{"id":5036,"date":"2010-12-13T09:06:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T14:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2010-12-13T10:15:37","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T15:15:37","slug":"the-pleasure-and-uncertainty-of-a-rising-stockmarket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=5036","title":{"rendered":"The pleasure (and uncertainty) of a rising stockmarket."},"content":{"rendered":"

There is logic. Corporate earnings are rising. The higher the market rises, the more sideline money will pile in. Muni bonds have been bad mouthed. People are leaving them for the “safety” of the stockmarket. Institutions are piling in, to make their end-of-year performance look impressive.<\/p>\n

In short, keep riding it higher until the signals come that tell you to stop. Tight trailing stops will get you to cash at the right time.<\/p>\n

Weekend reading\/Viewing. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

+ The Economist<\/em> has its Technology Quarterly. No investment ideas. But neat reading. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

+ 60 Minutes<\/em> did a positive piece on Brazil. EWZ is the easiest way to play Brazil. It hasn’t gone anywhere this year, but still could.<\/p>\n

+ A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives <\/em>and basically overcharges every business which uses derivatives as a hedge against price increases. New York Times. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

+ Munis Have Tower to Climb.<\/em> There’s no real up-to-date financial information on them. Wall Street Journal. Heard on the Street.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Airfares are skyrocketing.<\/strong><\/span> Keys:<\/p>\n

1. Book early.
\n2. Try different days.
\n3. Try other airports.
\n4. Try connecting flights. (Yuch.)
\n5. Try booking to distant cities, then getting off the plane.
\n6. Use mileage.
\n7. Buy mileage.
\n8. Catch the train.
\n9. Drive.
\n10. Stay home. Use Skype Video or Apple Facetime to see your friends.<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs ups Apple.<\/strong><\/span> Shares of Apple (AAPL) are higher in pre-market trading as the company is reportedly resumed with a Conviction Buy (whatever that is) at Goldman. The firm reportedly has a $430 price target on company shares. This news from MidnightTrader<\/em>. Sign up for a free trial. Click here.<\/span><\/strong><\/a> I have no idea if they’re any good. I just “discovered” them this morning.<\/p>\n

I hate publishing depressing stuff.<\/strong><\/span> But this is worth reading.<\/p>\n

From WikiChina
\nBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
\nWhile secrets from WikiLeaks were splashed all over the American newspapers, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder: What if China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America? I suspect the cable would read like this:<\/p>\n

Washington Embassy, People\u2019s Republic of China, to Ministry of Foreign Affairs Beijing, TOP SECRET\/Subject: America today.<\/p>\n

Things are going well here for China. America remains a deeply politically polarized country, which is certainly helpful for our goal of overtaking the U.S. as the world\u2019s most powerful economy and nation. But we\u2019re particularly optimistic because the Americans are polarized over all the wrong things.<\/p>\n

There is a willful self-destructiveness in the air here as if America has all the time and money in the world for petty politics. They fight over things like \u2014 we are not making this up \u2014 how and where an airport security officer can touch them. They are fighting \u2014 we are happy to report \u2014 over the latest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. It seems as if the Republicans are so interested in weakening President Obama that they are going to scuttle a treaty that would have fostered closer U.S.-Russian cooperation on issues like Iran. And since anything that brings Russia and America closer could end up isolating us, we are grateful to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona for putting our interests ahead of America\u2019s and blocking Senate ratification of the treaty. The ambassador has invited Senator Kyl and his wife for dinner at Mr. Kao\u2019s Chinese restaurant to praise him for his steadfastness in protecting America\u2019s (read: our) interests.<\/p>\n

Americans just had what they call an \u201celection.\u201d Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could do it to him. This leaves us relieved. It means America will do nothing serious to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.<\/p>\n

