October 2013

Margin Debt: Another Bogeyman Slain

In 2009, they routinely trotted out charts of aggregate insider selling to show how corporate executives weren’t buying the relief rally and were getting out while the getting was good. Every day a new chart or blog post or newsletter written about the mass dumping of execs’ personal stock holdings. Fortunately, we learned that aggregate…

using spurious correlations to justify trades you just want to do anyway

via Eric Peters: Stupid Questions: “An African contact sent a chart of bush-gold vs gold prices,” said the CIO. And having long since overcome my fear of asking stupid questions, I asked what the hell bush-gold is. “Gold ore arriving in African mkts from the bush.” I asked why he cares? “When African’s really want gold,…

I know that we the New Slaves

Barry taught me an important lesson when I began getting invites to write stuff or do speaking engagements all over the country. He explained that if you agree to speak at an event or contribute content for free, make sure it’s because it’s some place that you really care to be seen. Otherwise, insist on…

519 Days: Kopin Tan on the State of the Rally

Kopin Tan is killing it week after week on the Barron’s Streetwise column he took over from the virtually irreplaceable Michael Santoli, who had been penning it from 2007 til 2012 when he jumped to Yahoo Finance. Tan’s really come into his own in recent weeks, I thought this weekend’s State of the Rally rundown…

This Week on TRB

Here were the most read posts on TRB this week, in case you missed them: The Infographic That Ate Wall Street “Sentiment is Frothy” Demented. Silly Little Bitches  The Never List  

Twitter’s Valuation vs Peer Group Stocks

To be clear, Twitter doesn’t actually have any peers – the closest one is probably Facebook but even that is problematic from many angles. But! It’s still worthwhile to get a sense of where Twitter’s IPO valuation will place it among the handful of social stocks that now exist. Here’s Bob Peck, SunTrust’s ace web…