Skip to main content

Features of the week

Welcome to our "Features of the week", where we review some of the week's most interesting articles features and news stories. Grab a chair and browse!

1. Bernanke and Bush attempt to calm the markets with their "plan to help homeowners" and the broader economy. Bush and Paulson stress that their is focused on homeowners in trouble, not a bailout of lenders.

Funny, because this whole mess reminds me of the early 1990s S&L blowup more with each passing day. More on this from Bear Mountain Bull and The Big Picture.

2. "Mozilo Cashed Out at Top of Market". Brett Arends on the hefty insider selling of Countrywide Financial shares.

3. Cleaning up on the meltdown. BusinessWeek reports on market participants who took the other side of some popular trades during the recent credit market turmoil.

4. A tribute to Dr. Kurt Richebacher, patriarch of the "anti-bubble" economists.

5. Jeffrey Tucker and Mark Thornton discuss the Mises Institute's Bastiat Collection.

6. What's at the heart of happiness? A brief overview from WSJ.com (Hat tip to The Kirk Report).

7. Ah...it's all starting to make sense now. Damien Hirst is now mentioned as being part of the previously "unnamed" investor group that is planning to buy his $100 million skull.

Classic. Anonymous Dealbreaker commenter, you were right!

8. Here's a strange story: "Gold Fields Bidder Takes Twisted Path From Shelter to Argentina".

9. Commodities. Wheat hits all time high, while the bloggers at Commodity Trader ponder a corn futures trade.

10. Gary Dorsch wonders if the "Commodity Super Cycle" has stalled out.

11. Anonymous blogger and hedge fund manager, Fintag gives us his inside view of the markets and a review of the day's interesting stories.

12. The Big Picture tips us to a historical perspective of recent bear markets.

13. Buyout funds face higher costs, elusive returns in the future, says Bloomberg.

14. "A Political Theory of Geeks and Wonks". Mises Institute's Jeffrey Tucker.

15. The Financial Philosopher reminds investors to focus on what is certain, rather than the distraction of uncertainties.

Thanks for reading Finance Trends Matter. Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean