Ebola again?  Yesterday a woman who was on the Ebola "watch list" in New York fell dead in a hair salon. Witnesses say she was bleeding profusely, but the investigators are saying she had a heart attack.  I find it sort of interesting that for the most part the media has been very quiet about this.

Last week we found out that a doctor had supposedly tested positive for Ebola in New York, which got people a bit nervous. But they saw that down in Dallas it didn't seem to spread much, so they found hope in that. Today we hear a five year old boy is in the hospital in NY being tested, and this kid had recently returned from Africa. Once again folks are sort of nervous buy they're hiding it well. Sort of like kids whistling past the graveyard.

10.27.2014

Good morning all, welcome back from your weekend. I truly hope it was a good one for you all. I have to admit that for me, it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. The wife and I had planned this weekend way back in June, to travel to one of our states nicest paved bicycle trails, and stay at a historic bed and breakfast. Well, the weather was perfect, the trail nicer than we expected, the B&B a sheer delight, and all in all...it was great. I wish I could do it every weekend!

But now we're back in the saddle, so let's take a look at where things stand.

Late last night the news hit that the Doctor in NY who showed Ebola symptoms had indeed tested positive for the disease. Naturally that's going to create a certain level of fear in the city. The only "good" thing you can say is that down in Dallas, it doesn't seem to have spread exponentially, so there's some comfort in thinking this guy probably hasn't infected the masses either.

10.24.2014

Wow, what a wicked market.

Yesterday we were up 303 points when all of a sudden news broke that a NY Doctor had just returned from Ebola stricken Africa, and was displaying symptoms. So he was being taken to the hospital by guard to be tested. That caused the market to pause in its tracks and start selling off. When we hit the closing bell, we were off almost 100 from those highs.

Will They Do More QE?

Pull up a chair and let’s chat folks.  This is going to be an interesting letter on a lot of levels, so let’s get started.

Everyone that has any interest in finance knows that the Federal Reserve has had a program in place called Quantitative Easing for the past 5 years. For those of you who don’t understand what it is, the basics are that the Fed’s have printed up money and then used that money to buy Treasuries from the Government and to soak up toxic assets like bad mortgages from the banks. In doing so, it has had the effect of constantly lowering interest rates, since they don’t have to raise rates to “lure” folks into buying the T bills. The Fed’s would buy them at any price, and any rate of return.

But the offshoot of QE was that because they were buying up toxic crap from the banks, AND because Treasuries are also bought from the “primary dealers” ( the big banks) the banks got tons and tons of money to go play cowboy in the asset markets. With virtually zero percent money for the big companies to borrow and buy back their own stock, and all the bank money sloshing around, we’ve had the best bull market that fake money can buy. Stocks are up gigantically since the beginning of the program.

Fake Facts You Believe

One of the problems you face when you write a newsletter that goes out to thousands of folks, is that often the things you say…are diametrically opposed to what people have taken as fact for years.  Then they have to try and figure out if I’m simply nuts, or maybe realize that they’ve been shoveled a bucket of horse hockey all those years.  It causes stress I’m sure.

For instance we all know that Eve ate an apple in the Garden of Eden right? Well not so fast. She ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not once is it mentioned in the Bible that it was an apple. It probably wasn’t. Yet it’s taken as a generalized fact that she ate an apple.

At 9 am Wednesday, the DOW futures are indicated down by 160 points. The S&P is down about 25. What's that all about? Well the reason that's making the rounds is that there's been another case of Ebola discovered in Texas.  But is that really the reason? My guess is no, that's not the whole reason, but it is a great excuse. Let me explain...

10.15.2014

Morning all, welcome to what could be an interesting day.

The futures are all over the map this morning but mostly deep red. So, what's their issue this morning? Didn't they do a pretty good job of at least keeping the market flat yesterday? They did.  So what's up with all the red? Well, it started in Europe. Italy, Greece, and a handful of others were very weak, So this morning we've got a sea of red over there, with Germany down 100.

But there's another twist to the story. Evidently down in Texas there's another healthcare worker that's tested positive for Ebola. That's got folks rattled a bit.