{"id":2283,"date":"2010-05-25T09:01:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T13:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2010-05-25T09:25:53","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T13:25:53","slug":"want-some-bad-news-check-out-europes-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=2283","title":{"rendered":"Want some bad news? Check out Europe&#8217;s misery."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Europe is not the United States of Europe. Financial woes there brought \u00a0European stocks down sharply today. \u00a0In a connected world, we&#8217;ll be hit too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Richard Rusell, the 85-year old stockmarket doyen writes yesterday:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">My job is to get my subscribers <strong>OUT<\/strong> of stocks in any way I can. I&#8217;ve used logic, technical analysis with explanations, threats, pleading, history, tears, arguments from authority (my authority), warnings about the treacherousness of the bear. What&#8217;s left? I guess more work on my part.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I showed subscribers the rare head-and-shoulders top-pattern in my PTI.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I showed you the bearish pattern in the point&amp;figure chart of the Dow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I showed you the bearish simultaneous breaking of the May 7 lows by Industrials and Transports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I included a chart of the fatal downward zig-zag in the advance-decline line.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I show on today&#8217;s site where <strong>50%<\/strong> of the stocks on the NYSE are now trading<strong> BELOW<\/strong> their 200-day moving averages.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I sent Russell&#8217;s newsletter to one of my last remaining money managers, who&#8217;s savvy enough to be net-short. He emailed me back this morning:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Yup.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">We&#8217;re in pretty good shape, Harry. We might make a few bucks today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Logic tells me there&#8217;s a growing risk of going back to 1987 levels -i.e.\u00a0below Dow 3,000. (We&#8217;ll break 10,000 going down today.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I don&#8217;t say this publicly. But it makes sense. We rode the back of debt accumulation on the way up, now it&#8217;s time to ride its unwinding on the way down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Think of all the excess government jobs and govt. spending. \u00a0It&#8217;ll take a long time to set that straight. And it will be painful: very high unemployment, social unrest, etc&#8230; Corporate earnings will take it on the chin. What would prevent such a decline is the government printing oodles of $$ to support the market, which they&#8217;ll probably do.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">This explains the rise in gold &#8212; the anti-paper currency.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">I&#8217;m off to exercise&#8230; will be back before the open.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This was yesterday&#8217;s &#8220;action.&#8221; The Dow was down 126. Much was red, except for gold and silver.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/IndexesandKeyStocks2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2286\" title=\"IndexesandKeyStocks2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/IndexesandKeyStocks2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"607\" height=\"625\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/IndexesandKeyStocks2.jpg 607w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/IndexesandKeyStocks2-291x300.jpg 291w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 607px) 100vw, 607px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Barron&#8217;s carries a story:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">FAMED BOND-FUND MANAGER Bill Gross isn&#8217;t shy about expressing himself when he&#8217;s got an opinion about the market. His actions may mean even more when investing his own money.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Even as the market reeled in recent weeks, Gross plowed about $7 million into three bond funds he manages at Pimco.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Gross, the co-chief investment officer of the bond giant, has bought a total of 1.1 million shares in three bond funds &#8212; the Pimco Corporate Opportunity Fund (PTY), the Pimco Income Strategy Fund (PFL), and the Pimco Income Strategy Fund II (PFN) &#8212; since the beginning of this month. Gross had not bought into any of the three closed-end funds since 2007.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">The Pimco Corporate Opportunity Fund invests in the lowest rated investment grade corporate bonds and highest-rated junk bonds. The Pimco Income Strategy Funds invest in floating or fixed-rate debt instruments. Bank debt makes up the largest portion of each of the funds&#8217; holdings. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Gross helps manage more than $1 trillion worth of assets at Pimco. In recent weeks, Gross has said that investors world-wide are liquidating holdings amidst the uncertainty caused by Europe&#8217;s debt problems. Last week, Pimco&#8217;s Total Return Fund, its most prominent fund, revealed that it had increased its holdings of US government debt to <strong>36% <\/strong>of the portfolio in April, its highest level since last November.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">Ben Silverman, the research director of InsiderScore.com, says investors should certainly take note of Gross&#8217; buys.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">&#8220;Anytime Gross is buying and disclosing what he&#8217;s buying, it&#8217;s certainly worth taking note of, especially if he&#8217;s buying when the markets are volatile,&#8221; he says. &#8220;He&#8217;s generally a more conservative investor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: left;\">On May 20, when Gross did much of his buying, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 376 points, or about 3.6%. The opportunity fund lost 2% that day, and the income funds lost about 3% each.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">These funds are high yielders:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BillGrossFunds.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2297\" title=\"BillGrossFunds\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BillGrossFunds.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"559\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BillGrossFunds.jpg 559w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BillGrossFunds-300x53.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 559px) 100vw, 559px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But they are also volatile. Check out the spread between the 1 year high and the 1 year low. This means you could lose in principal <strong>more <\/strong>than you make up in yield.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Here are a bunch of ultra-high yielders.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/UltraHighYielders3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2298\" title=\"UltraHighYielders3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/UltraHighYielders3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"629\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/UltraHighYielders3.jpg 629w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/UltraHighYielders3-300x79.