Sunday, March 8, 2009

Weekend Linky Dinks

Well, we still haven't put together two plus day in a row since Feb 5th and 6th. Let's see if we can make it happen on Monday. Here are some links, the newsletter will be out this afternoon, and I hope you are having a great weekend.

Stocktwits gets some love from Brian Deagan at IBD.

Obama disses bloggers.

Steve Forbes on mark to market accounting. Great piece.

Will people invest again?

Are our leaders really clueless?


If Barney Frank wants to prosecute, should we start with him?

The credit downgrades have started and should continue.

Taking Cox's back.

Rethinking the American Dream.

Remember the DOW 36,000 guy?

Like everyone else, the G-20 didn't see any of this coming.

6 comments:

Troy Peterson said...

Hey upside, i take exception to your props for Forbes.

As an institutional bond investor, the reason to buy cds protection and sell banks was always because defaults and delinquencies were rising for a lot of companies.

Lehman, Bear, and many others were NOT disclosing their asset valuations on a market basis (for the most part). For almost any of the opaque structures the i-banks created, there were no market prices to report, so this is not what caused anyone to fail. quite the opposite, because guys like Bear Stearns/Lehman were not disclosing their books, the lack of confidence in their "model" valuations eventually triggered runs on the companies

Need proof? Recall John Paulson was complaining in mid 2007 about the fact that he owned CDS contracts on CDO's and assets that Bear Stearns held in certain funds that it managed. His CDS contracts were pricing in near-certain default, but Bear Stearns was reporting their funds asset value as relatively unchanged.

Oh, and the naked shorting of stocks? even if true, it is ridiculous to focus on that, when we are in a "credit crisis". Credit was collapsing in mid/late 2007, while equities were rallying to new highs. Naked stock shorting had nothing to do with anything from what i see. Now, naked-CDS buying (limitless shorting of company's creditworthiness, with negligible margin restrictions on the buyer) clearly is much more nefarious. A fund with $1Bln of capital could short more than $50Bln of Berkshire CDS (or more, depending on the price), even if they owned no bonds (no insurable interest). Forbes is either a hack, or too out of touch and deluded by visions of tax-cuts to know whats really going on.

Unknown said...

Hi upsidetrader

The link for 'How the oil industry is surviving $40 oil.' is wrong.

Anyway, excellent blogs, very intelligent, read them all the time.

Regards from Slovenia,
Ales

Sail Away said...

Good bunch of articles, although you need to fix the link on the oil industry article at the bottom.

upsidetrader said...

HEY Troy,

hey, thanks for the comment-i was just posting the Forbes thought process as one point of view-i'm actually with you-he has become a broken record on M2m and it will probably go the way of his flat tax initiative-the short thing is just inane

joe

upsidetrader said...

sa
THX

upsidetrader said...

ZU

THX

About Me

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I am a former hedge fund manager, broker and capital markets dude who now trades for his own account. I love what I do. I will try to post some stocks and an occasional chart that looks attractive for entry.I will also try to point out the idiocy of conventional wisdom and the lack of value added by the mainstream financial media. These postings should not be viewed as recommendations.