Archive for January, 2010

  • 2010 Gets Off to a Nice Start
    , January 4th, 2010 at 2:14 pm

    The new year has gotten off to a very good start. The Dow has been up by as much as 170 points today and it came close to breaking 10,600 for the first time in 15 months. The Nasdaq is now at a 16-month high.
    The new Buy List is also doing well. Moog (MOG-A) is up over 4% today, plus Leucadia (LUK) and Stryker (SYK) are both up over 3%. Stryker is up thanks to an analyst upgrade, and price target revision from $48 a share to $59.
    Our new additions are also holding their own. I should add that I announce the new buys two weeks before the new year so I can’t be accused of trying to goose the numbers. Wright Express (WXS) is up about 4.5% today, and the big news of the day is an upgrade on Intel (INTC). The analyst at Robert W. Baird raised the stock to Outperform from Neutral, and bumped up the price target from $24 a share to $26.

  • Bernanke Defends the Fed
    , January 4th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    I continue to be very impressed with Ben Bernanke. Yesterday, he gave a speech to the American Economics Association which defended the Federal Reserve from the charge that easy monetary policy caused the housing bubble. Naturally, this won’t sit well with the Fed’s critics.
    If you have the time, I encourage you read Bernanke’s speech. It’s long but he uses the length to carefully consider the evidence leveled against loose monetary policy. He briefly mentions a favorite topic of his, the global savings glut, as explaining some of the housing bubble. I think this is a very important topic. As I’ve said before, if you really want to damage another country, don’t send in tanks. Instead, lend them too much money.

  • Female CEOs Win Again
    , January 4th, 2010 at 9:46 am

    From the Chicago Sun-Times:

    Still, the year after Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin fell just short of becoming the first female president or vice president, and heading into 2010, when women will begin outnumbering men in the work force, stocks of the 13 Fortune 500 companies that had a woman at the helm for all of 2009 were up an average 50 percent.

  • Ah, Economists
    , January 2nd, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    From the WSJ:

    Stanford University economist Robert Hall, incoming president of the American Economic Association, values his time so highly that his wife, economist Susan Woodward, occasionally puts her foot down. “Bob doesn’t see why we can’t just hire people to trim the Christmas tree,” she says. “I tell him that’s not what it’s supposed to be about.”

  • Mars Goal By 2010, Soviets Say
    , January 1st, 2010 at 12:26 am

    So reads the Anchorage Daily News from Jul 7, 1988. Sixteen months later, the Berlin Wall would come down.
    In 1984, there was talk of the U.S. colonizing the Moon by 2010.
    The Reading Eagle from Nov 6, 1910 reports that there will be 6 billion people by 2010, which was a pretty good estimate.
    The Modesto Bee from July 11, 1966 tells us that our Story & Clark piano will still be insured in 2010. That’s good to know.
    The downside is that by 2010, the Ottawa Citizen from November 5, 1960 tells us that food scarcity will lead us to eat…baby bees!
    The Spokesman-Review from Apr 6, 1962 writes that some historical material isn’t to be opened until 2010. Also, the Gadsden Times from May 6, 1960 reported that 85-year-old former President Herbert Hoover helped dedicate a new Boy’s Club of America headquarters with a time capsule to be opened in 2010.