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 629px) 100vw, 629px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">They are also volatile.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So, now I&#8217;ve read your introduction, Harry, what do I do?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Answers Harry: <strong>Stay heavily in cash until this blows over<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Some of the financials are clearly ripe for shorting. (&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you tell me that three weeks ago?&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Our Drug War sucks bigtime. <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The analysis is simple:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If drugs are illegal, but there is a huge and growing demand for them, someone will step in to supply the demand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">You must read William Finnegan&#8217;s long piece &#8220;<em>Silver or Lead &#8212; The drug cartel La Familia gives local officials a choice; Take a bribe or a bullet.<\/em>&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The piece is in the May 31 issue of the New Yorker. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If you have a fast broadband connection, you can read the entire piece now. But beware it&#8217;s nine megabytes. It&#8217;s a big file. Click <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/SilverorLead.pdf\">SilverorLead<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There is only one solution to the growing drug violence &#8212; legalize drugs. Tax them. Quality control them. And educate the masses that taking them is seriously bad for their health, their family and their careers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">My wife says I have no taste.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> I like this.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BucolicScene.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2282\" title=\"BucolicScene\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BucolicScene.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"317\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BucolicScene.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BucolicScene-300x148.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I also like Nescafe. My wife likes coffee. This painting is <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000; font-weight: normal;\">the work of an American called Len Tantillo. He paints in the tradition of the Dutch masters of the 17th century. But unlike his predecessors, Tantillo doesn&#8217;t paint what he sees. He reinvents places in the common history of New York State that none of us have ever seen. He isolates us in a moment past, and makes us accept his vision of these lost worlds as &#8220;restored reality.&#8221; This picture depicts a 1640&#8217;s Dutch farm on one of the creeks that lead into the Hudson River. It was about 5 miles south of Albany. You can buy a signed and numbered print for as little as $125. Here&#8217;s his <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lftantillo.com\/shop\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">website.<\/a> <\/strong>I also like this one. It&#8217;s called Creekside.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-weight: normal;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Creekside.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2292\" title=\"Creekside\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Creekside.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"437\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Creekside.jpg 550w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Creekside-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As a postscript, a story. A few years ago, \u00a0I was in Paris alone. I happened on an art &#8220;gallery&#8221; selling paintings of Paris. I fell in love with one. I paid $3,000 for an &#8220;original.&#8221; The painting has never received permission to be hung. It now resides behind a couch where it gathers not praise, but dust.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">The management efficiency expert.\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000; font-weight: normal;\">A lesson on how consultants can make a difference in an organization.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Last week, we took some friends to a new restaurant, &#8216;Steve&#8217;s Place,&#8217; and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I observed that he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets. When the waiter came back to serve our soup I inquired, &#8216;Why the spoon?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8216;Well, &#8216;he explained, &#8216;the restaurant&#8217;s owner hired Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) to revamp all of our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he replaced it with his spare. &#8216;I&#8217;ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.&#8217; I was impressed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter&#8217;s fly.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Looking around, I saw that all of the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So, before he walked off, I asked the waiter, &#8216;Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8216;Oh, certainly!&#8217; Then he lowered his voice. &#8216;Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also learned that we can save time in the restroom..<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">By tying this string to the tip of our you-know-what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I asked quietly, &#8216;After you get it out, how do you put it back?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8216;Well,&#8217; he whispered, &#8216;I don&#8217;t know about the others, but I use the spoon.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Favorite two New Yorker cartoons:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/WillItMakeMeHappy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2287\" title=\"WillItMakeMeHappy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/WillItMakeMeHappy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/WillItMakeMeHappy.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/WillItMakeMeHappy-300x244.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ShortTermStimulus.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2288\" title=\"ShortTermStimulus\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ShortTermStimulus.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ShortTermStimulus.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ShortTermStimulus-257x300.jpg 257w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/HarryNewton.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9\" title=\"HarryNewton\" src=\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/HarryNewton.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"95\" height=\"162\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Harry Newton, who spent far too long reading the brilliant New Yorker article.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Europe is not the United States of Europe. Financial woes there brought \u00a0European stocks down sharply today. \u00a0In a connected world, we&#8217;ll be hit too. Richard Rusell, the 85-year old stockmarket doyen writes yesterday: My job is to get my subscribers OUT of stocks in any way I can. I&#8217;ve used logic, technical analysis with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}