read about it here, but then I made a choice to go with MA this time. My next purchase will be a high yield dividend stock.
 
 




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Posted by Martin February 03, 2014
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Minimum wage? Yes? Then watch this!


 




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