5 Reasons NOT To Buy [Physical] Gold

5 Reasons NOT To Buy [Physical] Gold
BARRON'S February 7. 2013 By: Mark Hulbert Humphrey Neill, the father of contrarian analysis, famously wrote that "when everyone thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong." That's a sobering thought when it comes to gold, since the belief in gold's investment virtues seems to be almost universal. For this column I am taking Neill's advice to heart, with help from a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. "The Golden Dilemma," by Claude Erb, a former...

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Beware The Big Errors of "Big Data"

Beware The Big Errors of "Big Data"
WIRED.COM February 11, 2013 By: Nasim Taleb We're more fooled by noise than ever before, and it's because of a nasty phenomenon called "big data." With big data, researchers have brought cherry-picking to an industrial level. Modernity provides too many variables, but too little data per variable. So the spurious relationships grow much, much faster than real information. In other words: Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information. Just like bankers who own a free...

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Insiders Are Aggressively Bearish

Insiders Are Aggressively Bearish
WSJ MARKETWATCH February 8, 2013 By: Mark Hulbert This is worrisome because corporate insiders — officers, directors and the largest shareholders — presumably know more about their companies' prospects than the rest of us do. If they were confident that the shares of their companies would soon be trading markedly higher, they wouldn't be selling them now. Yet selling they are — at an alarming pace. Consider an insider indicator calculated by the Vickers Weekly Insider Report, published by...

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GMO - Investing In A Low Growth World

GMO - Investing In A Low Growth World
GMO February 7, 2013 By: Jeremy Grantham The ever prescient Jeremy Grantham discusses how to invest in a a low growth world. "This quarter I will review any new data that has come out on the topic of likely lower GDP growth. Then I will consider any investment implications that might come with lower GDP growth: counter intuitively, we find that investment returns are likely to be more or less unchanged – a little lower only if lower growth brings with it less instability, hence less risk. ...

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No Warning Signs Anywhere (Except Here, Here, and Here)

No Warning Signs Anywhere (Except Here, Here, and Here)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL BLOG February 7, 2013 By: Paul Vigna Look, we get it. The Dow’s going for a record, and the hot-stocks will probably get it there no matter what happens in Rome or Madrid or Washington, D.C. But it’s at times like these, when just about everybody is convinced that the markets are moving in one direction, that they are most likely to be thrown the proverbial curve. There are signs that this big run-up is losing steam, beyond the market’s waffling this week. If you pay heed to...

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100 Startling Facts About The Economy

100 Startling Facts About The Economy
THE MOTLEY FOOL February 7, 2013 By: Morgan Housel In no particular order... 1. As of January 2013, there are 16 people left in the world who were born in the 1800s, according to the Gerontology Research Group. With dividends reinvested, U.S. stocks have increased 28,000-fold during their lifetimes. 2. If you divide their net worths by their age, Carlos Slim and Bill Gates have each accumulated more than $100,000 in net worth for every hour they've been alive. 3. According to Forbes, if a...

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Subprime Is Back

Subprime Is Back
SURLY TRADER February 6, 2013 By: Surly Trader In 2005 and 2006, CDO's were being pushed like crack. I remember asking many of the pushers why I would leverage into credit at historically tight spread levels. Their stock answer: "Because you can get a AAA rating at a much higher yield! This thing will never break because it has so much subordination!" My follow up question: "how do you know the correlations that you are using are right?" Now I definitely did not know how bad it could get, but I was...

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So God Made A Banker

So God Made A Banker
WSJ MARKETWATCH February 6, 2013 By: Brett Arends To be read in the voice of Paul Harvey. And on the eighth day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need someone who can flip this for a quick buck." So God made a banker. God said, "I need someone who doesn't grow anything or make anything but who will borrow money from the public at 0% interest and then lend it back to the public at 2% or 5% or 10% and pay himself a bonus for doing so." So God made a banker. God said,...

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Rosenberg: 16 Reasons I'm Not Buying The Employment Report

Rosenberg:  16 Reasons I'm Not Buying The Employment Report
GLUSKIN-SHEFF February 5, 2013 By: David Rosenberg [This is a great follow up to our recent posting on the problems with seasonal adjustments which obfuscates the real status of employment.] I went through the January data one last time with a fine tooth comb. I fail to see what got everyone so excited, beyond the upward revisions to the back data. That only proves that productivity has been weaker than initially thought. And the income from those upward job revisions has probably already...

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David Stockman: Housing In "Echo" Boom

David Stockman:  Housing In "Echo" Boom
YAHOO! FINANCE Febrarury 5, 2013 By: Lauren Lyster Many have named a U.S. housing recovery as a bright spot in a so-called broader domestic economic recovery. And data seems to support this analysis, despite a slowdown in sales momentum at the end of the year. Existing home sales in December were up 12.8% from the same time in 2011, with the total number of sales in 2012 rising to the highest level in five years, according to the National Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, the annual price for...

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