Dan Amoss, CFA, is managing editor for Strategic Short Report and a contributing editor to Whiskey and Gunpowder. Dan joined Agora Financial from Investment Counselors of Maryland, investment adviser for one of the top small-cap value mutual funds over the past 15 years. As a buy-side analyst, Dan refined his value investing approach by meeting with corporate executives and sell-side analysts and writing proprietary research for the fund’s management team. Dan has made appearances on MarketWatch, and was quoted in Corporate Finance Review, a Thomson Reuters publication.
Investors often assume dangerous, unnecessary risks by owning stocks on the basis of sloppy economic and financial analysis. For each stock you own, you should frequently reassess the reasons for owning it. Also, you need to remain on the lookout for signals that the future operating environment for a particular ...read more
This week's big market development was the announcement of proposed reforms for the flock of federal regulators that apparently "supervise" the banking system. You wouldn't know there was much supervision going on based upon the events of the past year.
Predictably, we're likely going to see the addition of another big ...read more
I’m happy to turn the page on 2008. We had a great streak of profitable trades in Strategic Short Report, but it still was a stressful, painful year to be an investor. Even if you’re far more patient and disciplined than most investors, you still were punished in 2008.
Dozens of ...read more
Out of the thousands of hedge funds in existence, hundreds are closing up shop and liquidating, if the latest trading action was any indication. Many of these hedge funds should never have been started to begin with, because their illusory gains during the credit bubble were too often made with ...read more
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws.”
— Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Let’s observe a moment of silence to mourn the slow demise of capitalism in the U.S.
Our government is now overtly manipulating the stock market. We have “crossed the Rubicon.” We can no longer ...read more
It has been a brutal couple of months for commodities investors. Prices may have temporarily overshot fundamentals on the upside in June. But the opposite situation now exists. The commodity sector wipeout of the last two months has obliterated any froth or excess. And now, prices may overshoot to the ...read more
“You know, you saw subprime go first, and then, on a slight lag, you saw home equity, and now in the lag, you’re seeing prime go. And it’s exactly the same loss factors. But remember, the components of where we are in the states…[are] very different. And we started doing ...read more
Last year, I devoted several issues of my Strategic Investment service to the web of structured finance. I think it paid off.
Since then, banks and brokerage stocks were punished. Energy and material stocks have soared-thanks to the Fed’s inflation campaign. Fed officials have taken their ability to devalue the U.S. ...read more
Since the rescue of Bear Stearns on March 17, the Amex Securities Broker/Dealer Index has rallied 20%. The shares of Lehman Brothers have rocketed more than 30%. These dramatic rallies support the popular thesis that “the worst is over” for the financial sector. But these dramatic rallies also provide attractive ...read more
THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT BEND THE ECONOMY to its will, as most economists appear to believe. The economy is infinitely complex, and instead bends to the will of billions of spending and investing choices. Yet some economists still try to tweak the economy if it does not suit a political agenda, ...read more
