Now, Let the Games Begin

From thestreet.com 8/25/08

The 2008 Olympics are in the books. The U.S. won the most medals and China won the most Gold. Now it's time for the real games to begin.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) kicks off this week, to be followed by the Republican National Convention (RNC) next week. The gamesmanship will far surpass that of the last two weeks in Beijing.
The Democrats will likely spend the week talking policy: the economy, energy, taxes, spending, trade and everything else that matters to them. Then they will presumably nominate Senator Barack Obama as their candidate with Senator Joe Biden at his side.
The GOP with go through the same drill and nominate Senator John McCain and whomever he chooses as a running mate......
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Mark Spitz On The Olympic Record

CME Chairman Duffy On Takeover Deal

The Benefits of Trading

From thestreet.com 8/19/08

While discussing the market's trials and tribulations with folks at a party this weekend, some interesting observations arose.
One guy who is in fixed income seemed to be the most talkative. Although he has always made a good living, his phone seldom rang, even in a very busy major brokerage office. It was the equities guys rocking and rolling for years.
Now as equities have become shaky investments, his fixed-income desk is in big demand. Fixed income represents safety and a hint of return, he said. We laughed at the rates seen in Treasuries, the fed funds rates and inflation. And we chatted a bit about the relationship between inflation and fixed-income returns.
Another guy spent his days in structured products. He told me that they were busy creating products -- anything that would pull people out of cash. He mentioned a bizarre structured product called a Barrier Note. It appears to be a structured investment that plays out like this: ...
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Traders Must Go by Intuition

From thestreet.com 8/13/08

Last Sunday, during a ritual morning run, I remember feeling a hint of a breeze that seemed more emphatic than usual. It wasn't obvious, but it was enough to elicit my brain to think, "Hey, maybe there is a change in the weather coming."
When I returned from the run, my neighbor mentioned that she thought the weather was turning; she could "feel it." We intuitively spot slight changes in the weather, consciously or not.
In a column that I wrote on June 11, I talked about a trader's intuition about trading activity in stocks of agricultural companies. Until that day, these stocks had been on a tear.
Shares of Potash (POT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) had surged from $105 in January to $229 that day. Bunge sat at $122, Monsanto was trading $140 and Deere topped out at $82 per share........
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Maxwell, O' Hanlon on Georgia Conflict

Nothing Lucky About Rally

From thestreet.com 8/11/08

Eight seems to be the magic number.
In Chinese numerology, recurring numbers represent luck, and 8/8/08 was thought to be the luckiest day. Three eights were the perfect day to launch the Olympics. However, that day the luck was flowing here in our equity markets rather than in Beijing where the numerologists reside.
Think about this for a minute. If someone told you that there was a brand new conflict between Russia, a big oil producer with 200 million residents, and its small (population 4.5 million) border neighbor Georgia, and if you heard that Russian tanks were rolling and casualties were mounting, what would you guess the reaction would be in the oil market? Up $5? $10?

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Big Blue Moving, Grooving

From thestreet.com 8/6/08

At the end of the trading day, I usually spend a few minutes paging through stock and commodity charts. Occasionally, something jumps out at me. Yesterday I was scanning the usual suspects: Goldman(GS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Chevron(CVX - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Apple (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Research In Motion (RIMM - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), steel, Chesapeake Energy(CHK - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), oil, gold, dollar, corn, International Business Machines(IBM - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Morgan Stanley (MS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Norfolk Southern(NSC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) ... wait a minute, go back ... IBM.
I know the green flags were waving all day in tech of all forms -- consumer tech, big-cap tech, semis and Internet infrastructure. Techs started strong and stayed strong all day. IBM is one of the little talked-about tech stocks lately that have been doing quite well. It is up about 19% year to date and has held up in the face of some really choppy markets recently.
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All Aboard the Rails Trade

From thestreet.com 8/4/08

Don't miss your train, it's departing.
After many attempts, Gold finally hit a record last week in London. It was a result of frenetic buying coming from everywhere. There was big buying in the U.S. and Europe, surprising even some longtime fans of Gold. You know, I have loved and recommended gold for years. This time the world brought Gold to a record that surprised some but not me.
This week, I talked on Fox's Bulls & Bears TV show about a trade that makes a ton of sense to me. With the recent high cost of fuel, the railroads have become the shipping method of choice. It has been a favorite space of Warren Buffett. He has amassed an 18% stake in Burlington Northern(BNI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr).
One of the main reasons the rails are prospering now is because diesel fuel has risen faster than oil, gasoline and jet fuel. The national average diesel price topped out recently at $4.85 a gallon, up a whopping 67% vs. last year. It still sits at $4.68 per gallon today. .........
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