Stock Preacher

USA regulators charged a money manager with fabricating several large client accounts in order to lure legitimate investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission said last week. The SEC alleged that Leila Jenkins and her firm, Locke Capital Management, invented large advisory client accounts purportedly based in Switzerland and repeatedly claimed the accounts contained more than US$1B in assets that she managed. Jenkins lied about the accounts’ existence to investors and SEC staff and provided the SEC with “bogus” documents in 2008 such as fake account statements that she created, the SEC said.
From at least 2003 though 2009, Jenkins and her firm, with offices in New York and Rhode Island, communicated falsehoods about the accounts in brochures, meetings and SEC filings, the SEC alleged. Locke’s assets under management of its real clients never amounted to more than a very small portion of the billion-plus- US$s Jenkins claimed to manage, the SEC said. A lawyer representing Jenkins and Locke said we have not been served yet with the complaint.

Popularity: 5% [?]

US securities regulators are examining Apple Inc.’s disclosures about CEO Steve Jobs’ health problems, to ensure investors were not misled. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s review does not mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing. Both the SEC and Apple declined to comment on the matter. Jobs has said he had an easily treatable “hormonal imbalance,” but last week came back to say that his problems were “more complex” than originally thought, and he would take a medical leave of absence for six months. In 2004, Jobs was treated for a rare type of pancreatic cancer called an islet-cell, or neuroendocrine, tumor. Such tumors can be benign or malignant, but they usually grow slowly and are far less deadly than most pancreatic tumors.

Popularity: 6% [?]

This is what happened last week…

Bad news, bad news and bad news again (tell’em, tell’em again and tell’em what you told them). Nevertheless, last Friday, the market rallied some off of Thursday’s technical reversal action.
The banks are still sending out the worst news, what with Citi breaking up and Bank of America needing more cash to digest Merrill Lynch, it is a fact that Wall Street has moved to Washington, D.C., perhaps never to return to Manhattan. If that was not enough, the production capacity numbers were worse than anyone expected.
Read more

Popularity: 16% [?]

This is what happened last week…

Last Friday’s gave us a Jobs Report that is somewhat flawed and a number of other stories, like the beginning of the lame earnings reports that most of us have come to expect.
Crude Oil ended the week at 40.45 bbl -1.25, the US$ rallied some, and a Fed rep noted that the recession would likely extend past Q-2. People started to put some money back to work in mutual funds and corporate bonds

I had a discussion with some of my pals last week about the how things were in the US back in 1980, and although this is bad, it was bad then too. But opportunities abounded then and do once again now in our collective opinions. So if we are back to the early 1980’s then we are back in the land of huge investment opportunity.

On page 2, there is a Q & A between Mike (he asked the Q’s) and me. It bought the “glass is half full” POV once again to a clear prospective. 20-odd years ago we had come out of a decade of being in “irons” and had big hopes for a new era, the Reagan Era; now we are in a similar boat but not alone on the sea; interest rates are at record lows in the West and we have big hopes for another new era, the Obama Era.

Friend, major advancements and fortunes came out of the Reagan Era and expect that to happen again, the odds favor it.

The collective thinking of the central bankers has turned to stimulus, and stimulus it will be like never before in history. No one knows what will be the result, but hopes are running high that the bleeding will stop, the wounds will heal, scar tissue will form and we and the rest of the world will forge ahead into economic bliss.

We all know that the Chinese word for crisis is weiji and that means danger/opportunity. You do not need to be Chinese to understand what that means in the investment world.

The market indices are in good shape on last week’s pullback; the financials got hammered some but the leaders held support levels on the test lower during the day on low volume as they made higher lows as the Bears weaken. However, today whoever is left will be back to work in Wall Street, Bulls and Bears alike, and this is a week of high anticipation as we run up to the Inauguration on January 20.

There is a Wall Street adage that I learned from Gene Morgan, “Stocks climb a Wall of Worry”. And we all know that most folks are worried.

Stay tuned…

Below is the short Interview that my pal Mike did with me last week on investing in the Stock Market as I reminisced, good thing he recorded it and transcribed it for us… Read more

Popularity: 13% [?]