Martin Kronicle

U.S. stocks boomed in the last nine months of 2009, but remained well below earlier highs. Indeed, many people referred to the first 10 years of the 21st century as “the lost decade,” because stocks returned virtually nothing while investors had been conditioned to expect 10% a year. Meanwhile, bonds and commodities experienced a stunning run. Have the rules of investing changed?

I did not record this podcast, but I thought it would be interesting to compare Jeremy Siegel to some of the podcasts I’ve done with commodity traders so you can get a feel and put things in perspective.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A trend is a trend is a trend as Gertrude Stein might have said. Here is my article on Social Media trends wrt mobile platforms at the Huffington Post.

I read The Freeman regularly and get the daily feeds from FEE.

Here are some great articles worth reading in the latest edition.

How Dense Can They Get

When it comes to power, energy density is the key. Solar power, wind power, and ethanol are so expensive because they are derived from very diffuse energy sources. It takes a lot of energy collectors such as solar cells, wind turbines, or corn stalks covering many square miles to produce the same amount of power that traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear plants can on just a few acres

The Long and Short of Short Selling

Short selling is a little-understood, much-maligned tactic by which traders can profit from their belief that a company’s stock is overvalued. (Editor’s note: it works for commodity futures too.)

Failure is an essential feature of free markets. Companies that suffer losses must be allowed to fail so that scarce capital can be redeployed into lines of business that better serve consumers. Short sellers, when they are right, hasten the necessary decline of the stock of a faltering company. In extreme cases, short sales can predict liquidation or bankruptcy. In other cases the stock of a generally sound company may have been driven to unsustainable heights by bandwagon psychology, and short sellers can help deflate those spikes and hasten a return to more realistic levels.

I have 3 Google Voice Invites left that I’m willing to give away to MartinKronicle readers who have downloaded my free e-book. First come, first served. I’ll need your email alias to invite you.

Download my e-book if you already haven’t from the homepage in the top-right corner. Then email me immediately and let me know if you want an invite – my email alias is on the confirmation page. It’s that simple.

The email service time stamps each email confirmation, so there will not be any ambiguity wrt who makes the first 3 requests.

Note that Google Voice is only available for sign up in the US. Users must have an established U.S. telephone service to activate Google Voice.

I’m sorry to my international readers. I’ll find something exclusively for you as soon as I can.

I just came across a paper by Paul Krugman on the economic realities we face. Mutual fund companies and the televangelists are mostly bullish given the market comeback since the March lows of 2009.

Disagree with me? Well, as long as you have money invested or at risk, you must be bullish – otherwise it would not make much logical nor emotional sense to remain committed.

No one will care more about your money that you.

Read Professor Krugman’s paper Crises