http://www.hedgefolios.com/read Helping equity investors build and manage their own portfolios in bullish or bearish markets Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:15:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en "Too Big To Fail." We saw it with Countrywide Financial. We saw it with Bear Stearns. As the controversy expanded, there were more than a few smarties defending the need to save big financials because of the systemic danger their failure would inflict upon the world's intertwined ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/too-small-to-nt-fail Americans and their ass-kissing politicians are at it again.  Watching the Chairman sit in front of the Congressional committee today was about as painful as it can get.  I always wonder why politicians, especially Republicans, love to suck up to Ben and thank him for his fearless leadership and great ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/monetary-and-fiscal-failure For whatever reason, there was a significant amount of improvement on the technicals of many financial stocks - mostly small regional banks. Almost all the repair came on Friday and looks pretty odd to be honest. I saw no fundamental reasons why this occurred and yet, the breadth ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/technical-repair-on-financials Each day the mortgage crisis gets worse, a bigger problem is getting worse. Each day the CDO / credit crisis gets worse, a bigger problem is getting worse. At some point, we are going to have to be objective and evaluate the capital at the companies that provide financial guaranty insurance. ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/reinsurers-of-financial-guaranty-insurance Oil is a great lesson on the price of fear. Of course, supply and demand is the primary component of what traders pay for a barrel of oil and a declining dollar doesn't help, but when you look at the rest of the price - it's fear. It's ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/the-price-of-fear When it comes to foreign telecoms, I feel like I've been disconnected from reality.  These stocks have had tremendous returns over the past few years and my performance on their signals has been poor.   For the most part, the fundamentals are at a discount to US-based telecoms but I am ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/disconnected Latin American stocks are en fuego! ("on fire" for you gringos).  China's stock market gets a lot of attention but I am much more impressed by Latin America.  The Latin American 40 ETF (ILF) was in the low $30's when the US bull market started 5 years ago, today it ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/en-fuego Last week, there was massive and broad-based technical damage done to many interest rate sensitive stocks.  I saw a bunch of 5% to 10% declines in individual stocks while the associated ETFs had only minor moves.  This divergence is very troubling. I rarely comment on things like this unless a situation ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/sensitivity-2 Six months ago, I wrote about LEH, BSC, and GS Vaporizing Subprime and pushing the markets higher. In fact, if anything bailed out the markets from the three weeks of pain in February and March, it was the well-crafted earnings reports and comments from the investment banks. Hopefully, ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/fool-me-oncefool-me-twicekeep-on-fooling-me Pull up the WFC chart and you'll see a financial stock that is not in trouble. Despite all the hype that financials (primarily the banks) have gotten excessively oversold and are tremendous bargains - I just don't see it. I know it's important for the bulls to lift ... http://www.hedgefolios.com/read/financials-in-trouble