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Showing posts from September, 2010

$1300 Gold at the "End" of the Great Recession

Apparently, the Great Recession is now over (though Warren Buffet - for one - disagrees ). At least the end of it seems to fit as far as the technical definition of “recession” goes. I remain unconvinced that we won’t slip back into a “double-dip” , but no one knows, so I’ll wait and see. Meanwhile, silver and gold continue to rise . $1300 is the next target level for gold, though it is currently overbought and due for a $50-$80 correction, in my opinion. Then it might be time to buy some more. Personally, I hope the recent rapid rise of the rare metal slows and retracts somewhat. It is starting to stray far away from the 200-day moving average . As you know, for myself it is a basic investing tenet that the further any item moves above or below the 200-day MA the sharper and more violent will be the snapback toward that average when the item finally does correct (as everything does in the yin-yang dance of the markets). No one has been more anti-gold in recent decades than Alan Gree

Meltdown in Philadelphia

Last Sunday the Atlanta Braves completed a three-game sweep of the New York Mets on the road. When that game ended the Philadelphia Phillies were in the process of playing the Washington Nationals. The Nationals were leading the Phillies 6-3 in the 9th inning. But, the Phillies ( thanks to Jayson Werth ) scored 4 runs in their last at-bat and beat the Nationals 7-6. The Braves could have pulled into Philadelphia for an important 3-game series with some momentum and only two games out of first place on Monday. Could've, would've, should've...that didn’t happen. Jair Jurrjens injured himself in a routine off-day throwing session and the Braves were forced to start Brandon Beachy , who wasn’t even called up September 1. Throwing the AAA pitcher at the red hot Phillies was not exactly what Bobby Cox had in mind. But, Beachy didn’t pitch that badly. He kept the Braves in the ball game but we couldn’t do anything with Cole Hamels and lost 3-1 . The Braves, once again, left too

"Is it real?"

OK, so maybe it is not exactly earth-shattering that Joaquin Phoenix has “acted” the last two years of his life whenever everybody thought he was crazy, but it is rather cool to consider. I mean, it does beg the question where exactly is the boundary between the actor’s art and “real” life? For whatever reason, Phoenix, who is an accomplished actor , shocked the entertainment world in 2008 by supposedly renouncing his film career in order to tour as a mediocre hip-hop performer. All he got for his trouble, apparently, was a rather bizarre interview on The David Letterman Show and a fight with an audience member in Miami . Not everyone bought the act to begin with . I recall following these events with interest at the time. I was particularly taken with the Letterman episode because, I swear, if I didn’t know better I would have thought Phoenix was making a mockery of the entire, inane talk show industry. A rather intense parody where the event is turned back on itself and Mr. Lett

Tied with 19 Left

If Alex Gonzalez (or Derrek Lee , for that matter) starts hitting homeruns the way he hit one today (night – 12th inning) the Atlanta Braves will win the NL East. We are down to a few games left in the 2010 season and things like this mean a lot. Tonight the Braves and Phillies are tied for first . Gonzalez crushed the Cardinals . That is what we need right now. Players who will crush our opponent. Kill . There is a poetry about baseball that lies at the heart of why I love the game. Discussion of the game among fellow fans always eventually revolves around statistics. Batting averages, earned run averages, strike outs per nine innings, walks per nine innings, fielding percentages, how this batter matches up with this pitcher in this particular situation. And so on seemingly forever. It was statistics that initially got Jennifer interested in the game. Her engineering training makes her a very detailed, quantifiable type of person. She immediately could “see” the game through statist

Echoes in Gdansk

The juxtaposition of two small events the past few days has brought considerable entertainment in to my life. A couple of weeks ago I was watching David Gilmour’s Remember That Night DVD. There are several noteworthy aspects to that 2006 concert in the Royal Albert Hall (released in 2007). David Crosby and Graham Nash sing some background vocals on Gilmour’s full presentation of his album On An Island and then they come back later for an encore; their remarkable harmonies joining with David’s great voice on a terrific rendition of Find the Cost of Freedom . Then David Bowie comes out to perform Syd Barrett’s original part in the old Pink Floyd tune, Arnold Layne . Bowie follows that with performing Roger Waters’ vocals in Comfortably Numb . Really nice stuff. But, for me, the highlight of the DVD is the performance of Echoes , which so prominently features the keyboard work of Richard Wright . Though Echoes is one of my favorite Pink Floyd concepts (at 22-plus minutes it is h

Once A Lucky Dog

Tennessee Williams once wrote that “Time is the longest distance between two places.” The other day, I was driving with my daughter down a road toward my parents’ farm. We passed an old white house on the left nestled under the shade of four large oaks. Every time I pass this house I recall something that happened to me many summers ago. This time I related the story to my daughter. Back then, I worked a different job each summer when I was home from college. This particular summer I was working in a small carpet-related plant that manufactured the edging that is applied to carpet samples as well as to rugs and mats. It was about a 25-mile drive to the plant and, being a young guy, I tended to drive a lot faster than I do today. One day I was driving home after work, going probably 10-15 miles over the speed limit. It was a two-lane road, well-paved, kind of hilly but with a lot of straight-aways and good visibility. As I was barreling along on one of those straight-aways I saw a smal