Josh Stern

65 Comments

    • Obama Is Bad for the Economy - Barron's [view article]
      The current issue of Barron's includes a much better article on tax policy by Gene Epstein entitled "When Is a Tax Cut Really a Tax Hike? Usually" which points out that since all Federal expenditures must eventually be matched with revenues from somewhere or else devaluation of the currency, low tax advocates would do better to focus on controlling spending. Epstein says that Democrats and Republicans alike have failed to do that, but the graphs in the article showing the growth of spending as a percentage of GDP over time make it clear that percentage based Federal spending has generally declined under Democratic administrations (going back to the early 1960s) and generally risen under Republican administrations.
      s.wsj.net/public/resou...

       Aug 24 11:40 PM
    • Why Every Investor Needs To Have a China Investment Strategy [view article]
      We all know that when an entire index drops by more than 20%, there are often a lot of small fry that get anonymously crushed. Not surprisingly then, there are a whole bunch of Chinese micro-cap ADRs with low to zero debt and trailing or forward PEs (among those with analyst coverage) in the 3X-8X range. For example:

      CAGC CHCG CNOA CPHI CYXI FUQI GFRE LTUS QXM SORL SUTR XIN XING

      In the case of these companies, the question of when China will slow and by how much is somewhat moot since they are already selling at distressed prices.

       Aug 09 11:32 PM
    • Bond Expert: Monday Wrap [view article]
      Beyond the sanctuary aspect, the dollar is doing better than expected vs. the Euro because Trichet is humming a happy tune while he drives Europe over the cliff.
       Jul 14 11:08 PM
    • Is the Equities Party Over? [view article]

      Congratulations. It really takes some big balls to make a predictions based on a trendline where you show the data that was used to fit the trend and the reader can clearly see from your graph that the fitted slope is much lower than it would be without data from 1800-1850.

       Jun 26 10:18 AM
    • Why the E*Trade Shorts Have It Wrong [view article]
      The ETrade model of combining a fully web-enabled electronic bank and discount brokerage in one entity offers a lot money management time convenience and cost/interest savings. Highly recommended even to traders who place most of their transactions at another brokerage.
       Apr 26 04:22 PM
    • Morgan Stanley: What's Behind Mexico's Extraordinary Resilience? [view article]
      Nice column. Does your name have a middle initial that could distinguish it from Gary B. Smith and Gary D. Smith, who have both published a lot about equity related topics on the web?
       Apr 24 01:11 PM
    • CALM Longs Walking on Eggshells [view article]
      Here is an article on the factors driving egg costs: www.infozine.com/news/.../

      I believe the parent article makes a good negative point that in the long term one would expect egg production to rise to meet demand at some sort of average agricultural profit margin, but it misses several factors that have caused production to lag demand including export demand, changes in de facto chicken care standards, changes in the health view of eggs in the diet, and the general environment of rising food costs where eggs are still very competitive as a convenient protein source.
       Apr 21 10:16 AM
    • Signs That Foreclosures May Be Peaking [view article]
      I believe people have done research to see whether (negative) home equity levels or resets were more important to predicting defaults and foreclosures, and they all found that equity levels were much more important.
       Apr 09 06:01 PM
    • China's Agriculture Sector Is Ripe for Investment [view article]
      Just to follow up...the biggest valuation differences show up when one looks at price to sales ratios. Of course it all depends on what one expects for future profit margins, but I'm a lot more comfortable with P/S near 1 than P/S in the 6-9 range.
       Apr 08 02:45 PM
    • China's Agriculture Sector Is Ripe for Investment [view article]
      I agree with the theme, but I like the fundamentals of CAGC and HOGS better than the ones you mentioned. CAGC is current OTCBB, but working on moving to a major index.
       Apr 08 11:58 AM
    • 4 Microcaps Warren Buffett Would Love [view article]
      I was interested in ELSE based on your description and took a look at the numbers. Turns out that shareholder equity and tangible equity have trended *down* since 2004. There might be other bullish things about the company, but since your methodology was explicitly designed to find companies with good trailing performance, methinks the methods need some tweaking.

       Jan 29 12:41 PM
    • How Google Killed Web Subscriptions [view article]
      The thesis of this article - that Google search is the main problem for NY Times Select and other attepts to monetize the NYT's online presence - is in the right neighborhood, but at the wrong address. The problem for Times Select is that, in the context of all the information sources on the internet, that product isn't competitive at the price they want to charge for it. The Internet offers a very different competitive landscape than what the print edition faces. The costs to publish something internationally on the web are incidental, and on the web it is easy for readers and secondary sites to aggregate content from many different sources, picking the most interesting sources in each area of interest. Participating in 'searched for' news is definitely one part of that market, but it's a small part. In order to charge fees on the Internet, the NYT should consider offering less costly al a carte choices in just a few areas where they have a lot of expertise, being more realistic about the competitive value of those offerings. It would make more sense for them to produce greater quantity of content on the Internet - where publishing cost is much cheaper - and pick only the best of those items to use in their print edition.
       Sep 18 02:16 PM
    • Memo To Retail Investors: Smart Investing Is A Serious Business [view article]
      Professional behavioral scientists also take a dim view of descriptive theories based on anecdotal newspaper articles... Aug 17 10:12 AM
    • Gold's Value In the 21st Century: About As Real As the Myth of El Dorado [view article]
      Some people above mentioned the fact that gold was traditionally the investment of choice for common folks in India. One question that I don't know the answer to is whether that source of demand will increase or decrease as India emerges economically.

      I do agree with the author that gold is not safe as a hedge of last resort. Diversifying across all currencies and asset classes is the hedge of last resort because everything can't decline relative to everything else.       Aug 16 12:05 PM
    • The Existing Home Sales Report Beats Expectations [view article]
      Zillow.com does estimates of value for individual homes, and these estimates seem to have stabilized recently (up in some places, down in others). Aug 15 03:09 PM
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