A year ago at this time we wrote a blog post entitled "Taking stock of 2008." It is worth revisiting because the issues we discussed then are still swirling around as pundits from all directions take stock of 2009.We believe that the events of 2009 have borne out the interpretation we offered back in 2008. Back then we said that the "spectacular implosion...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Issues raised by the indictment of Raj Rajaratnam
Today the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "The Man Who Wired Silicon Valley" full of colorful details from the career of former tech analyst and hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who has been accused and indicted by the SEC for profiting in the markets from insider information.The Journal article's accompanying interactive graphic calls...
Monday, December 28, 2009
Some lessons from 2009
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article which brings up a few important points we've made at length and which are worth revisiting as investors consider the lessons of 2009.The Times article notes that many investors underperform available investment vehicles. We have discussed this phenomenon previously, linking it to the situation...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
We get by in spite
Over a year ago, we published one of our quarterly commentaries on the investment climate (dated October, 2008) in which we began with one of Richard C. Taylor's favorite phrases: "We get by in spite."In that commentary, we explained that to Dick Taylor, "We get by in spite" was a kind of short-hand expression which meant that "in spite of the lunacy...
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Unstoppable Wave: Revisited
Mary Meeker and the rest of her tech research team at Morgan Stanley* recently released a trio of research documents entitled the Mobile Internet Report.They can be downloaded at the Morgan Stanley link above, and also read online in their entirety at ReadWriteWeb.Meeker and her team are one of the first major Wall Street firms to delve into the enormous...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The 97-pound weakling
Who isn't familiar with the iconic and long-running ad campaigns for the bodybuilding techniques of Charles Atlas, featuring the "97-pound weakling" being bullied on the beach?Becoming "fed up" with having sand kicked in his face, the former bag of bones bulks up and returns to the beach to put down the bully, restore order to the beach, and earn...
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
What Rube Goldberg could teach us about economics
Rube Goldberg was a San Francisco-born American cartoonist and the genius behind a long-standing series of cartoons illustrating impractical humorous and endlessly-enjoyable contraptions. His name, in fact, became synonymous with "a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation." Some of his inventions...
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The best defense is a good offense!
Recently, independent investment research firm BCA Research published a weekly bulletin (available by subscription only) with the subject of "Wealth Preservation."In it, author Chen Zhao noted that he has found from his conversations with ultra-wealthy investors and their advisors that they are often "natural bears.""As one gentleman put it," the...
Monday, November 30, 2009
Would you sell your successful local restaurant because of a debt hiccup in Dubai?
The Wall Street Journal reports that "the Dow dropped sharply Friday after Dubai World asked creditors for a six-month stay on repayment of $60 billion in debts" and that "Stocks were lower around midday Monday [today] as mixed Black Friday sales results sparked concerns about consumer spending and unease about Dubai World's debt headaches lingered."To...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving 2009
We'd like to wish all our readers a warm and happy Thanksgiving.As we gather with family and give thanks for our blessings, we are mindful that for many around the world, conditions are still as dire as they were for those first ragged settlers who clung to existence after crossing the Atlantic to the New World in the 1620s.What made such a difference...
Friday, November 20, 2009
What about commodities? (part 3)
We've written at least two times previously on the topic of commodities (see here and here). When commodities such as gold and other metals begin to skyrocket, gold advertisements begin to flood the radio stations and financial television shows, and investors inevitably begin to ask themselves, "What about commodities?"Investors are understandably...
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Dismal Science
We recently attended a business conference where we heard an economist making extensive predictions about where the economy was headed. Our concern immediately turned to the many attendees who left the conference with a conviction that this particular view of the future was accurate (after all, they just heard it from an economist). The problem...
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall
The night of November 9, 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall at the hands of the people it had isolated for twenty-eight years. In the famous speech (available here) that former US President Ronald Reagan gave at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, he correctly declared that the Wall represented "the question of freedom for all mankind." Its downfall...
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Voting With Their Wallets!
While much attention has been focused on the election results in Virginia and New Jersey last night, perhaps the bigger story is the election results announced in Michigan yesterday where Ford Motor Company announced a profit of almost $1 billion.* Ford, the lone of the Big Three Automakers to not accept government bailout money, is demonstrating...
Friday, October 30, 2009
Special report on variable annuities
We recently published a Taylor Frigon Special Report entitled "The Anatomy of a Modern Variable Annuity (in plain English)" in the Our Views of our website.
In it, we summarize some information about variable annuities and our opinions about these products.
Taylor Frigon Capital Management is a fee-only Registered Investment...
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The moral case for free markets
Today's robust GDP number may have surprised the majority of economists, but it did not surprise us here at Taylor Frigon and it did not surprise economist Brian Wesbury, who was predicting a strong rebound before almost anyone else.Today, he posted a new installation of his "Wesbury 101" video series, entitled "The Conservatives' Big Mistake." We...
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Remember all the hype about "toxic assets"?
Recently, concerns have arisen over the prospect that the government may force banks that received TARP money to raise capital in order to pay their way out.Doing so would cause the banks to have to issue more shares of common stock, thus diluting the value of the shares currently outstanding, a prospect which yesterday prompted a sharp sell-off in...
Monday, October 19, 2009
"The Consumer"
Investors who spend much time reading financial predictions or watching the financial media can't help but hear about the powerful entity known as "The Consumer."
This amazing being figures so prominently in conventional economic analysis because many analysts attribute superhuman powers to The Consumer. In their view, The Consumer...
