Friday, February 21, 2014
Careful Out There! Sharks are in the water......
If you are a Bonehead Investor you know my motto - Day Trading is great for the day... But trying to time the market with computers doing the work now, you will get killed. This goes back to my picks for 2104. I am hell bent on VNQ and EDF to protect my money in this kind of a rocky market. (VNQ & EDV). I pick these two positions to protect in the event of a market pull back and more important a Federal Reserve surprise. If we look at the data on housing today and the true unemployment number you can quickly see why I have protected my money in these investments. Housing Market - February Housing. Unemployment - Unemployment.
Don't get caught up in the noise of the talking heads and your broker. Defend your money yourself with good education and an understanding of the market. Be a Bonehead investor and win!
Monday, February 17, 2014
The Bonehead is BACK!
| 1-Year | 3-Year | 5-Year |
| 36.47% | 28.35% | 26.14% |
Sunday, November 7, 2010
A $900 Billion Shit Sandwhich for the United States Taxpayers...
As I sit outside in lovely Atlanta I have a cold streak running down my spine. Our Federal Reserve has decided and not unanimously to bail out our economy once again with a repurchase of $900 billion of treasuries. Wow, ain't that nice. So who will benefit from this move?It is pretty easy to see that this is just yet another shame move by our government to bail out the "to big to fail" banks. Let's start with the easy banks who will benefit first, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Clearly B of A is the leader of the pact with a disastrous balance sheet that really should be called a comic book. B of A has good will write offs of well over $2.8 billion dollars and a stock falling faster than a speeding rocket. B of A is screaming "help again" to the Fed's....And the Fed's have heard the screams for help...Welcome QE2
With the approval of QE2 we now have a stock market on fire (thanks to computer trades) and a dollar sinking like the Titanic. Let's not forget that we are also pissing of the Chinese and Brazil with QE2. More excitment to help with this coming US economic disaster. We have taken the first step on the slippery slope and the next step looks like the creation of an avalanche. The US consumer is tapped out, unemployment is well of 20% and job creation in the US is non existent. So how does this story of QE2 play out?
We will see a bounce in the markets through the end of 2010 on computer trades and institutional trades. We will continue to see dismal dollar investing into 401k's by those that do have jobs due to fear of the markets and not being able to pay rent or mortgage. We will bypass inflation and head straight to deflation and then and only then will the Fed's state they are "out of bullets" and we do what should have been done long ago, let the capital markets work out events on their own....
I am out of the market now going majority cash and some gold. Other than that the rest of this market looks like the making of a huge shit sandwich that we the US tax payers will have to bail out...Good luck...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Where you been? They ask....

Hi Folks -
Sorry for the sabbatical. I had a lot of new events happen that took me away from investing. Getting married and honeymooning in Bora Bora is one of the events!
Anyway I am back with lot's of thoughts this month. First, let's look at the financial sector. With the Dodd Bill (http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0908/Dodd_bill_much_more_aggressive_than_Treasury_plan.html), banks will be loving life. But it has to be the right banks. My call on this play is that banks like Citi, B of A, Wells Fargo and BB&T will do well. Why? The bill will protect these banks from financial losses in the consumer and commercial real estate market. Special legislation will protect this "institutes" from failure. After all without lending how do you expect jobs to be created? And we need jobs today (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm).
Unemployment also makes me think about some of the consumer stocks that could be set up to take a beating. First, and I can't believe I am saying this but I see Apple taking a huge hit on the chin over the next few months. I am not sold on the apple iPad (http://www.apple.com/ipad/) at all. I believe that Apple is telegraphing to us that they are running out of great products to support the $223.00 stock price (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl). I think now is the time to short Apple. Sorry Apple...
Another interesting play that I am fully invested in are the following stocks - McDonald's, Yum Brands!, Altria. WalMart, Exxon and Republic Services. Why these stocks you ask? McDonald's and Yum Brands!, good food cheap....Altria, stress of losing that job......WalMart, crappy products sold dirt cheap, Exxon, we still need gas for now and Republic Services, we in the USA no matter how many jobs we lose we still make more trash then any other country in the world.......I have all of these stocks as a strong buy.
I see the USA going through some trouble times. We lost over 9 million jobs and they will not be replaced.....Something has got to give....Good luck out there.
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Bailout.

