August 2008

According to a recent New York Times article, home equity loans have ballooned to more than $1 trillion dollars from $1 billion dollars in the early 1980s. It's an unbelievable statistic given the risks that the banks currently have on their books with CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and MBSs (mortgage-backed securities) exposure due to this subprime crisis. You may be one of the ... read more

Take a wild guess. What do you think the gold medal is worth at the Olympics? Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more. Wrong! I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it's only worth $240.00. That's right, $240.00! It sounds like I'm making this up but it's true. Did you realize that the gold medal is not truly gold? Today's gold medals have only 6 grams of gold and about 130 grams of silver. ... read more

Does August 14th, 2003 ring a bell? It was the BIGGEST outage/blackout in U.S. history. More than fifty million people were affected in the Northeast, Midwest and Canada when transmission lines in Ohio automatically shut down because they were too close to trees. As you recall, that caused electricity to be rerouted to other transmission lines which, in turn, overloaded the lines and caused them ... read more

So I bait you yesterday with my Goldman blog about how much I loved yesterday's guest lineup, and then I forget to post this blog about Wilbur Ross. Age... it can do wonders to your brain cells! Yesterday on The Opening Bell, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross joined me to discuss his last couple of investments, how he feels about the subprime crisis and why he thinks there are opportunities for ... read more

At 8:30 this morning the monthly retail sales report was released. While it's normally not a reason to get overtly excited, this morning we had Britt Beemer on from America's Research Group. He is the chairman of the company which recently surveyed consumers’ appetites for back-to-school items. The survey referred to as the Consumer Mind Reader (TM) studied the telephone interviews of 1,000 ... read more

As you've seen in my past blogs, I have a long standing relationship and occasional love affair with David Darst, the chief investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. We have known each other for 15 years. Wow.....that hurts saying that. Prior to David's position at Morgan Stanley, he worked at Goldman Sachs. When I started working at Goldman Sachs in 1994 he was one of my mentors. Today he is ... read more

This morning as you may have noticed I wrote a blog called “Good Prognosis for Health Care” about why I think health care could be the next hot sector. At about 9:30 this morning Genentech, who I talked about earlier, rejected the $89 bid from Roche. Roche currently owns 55.9% of Genentech and has hoped to purchased the remaining amount. Some analysts have speculated as high as $115 for ... read more

OK. I cannot resist. Today was one of my favorite days. The lineup of guests and topics that we had on Money for Breakfast and The Opening Bell, which I host, were excellent. This is the part of my job that I love the most. Today we talked about everything from Goldman Sachs and why they are reinvesting in overseas markets and personnel, to the Presidential candidates Healthcare plans, to the CEO ... read more

Yesterday I talked about some of the reasons why I am becoming slightly more optimistic. One thing that I neglected to talk about is leadership. In past bull markets, the average bubble corrects 75%, this according to my colleague Keenan Hauke at Samex Capital. He joined me last week on The Opening Bell. He did some research and looked at past bubbles and busts. Here’s what he found: read more

It's been hard but I have remained tight lipped enough. OK I admit it, the Olympics have exceeded my expectations. To be very blunt, I thought they were going to be a grave disappointment given all of the human rights issues surrounding China and the truth is I have been pleasantly surprised. In no way do I or am I willing to dismiss their human rights record and their affiliations to governments ... read more