Investing Strategies

Geothermal Frustration, Part II

Jul 24th, 2009 | By Byron King | Category: Energy, Featured, Investing Strategies

Yesterday in Part I, I discussed how the publicly traded geothermal companies are not delivering what we hoped for as returns. I described how geothermal power is the beneficiary of a lot of government benefits, from renewable-energy mandates to tax breaks. Thus, the geothermal companies (including five companies in the ESI ...read more

Tags: business model, geothermal
Posted in Energy, Featured, Investing Strategies | 3 comments

Taxing Tobacco

Jun 10th, 2009 | By Linda Brady Traynham | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies, Personal Liberties

The great financial minds in Washington are at it again, starting another war. As usual, it is "for our own good" and will make twenty-eight per cent. of the adult population miserable while destroying a large industry and reducing tax revenues sharply. Does legislation get any better than that? This time ...read more

Tags: FDA, government, taxes
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies, Personal Liberties | 14 comments

Fear, Lust and That 1930s Feeling

Mar 16th, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies

I’ve had this ongoing project of reading as much as I can about the 1930s and the Great Depression. I favor the first-person accounts, stuff written by people who were there -- like Damon Runyon. Some of his early stories written in the 1930s reflect on the mood of the era. ...read more

Tags: 1930s, great depression, Odlum
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies | No Comments »

Stem Cells, Obama and the Austrians

Mar 12th, 2009 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Technology

As I predicted, the president lifted the funding ban on embryonic stem cells. First, though, please indulge a rant... "It's not the lie. It's the coverup" is the old political adage. Usually, in politics, it's much better to admit a mistake and move on. I wish to heaven we could learn that ...read more

Tags: federal funding, stem cells
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Technology | 3 comments

Inside The Obama Huddle: Housing, Banking, Life and Crisis

Jan 28th, 2009 | By Byron King | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Politics

The Inauguration is over. It’s PRESIDENT Obama now. So let’s get back to work. What can we discern about the incoming Obama administration? I had a long talk with an old friend who is a self-described “rabid Democrat.” Let me rephrase that. He’s a rabid Democrat in the way that Pittsburgh ...read more

Tags: cash, crisis, Gold
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Politics | 5 comments

Risk-Taking Traders Born Not Made

Jan 23rd, 2009 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies

A recent dispatch from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences didn’t give us the next big development in stem cell therapies. It didn’t tell us how the car of 2020 will be powered. Instead, John Coates and his team of Cambridge researchers turned the powerful lens of science ...read more

Tags: bubble, market, risk
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies | 2 comments

Falling Prices and Scarce Energy

Dec 16th, 2008 | By Byron King | Category: Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Oil

Lately I’ve been discussing concept of scarcity in the energy and natural resource sectors. In one recent note, I discussed how the idea of scarcity has transformed from a “geological” basis to an “above ground” basis. In another note I discussed how the financial system of the world has broken ...read more

Tags: Energy, resources, scarcity
Posted in Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Oil | 4 comments

Seeking Alfalfa

Nov 24th, 2008 | By Adrian Ash | Category: Commodities, Economics, Energy, Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies

“Well, God knows you don’t need any brains to buck barley bags...” — John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) Alpha used to be what hedge-fund managers promised their clients. Better still, portable alpha — defined in the easy bed-time reading of finance MBAs as the “generation of excess return over a benchmark ...read more

Tags: Buying Gold, Cost of Audits, Credit Lines, Credit Shutdown, hedge funds, wheat
Posted in Commodities, Economics, Energy, Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies | No Comments »

DRIP Investing

Nov 17th, 2008 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Investing Strategies

There has never been a better time than right now to buy stocks. I know what you’re thinking — it sounds strange considering the enormous volatility in the market. But, I’m not talking about just any old stocks. I’m talking about stocks that produce real income. In these manic times, you ...read more

Tags: dividend reinvestment plan, Dividend Reinvestment Plans, dividend yields, DRIP investing, reinvesting dividends
Posted in Investing Strategies | No Comments »

The Market’s Unintended Opportunity

Nov 11th, 2008 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Oil

If you’re sick of the gloom and doom permeating markets right now, you can find solace in one investment… Well, it’s actually a type of investment. I’m not talking about options or shorting or even bonds. We still like to buy low and sell high, but we also like our ...read more

Tags: High Yield Stocks, Income Stocks, Investing Dividends in penny stocks, Penny Stocks, Potential Money multipliers, small cap stocks
Posted in Featured, Gold, Investing Strategies, Macro Economics, Oil | No Comments »