Skip to main content

Outrage is here + themes for October

Back in July, as the fallout from the 2007 credit crisis deepened, Jim Grant wondered about the lack of popular anger over Wall Street malfeasance in a Wall Street Journal piece entitled, "Why No Outrage?".

Today, as the "Main Street" economy worsens and the House gets set to revote on a revised and enlarged bailout bill, that outrage is here, and it's growing.

So while Goldman Sachs may be getting the best of the credit crisis (and Warren Buffett too), the average American is not really enjoying the current environment.

It's bad enough to be suffering through declining real wages, rising inflation, and an unacknowledged recession; throwing on endless financial industry bailouts to the pile (and thereby saddling Americans with even more debt and inflation) is really adding insult to injury.

Looking over the last month's posts, it's clear to see that we've spent a lot of time talking about these very issues. And that's natural, given the weight of these problems and the much-discussed changes in Wall Street's landscape. We'll continue to follow these issues here in the weeks and months to come.

But I think we're also going to try and spend more time this month examining the shape of the markets and tracking future investment and trading themes.

The last few months have shaken out a lot of market participants, and even some of the most respected traders and fund managers have been humbled by the markets this year.

It will be interesting to see how experienced traders and investors respond to these market conditions. Will sudden rule changes and the increased volatility brought on by frequent government intervention in the markets lead traders to abandon the markets in disgust? Or will savvy investors stay defensive and bide their time waiting for future opportunities?

It's shaping up to be some kind of October. Stay tuned to this channel as we continue to take the pulse of the financial markets and the American cultural scene.

Popular posts from this blog

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.