Well it is getting close to the hour of the bailout. Will it happen? Most likely yes. Will it matter? In my humble opinion it will not. The damage has been done.
For those of you who follow me you know my greatest fear is that the average US citizen has zero savings. Most, in fact, about 96% of the US can't make it a week without a paycheck. How will this bailout help them. It won't.
Once and only if the few banks that will be around can get back to lending, the lending requirements will be like climbing Mt. Everest. Think about this for a moment. The average US consumer credit score is between 690 to 720. Banks were charging huge interest rates to these consumers when they could lend. What do you think it will be like when they start lending again? The average consumer will not qualify for a loan. This will soon be a painful wake up call for America.
To compound this problem the consumers who do have credit are now being notified that their credit lines are closed and until they can pay what they owe they have no available credit. So what is the consumer to do? No credit and no savings makes for a messy problem. Food, gas, heat, shelter all cost money.
The capital market has a unique ability to flush out bad planning really quickly. The US has been in a bad planning mode for sometime now. The warning bell rang 13 months ago and we ignored the ominous signs that the financial markets were in trouble. Readers this is bad. Very bad.
So now what. My predictions:
- Bailout goes through, barely
- FDIC limit raised to $250k and why? Who has $250k in cash laying around......
- Banks either gobble each other up or we see massive bank failures
- Mark to market kills accrued value. Assets will be significantly reduced across the board
- The treasury lines and discount window will not be enough to tie banks over or cover "toxic" debt
- Financial markets will freeze up again in about 25 days. Enough time to attempt to flush "toxic" bad debt
- Short selling banned for another 30 days
- More panic sell off by the average 401k holder and small time investor
- DOW 7300
- Money Markets hit .96 cents for $1. Money Markets will be a thing of the past very soon
- Hedge Funds will collapse and then the fun really starts.....
- Once market goes into free fall we will see massive layoff's
- Layoff's will have to be funded by State Unemployment
- States will now rush to Federal Government for bridge loans to stabilize their businesses
- Federal Government will have no money to lend
- Next, study the history of October 29th, 1929
Monday, September 29, 2008
Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations!
The idea of taking your money out of the bank and putting into your mattress might not be such a bad idea now. My other advice, wait before you invest this next couple of weeks.
By the way Wachovia did fail! It failed shareholders. Check out how much the officers of Wachovia made. They should all be ashamed of themselves......
Press Release: Citigroup will buy Wachovia's banking operations;FDIC says Wachovia didn't fail.
NEW YORK (AP) -- In the latest byproduct of the widening global financial crisis, Citigroup Inc. will acquire the banking operations of Wachovia Corp. in a deal facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Citigroup will absorb up to $42 billion of losses in the deal, with the FDIC covering any remaining losses, the government agency said Monday. Citigroup also will grant the FDIC $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants.
The deal greatly expands Citigroup's retail outlets and leaves it among the U.S. banking industry's Big Three along with Bank of America Corp. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
The deal comes after a fevered weekend courtship in which Citigroup and Wells Fargo & Co. both were reportedly studying the books of Wachovia, which was suffering from mounting mortgage losses linked to its ill-timed 2006 acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp.
The FDIC asserted that Wachovia didn't fail, and that all depositors are protected and there will be no cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a statement Monday, said he supports the "timely actions" taken by the FDIC "which demonstrate our government's unwavering commitment to financial and economic stability."
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson also welcomed the sale of Wachovia to Citigroup, saying it would "mitigate potential market disruptions." Paulson said he agreed with the FDIC and the Fed that a "failure of Wachovia would have posed a systemic risk" to the nation's financial system.
"As I have said before, in this period of market stress, we are committed to taking all actions necessary to protect our financial system and our economy," Paulson said.
The sale of the Wachovia assets comes just days after the government's seizure of Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc. -- the largest bank failure in U.S. history. As details of its takeover unfolded, Wachovia shares plunged 91 percent in Monday premarket trading to 91 cents. The stock had closed Friday at $10, down 74 percent for the year.
Wachovia has been among the banks hardest hit by the ongoing crisis in the mortgage market. It paid roughly $25 billion for Golden West at the height of the nation's housing boom. With that purchase, Wachovia inherited a deteriorating $122 billion portfolio of Pick-A-Payment loans, Golden West's specialty, which let borrowers skip some payments.


