You will often read in the news comments like the following.
Carl Tannenbaum said, “I think chances are evenly split between a cut and a hike right now it looks like inflation is coming down – but core inflation is still stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target.

Why 2%, why not 3%, why not 1.12345%? After all 2% is some number somebody thought would be a good number. Well, the 2% number is based on a central bank strategy.

One of the things that I do to rationalize positions is take the opposite side and create my own debate. I often do this when my head says one thing, but my gut feeling is saying something else. So for this blog entry I am going to spill my guts and hope somebody wants to add their own two cents.

Ok, here is my problem that my gut keeps telling me, and its from from a comment Greenspan made.
Alan Greenspan said the housing downturn is more of a problem than …

Ford is dire straits and we knew that. So what do they do? Sell Aston Martin! Idiots!!!! I am being harsh because I have not seen that much lunacy in a while. Aston Martin is profitable for Ford, and they sell what is profitable. What does Ford keep? Whatever is loosing money.
The Premier Auto Group, bogged down primarily by Jaguar, handed in a pretax loss of $344 million. Mulally, Ford’s top executive since September, has said Jaguar is not currently for sale.

Annual production dipped as low as just 46 cars …

For those that follow the car industry the linked news is definitely interesting. When I was studying to become a mechanical engineer I spent many a workterm working at Magna. My father was a higher-level manager at Magna and I used to have quite a few friends at Magna. For those that don’t know about Magna, think of it as the Microsoft of the car industry.
Magna was started by Frank Stronach an Austrian tool and die maker in the early 70′s. Frank found a niche in supplying car parts for the car industry. Supplying parts these …

Since I cashed out of equities about two months ago I have waited and watched for this pullback. I don’t trust the market because it seems to have forgotten about economics as illustrated by the referenced article.
I understand the market ignoring the slide in factory orders as a blip, but the out-pacing of wages to productivity is a problem. That is called inflation, and it is bad inflation, namely core inflation. I have noticed this core inflation problem at the stores as they have been scrimping on the sales, even …

My original version of this blog entry has been deleted because I did find some errors in my spreadsheet. I saw them when I was explaining what I thought I had found while doing my calculations. The new calculations are not as I thought they were, but still some interesting things can be extracted from it.
I was reading a blog entry where one couple in Seattle had a hard time trying to find a place where they could take out a mortgage for 15 years. One woman in another blog …

There is a rumour going around that GM might be buying (2) Chrysler. The rumour was based on something things that Zetsche (CEO DaimlerChrysler) said:
Speculation about the future of Chrysler started earlier this week when DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche revealed the future of the money-losing Chrysler division was being studied, and that the company was open to all options. That could include a spin off, analysts say.

Analysts are saying that GM buying Chrysler is unlikely and more likely the hoopla is about a large SUV that both companies are looking into developing.
Here …

Well not yet, but that is the plan. And I wonder if investors realize the potential. My guess is that Advanced Micro Devices (really their recently bought ATI division) is poised to make a bunch of money putting graphics processors into mobile phones, and this fact is not fully priced into the stock.

I wonder if investors are able to see past the PC market, when they think about AMD. It seems that all of the focus is on their competition with Intel. Meanwhile, the graphics card market is still ripe for growth. People, I think, finally realize that ATI and Nvidia supply chips for gaming consoles, and that part of the business is priced in. But what about the cell phone market? And the cell phone market is much bigger than the gaming console market. It may even be much bigger than the PC market, and with faster turnarounds.

I saw an article at MarketWatch that talked about 3G and how it has not lived up to expectations. Well, I could have told you that in 2002. I know that I said that in 2002 because in 2002 I gave a presentation at the Ann Arbor Computing Society entitled “The State of Wireless.”   
In my presentation I stated the following conclusions:

3G is dead and we will talk more about 4G before 3G ever gains any traction.
Wireless networks will become incompatible with each other.
Hot Spot is …

Last week (1,2) I talked about how the DJI should be breaking through the 12,700 barrier. We did not break through it, and I starting to become concerned. Some technical analysts will draw pretty pictures with lines in multiple directions, but we are hitting a resistance point. I like technical analysis, but use it in conjunction with mathematics and probability.
Here is what I would do, take some money off the table, not all. How much you want to take off the table depends on how nervous you might be. Last …