The ambassador recently took what the Americans call a fast train \u2014 the Acela \u2014 from Washington to New York City. Our bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin would have made the trip in 90 minutes. His took three hours \u2014 and it was on time! Along the way the ambassador used his cellphone to call his embassy office, and in one hour he experienced 12 dropped calls \u2014 again, we are not making this up. We have a joke in the embassy: \u201cWhen someone calls you from China today it sounds like they are next door. And when someone calls you from next door in America, it sounds like they are calling from China!\u201d Those of us who worked in China\u2019s embassy in Zambia often note that Africa\u2019s cellphone service was better than America\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But the Americans are oblivious. They travel abroad so rarely that they don\u2019t see how far they are falling behind. Which is why we at the embassy find it funny that Americans are now fighting over how \u201cexceptional\u201d they are. Once again, we are not making this up. On the front page of The Washington Post on Monday there was an article noting that Republicans Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are denouncing Obama for denying \u201cAmerican exceptionalism.\u201d The Americans have replaced working to be exceptional with talking about how exceptional they still are. They don\u2019t seem to understand that you can\u2019t declare yourself \u201cexceptional,\u201d only others can bestow that adjective upon you.<\/p>\n

In foreign policy, we see no chance of Obama extricating U.S. forces from Afghanistan. He knows the Republicans will call him a wimp if he does, so America will keep hemorrhaging $190 million a day there. Therefore, America will lack the military means to challenge us anywhere else, particularly on North Korea, where our lunatic friends continue to yank America\u2019s chain every six months so that the Americans have to come and beg us to calm things down. By the time the Americans do get out of Afghanistan, the Afghans will surely hate them so much that China\u2019s mining companies already operating there should be able to buy up the rest of Afghanistan\u2019s rare minerals.<\/p>\n

Most of the Republicans just elected to Congress do not believe what their scientists tell them about man-made climate change. America\u2019s politicians are mostly lawyers \u2014 not engineers or scientists like ours \u2014 so they\u2019ll just say crazy things about science and nobody calls them on it. It\u2019s good. It means they will not support any bill to spur clean energy innovation, which is central to our next five-year plan. And this ensures that our efforts to dominate the wind, solar, nuclear and electric car industries will not be challenged by America.<\/p>\n

Finally, record numbers of U.S. high school students are now studying Chinese, which should guarantee us a steady supply of cheap labor that speaks our language here, as we use our $2.3 trillion in reserves to quietly buy up U.S. factories. In sum, things are going well for China in America.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness the Americans can\u2019t read our diplomatic cables.<\/p>\n

Learning about sex.
\n<\/span> <\/strong>When Jane initially met Tarzan in the jungle, she was attracted to him, and during her questions about his life, she asked him how he had sex?<\/p>\n

‘Tarzan not know sex’ he replied.<\/p>\n

Jane explained to him what sex was.<\/p>\n

Tarzan said,’Tarzan use knot hole in trunk of tree.’<\/p>\n

Horrified Jane said, ‘Tarzan you have it all wrong, but I will show you how to do it properly.’<\/p>\n

She took off her clothing and laid down on the ground.<\/p>\n

‘Here’ she said, pointing to her privates, ‘you must put it in here.’<\/p>\n

Tarzan removed his loin cloth, showing Jane his considerable manhood, stepped closer to her and kicked her in the crotch!<\/p>\n

Jane rolled around in agony for what seemed like an eternity.<\/p>\n

Eventually she managed to grasp for air and screamed ‘What did you do that for?’<\/p>\n

Tarzan replied, ‘Check for squirrel.’<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/div>\n

Harry Newton, who is pleased that the clock at the top has begun to work —\u00a0 but not because he did anything to fix it.\u00a0 Newton gets pleasure from tiny things, like the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is logic. Corporate earnings are rising. The higher the market rises, the more sideline money will pile in. Muni bonds have been bad mouthed. People are leaving them for the “safety” of the stockmarket. Institutions are piling in, to make their end-of-year performance look impressive. In short, keep riding it higher until the signals […]<\/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-5036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036","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=5036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}