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REMINDER: All investment, economics, and finance related material now appears at the new IaconoResearch.com. For the time being at least, this has become a personal blog covering a variety of mostly unrelated topics.

Busted: The Economist and President Obama

On July 5, 2010, in Our Culture, WTF?, by Tim

Jeremy Peters at the NY Times notes how an image of President Obama, who was probably just leaning over a bit to hear someone speaking above the sound of lapping waves, made it on to the cover of The Economist without the person who was speaking.

It was the ideal metaphor for a politically troubled president.

There was President Obama on the cover of the June 19 issue of The Economist, standing alone on a Louisiana beach, head down, looking forlornly at the ground.

The problem was, he was not actually alone. The photograph was just edited to make it look that way.

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It Was a Good First Half For Some…

On July 2, 2010, in Bonds, Commodities, Stocks, by Tim

In updating the graphic for the companion investment website Iacono Research at the conclusion of the second quarter the other day, I couldn’t help but notice that the last decade’s best performing mutual fund, Ken Heebner’s CGM Focus (CGMFX), didn’t do so well and the model portfolio at Iacono Research is now back out in front.

You can see why the Pimco Total Return fund (PTTRX) has become so popular in recent years – slow and steady seems to have won them a lot of new clients despite the four percent front-end loads. Of course, the real lesson in the performance data above might be that simpler is better – if you had only sold your stocks and bought dumb ‘ol gold coins back in 2000, you’d be far, far ahead of just about any other investment on the planet.

For Iacono Research subscription details (where fees are far lower than Pimco’s), click here.

Full Disclosure: Long the model portfolio at time of writing.

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Wally, the Rapid-Response Team Leader

On June 16, 2010, in Commodities, Our Culture, by Tim

Understandably, the nation’s best cartoon artists are so preoccupied with the Gulf Coast oil disaster that they have little time to think about things like the economy, financial markets, or other topics that are more germane to this blog, but this gem is worth sharing.

From the always entertaining Tom Toles archive (and blog) at the Washington Post.

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More Dire Warnings from Matt Simmons

On June 16, 2010, in Commodities, by Tim

Matt Simmons talks to Bloomberg’s Lori Rothman about how crude oil is leaking into the gulf at a rate even faster than the latest upwardly revised government estimate and he reiterates his view that detonating a small nuclear device in order to turn the seabed rock into glass is the only way to stop the flow since the well casing is gone.

Also, this Ron Paul interview at CNBC via Dealbreaker is worth a look as it sheds some more light on comments made not long ago by Paul’s son, Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul.

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A Look at Relative Performance in 2010

On June 7, 2010, in Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Stocks, by Tim

Spotted over at Paul Kedrosky’s blog earlier today was this chart from Finviz (no link, apparently) showing the  year-to-date performance of various asset classes. Don’t get too excited about hogs and cattle (as Paul did) as a wicked contango persists in these markets that is killing investors, the iPath DJ-UBS Livestock TR Sub-Idx ETN (NYSE:COW) now up a whopping one percent for the year despite what you see directly below.

Practically speaking, the trade-weighted dollar and gold are battling it out at the top while the only equities still in positive territory for the year are the small cap Russell 2000 stocks with gains of 1.0 percent, but, down 1.08 percent today, they too should be painted red. Bringing up the rear are a host of agricultural goods that Jim Rogers and a few others have been recommending for the better part of a year now, but they just keep going down.

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The Future of BP and Tony Hayward’s Life

On June 2, 2010, in Commodities, Stocks, by Tim

Over in the U.K., they’re fretting about whether BP (formerly known as British Petroleum but now simply BP, despite what you might hear on American television) will survive the gulf oil disaster, a point that is quite clear in this video and a related report from the Telegraph.

The clip of BP CEO Tony Hayward saying “I’d like my life back” is not going over very well on this side of the Atlantic as the American media in general and the American left in particular are skewering him today as equity markets consider if  yesterday’s punishment was enough.

BP released its first estimate of the cost of the cleanup for the Deepwater Horizon “spill” and it is in the $4 billion range, prompting the question, “Why does the oil industry have to clean up its messes but the banking industry doesn’t?”

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