Economy Blog

Investors may find edges by considering both the levels of and changes in analyst stock ratings, with the combination more powerful than the separate indications….
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Missed a few postings here and there? (out of a total of 360 this year). No worries. Here is a list of our most popular postings in 2007….
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Told you so.
Under current index rules, only five deals qualified [twenty are needed] for inclusion in the Markit ABX.HE 08-1. Markit and the dealer community considered amending the index rules to include deals which failed to qualify initially but decided against this approach at this time.
Markit and the dealer community remain fully committed to the index and will update the market as and when appropriate….
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Berkshire Hathaway is starting its own municipal bond insurer, Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp. There are three questions. First, what impact will this have on the muni market? Second, what impact will this have on other monoline insurers? And third, what will muni guys call the new insurer? BHAC? (Pronounced like Be Hock? Maybe the old Oracle should have thought about that a bit more)….
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How exactly to top performing university endowments make all their money? You may be surprised by what this academic has to say on the issue….
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Good post on business plans for traders which includes an example plan…
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Looking for something a little different to read this holiday season? UBS’s Alexander Ineichen continues to mix history, philosophy, literature and finance and we’ve got his latest thinking….
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(Alternative title for long-time readers: There’s a meteorite that hit the ground near here. I want to check it out. It won’t take long.)A tender-option bond (from now on TOB) is the municipal bond market’s answer to the classic borrow short and invest long. As with many types of leveraged strategies, this one has been getting hit very hard in 2007. It also has some disturbing parallels with the S…
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in the spirit of celebrating the lesser-known, it’s time again to point toward the best blogs that might have flown under your radar….
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With the constant flow of hedge fund industry size estimates, it’s easy to wonder if the hedge fund industry is going to hit a ceiling at some point. We consulted one of the experts to find out….
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I’m contacted by new bloggers a fair amount, and I honestly at least check out the sites I’m sent. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time for reading as I’d like, so the list of blogs I read regularly is quite small. But still, I appreciate the e-mails from fellow bloggers. Keep ‘em coming.There is a piece on this new blog (which is trying to create a sort of independent stock research center where the reports are written by users) about i…
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I was out of the office yesterday, finishing up some Christmas shopping. Here are a few quick thoughts.MBIA’s disclosure surprises me. Not what they’ve disclosed, but how it happened. First of all, why not reveal all this stuff when you made the p…
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There has been a lot of talk about “crowded” hedge fund trades. But how do you measure this crowding and does it pay to join in the crowd?…
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When I started college, I wanted to be in politics. I was already of a Libertarian mindset, and had it in my mind that I could change the world. I picked economics as a major to learn about setting policy, not because I wanted to get into investments. Suffice to say I’ve fallen from the true faith and am now little more than a money grubbing trader.Anyway, early in my college career I wrote a paper on budget deficits. Having a Libertarian bias to begin with, I set out to find sources which would conclude that budget deficits were evil. …
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more brokerage thoughts from fleeing Schwab / CyberTraders……
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Bear Stearns has surprised industry observers by launching a new mutual fund. Here are some of the prospectus details you probably won’t find in the media….
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Last post of the year, enjoy.

[HT: Calculated Risk]
EmailThis
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Things change fast on the internet –and fame is no exception. Nearly half of the online celebrities identified in the inaugural edition of the Forbes.com Web Celeb 25 failed to place on the list in this second edition….
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A while back I wrote about the hidden benefits of day trading. It took me a while to think about some disadvantages, but here’s what I’ve come up with:…
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For the next interview in the StockTickr Interview Series (RSS feed), I spoke with Bennett McDowell, a well known trading coach and founder of TradersCoach.com….
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