{"id":657,"date":"2010-02-19T08:59:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T13:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2016-01-11T01:50:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T06:50:21","slug":"going-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=657","title":{"rendered":"Going positive"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s it for me. I’m going positive. I now believe equity markets will do well in 2010 and that I should have more money in equities. There are five signs:<\/p>\n

1. There is huge money on the sidelines. It will go into the stockmarket, especially U.S. markets. There is no other choice.<\/p>\n

2. Companies are reporting better earnings — much from the savings of all the people they fired.<\/p>\n

3. The Fed is tightening.<\/p>\n

4. I feel positive. We’re over the worst — though the banks got lots of awful real estate loan problems.<\/p>\n

5. This chart:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It popped into my inbox yesterday. The headline was Here’s The ‘V’ That Impaled The Shorts, And It’s Growing.<\/em><\/strong> And the words were:<\/p>\n

This was today’s most important data point to pay attention to — the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI).<\/p>\n

It rose 0.3% in January, after rising 1.2% and 1.1% in December and November respectively. This is shown by the red line below.<\/p>\n

The LEI has been rising for ten straight months, and had a critical inflection point right before the gigantic market rally of 2009. It also correctly began to dip before the U.S. entered recession in December 2007. Simply put, you made a lot of money listening to it recently, and historically it’s one of the few reliable forward indicators that exist.<\/p>\n

While today’s January release was slightly weaker than the 0.5% rise expected by many analysts, it nonetheless continued the LEI’s important uptrend. We also shouldn’t forget that the LEI is currently higher than at any time in many years — which means that we can count on growth to hold up at least through the first half of 2010 just based on where the economy is now.<\/p>\n

Economist Ken Goldstein @ The Conference Board: \u201cThe cumulative change in the U.S. LEI over the past six months has been a strong 9.8 percent, annualized. This signals continued economic recovery at least through the spring.”<\/p>\n

It’s even so high right now that the index could drop a bit in the future, which seems inevitable given the spike, but still augur future economic growth. Anyone short ignores this ‘V’ at their peril.<\/p>\n

You can receive their daily chart. Click here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What will I buy? I’m eyeing some tech stocks that are out of favor, like Google, Research in Motion and Qualcomm. \u00a0I’m eyeing some of the mainstream miners, like BHP and Rio Tinto. And I’m eyeing some of the ETFs that mirror the market — like IJJ, IJK and IWF. And I’m looking at strong overseas countries — like Canada, Australia (EWA), Brazil (EWZ) and Chile (ECH). Today might be a good day to buy. Futures look awful. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Spec of the month — Virnetx (VHC).<\/span><\/strong> The company makes patents in software security. \u00a0While I’ve been trying to figure out Virnetx’s technology in the last couple of days, the stock has been on a tear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One newsletter wrote, “. I feel that VHC’s licensing program can be described as having a potential of many billions of dollars.”<\/p>\n

The company itself \u00a0says VirnetX Holding Corporation is engaged in commercializing its patent portfolio by developing a licensing program, as well as developing software products designed to create a secure environment for real-time communications such as instant messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol. The Company’s patent portfolio includes over 48 U.S. and international patents and pending applications that pertain to LTE\/4G security specifications and provide the foundation for the Company’s unique GABRIEL Connection Technology.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty on Yahoo finance, though most of its seems to be press releases from the company.<\/p>\n

About this web site. “Your web site is about investing. Why do you include French \u00a0shoes, and other irrelevancies? Why do you keep quoting other people? <\/em>” I got these questions several times this week. I’ll explain: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

1. It’s not possible to find great investments every day. It takes eons to do the research. Cash is a good place to be in volatile markets. The richest young real estate entrepreneur I know didn’t buy anything for three years. He stayed in cash. He waited. He just bought the most incredible commercial property bargain I’ve ever seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. I quote other people because I dig what they said. They taught me something. Sometimes they do make stock recommendations — like the Hickey ones from yesterday. Sometimes, they’re just straight out commentary on the insane world of finance (or of the last few years). It’s useful to understand what went on, so you don’t repeat the same dumb mistakes. Like assuming asset values will keep rising at 30% a year ad infinitum or borrowing and borrowing and more borrowing. <\/span><\/p>\n

3. Life is not only about investing. It’s also about happiness. Like this family. From National Geographic:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Update: January 11, 2016. I removed this image at the request of the photographer, Stephanie Sinclair.<\/p>\n

You can find the photo on National Geographic’s<\/em> web site\u00a0 here. <\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n

The man at the center of the photo is an American. He’s a polygamist. He’s 88. He has five wives, 46 children, and 239 grandchildren. “I’ve had a blessed life,” he says. “I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.”<\/p>\n

Life is also about finding \u00a0fun things. Like this ugly shirt I found in the Hermes store in Paris.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It costs 1480 euros — about $2,001.26 at today’s Euro price (courtesy Bloomberg).<\/span><\/p>\n

It also about going to great Paris museums and discovering these bat teeth in the\u00a0mus\u00e9e<\/a><\/em> du <\/a>quai Branly<\/a>. <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

A hundred years ago, the natives of Papua and New Guinea used these bat teeth as money. Now they use the worthless fiat money we all use. Isn’t “progress” fun?<\/span><\/p>\n

Life is also about great jokes.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A Jewish congregation in suburban Boston honors its Rabbi for 25 years of service by sending him to Hawaii for a week, all expenses paid.<\/p>\n

When he walks into his hotel room, he finds a beautiful nude woman lying on the bed.<\/p>\n

She greets the Rabbi with, “Hi, Rabbi, I’m a little something extra that the President of the Temple arranged for you.<\/p>\n

The Rabbi is incensed. He picks up the phone, calls the President of the Temple and shouts, “Greenblatt, what were you thinking?<\/p>\n

Where is your respect? I am the moral leader of our religious community! I am very angry with you and you have not heard the end of this.”<\/p>\n

Hearing this, the naked woman gets up and starts to get dressed.<\/p>\n

The Rabbi turns to her and asks, “Where are you going? I’m not angry with you.”<\/p>\n

Seniors in love. I suspect we’ll be here soon.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

An elderly couple were invited to an old friends home for dinner one evening.She was impressed by the way her lady friend preceded every request to her husband with endearing terms such as: Honey, My Love, Darling, Sweetheart, Pumpkin, etc. The couple had been married for nearly seventy years and, clearly, they were still very much in love.<\/p>\n

While the husband was in the living room, her lady friend leaned over to her host to say, ‘I think it’s wonderful that, after all these years, you still call your husband all those loving pet names’.<\/p>\n

The elderly lady hung her head. ‘I have to tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘His name slipped my mind about 10 years ago, and I’m scared to death to ask the cranky old asshole what his name is.’<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Harry Newton, who’s going bullish on markets for 2010 — reversing his previous bearish position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s it for me. I’m going positive. I now believe equity markets will do well in 2010 and that I should have more money in equities. There are five signs: 1. There is huge money on the sidelines. It will go into the stockmarket, especially U.S. markets. There is no other choice. 2. Companies are […]<\/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-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","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=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}