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Author: toronAdded: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:50:13 -0800Duration: 238

Toron Managing partner arthur Heinmaa examines the growing concerns of deflation in the Canadian economy and what the risks might be for 2009. 

Dell unveiled their new ultraslim, the Adamo, a few days ago. The new laptop is a 13.4 inch “luxury” portable featuring no optical drive, a long life sealed-in battery, edge-to-edge glass screen, and a solid state hard drive comes at the very affordable starting price of $1999. Does this sound familiar? A MacBook Air, perhaps? To a lesser extent, the HP Voodoo Envy 133? 

One can’t fault Dell for wanting to keep up with Apple and HP. HP has maintained its stranglehold on worldwide notebook marketshare for over two years. In North America, Dell’s “home territory,” marketshare has fallen below 2006 levels while Apple and HP continue to capture the bulk of sector growth. 

Data courtesy of Gridstone Research. Apple bars represent “Total

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pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pLast week you noted that consumer and a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/consumer-pessimism-receding-investors.html"investor confidence were up significantly/a. But taking a closer look at the data reveals just how significant the confidence bounce was.br /br /In fact according to the archive of a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/indexes/rasmussen_consumer_index"Rasmussen Confidence Index data/a, it only took five days last week for a href="http://legacy.rasmussenreports.com/rasmussen_index.htm"the daily index/a to make up almost all of the ground it had slowly lost over the past five months. (Click to enlarge chart)br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s1600-h/5days.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s400/5days.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314739894846355874" border="0" //abr /You've seen how a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/retail-growth-is-indeed-leading-us-to.html"consumer spending drives recovery/a. Here's just one more data point leading us out of the winter doldrums into a much a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/evidence-points-to-recessions-end-by.html"cheerier spring and summer./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"div/div No Gloom here. Only Good ...

The markets continued to rally as the Dow Jones ended up 1.23% at 7486.58 while the S&P and NASDAQ closed up 2.09% and 1.99% respectively. The 10 year saw yields shrink as news that the Fed will increase its open market purchase pushed prices up. Yields closed around 2.55%. Gold and oil settled up at $49 and $929.50 as investors pushed funds into these commodities.

Big news from the tech sector today as International Business Machines [IBM: 91.95, -0.96 (-1.03%)] is in talks to purchase the ailing hardware maker Sun Microsystems [JAVA: 8.89, +3.92 (+78.87%)].  The two Companies have not outright stated anything, but sources close to both sides say an agreement is fast approaching. Could this be a strategic maneuver for IBM as competitors are beefing up their offerings in the data center space?   After all, CEO Palmisano did say he is now on

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      As the fallout in the financial markets continues to unwind, a number of companies have bolted down balance sheets and insured some cash flows by cutting their once attractive dividends.  In the past month we have seen the likes of General Electric [GE: 10.32, +0.32 (+3.20%)], JP Morgan Chase [JPM: 27.11, +1.97 (+7.84%)], Bank of America [BAC: 7.67, +1.40 (+22.33%)], Pfizer [PFE: 14.25, -0.01 (-0.07%)] and Alcoa [AA: 5.48, -0.11 (-1.97%)] all cut these coveted yields, proving that this trend has extended into and beyond the financial sector.  However, one sector that has maintained their healthy yields has been the utilities sector.  While equity prices in the sector have been beaten down with the overall market, there is still a basket of companies that have the means to continue redistributing lucrative cash flows to investors.  By no means are

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Jon Stewart torched Jim Cramer live on TV, but did he do more harm than good by slamming long-term investing as well?

For anyone who didn't catch it on March 12, comedian Jon Stewart put to shame many hard-nosed financial journalists when he caught CNBC's Jim Cramer in outright lies about his scamming ways running hedge funds.

Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," also blasted Cramer for his less-than-substantive antics on CNBC's "Mad Money" show. 

We should all stand up and applaud Stewart's performance. But he took it too far when talking about how his elderly mother had bought into the industry's long-term investing mantra.

Stewart should've stayed on-topic, drilling Cramer and not letting him off the hot seat. Instead, he ventured too far afield when relating the apparent drubbing his mom took in the markets during the ongoing recession.

Although ex-journalist Cramer is the sort of slumdog

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Notes from the

Investment Underground

Wednesday, March 18, 2008 Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Plastic Paddies… The now and future inflation… Spendaholics Anonymous… Waiting for the Treasuries bubble to pop… The perversity of ‘self-stimulation’… Paul Volcker’s two-tier financial system… Notes in “Fantasyland”… Going to ground in Ireland… And more!

*** Paddy’s Day celebrations are over. Yesterday, the streets of Buenos Aires filled up with lots of Latin “plastic paddies.” All very strange indeed. More on this below.

*** This morning, the Financial Times reports that Mr. Market is waiting to see whether the Fed will start buying long-term U.S. Treasuries to further ‘stimulate’ the economy.

And with rates at near zero levels, it’s running out of ammo. Talking to CNBC yesterday, Dr. Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report said

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I am moving in blindly behind Macro Man in his reiteration of the shock and awe effect of today's announcement by the Fed that they are going to do pretty much what it takes and most important that they now will be buyers of treasuries.

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January indicates that the economy continues to contract. Job losses, declining equity and housing wealth, and tight credit conditions have weighed on consumer sentiment and spending. Weaker sales prospects and difficulties in obtaining credit have led businesses to cut back on inventories and fixed investment. U.S. exports have slumped as a number of major trading partners have also fallen into recession. Although the near-term economic outlook is weak, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, together with fiscal and monetary stimulus, will contribute

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Last year, I developed the Eva Longoria Stock Index. Since Eva is now appearing on the new Microsoft (MSFT) TV commercials, replacing Jerry Seinfeld, I thought it would be appropriate to update her index for this year. Components of the Eva Longoria Stock Index: Hanes (HBI) celebrity endorsement New York & Company (NWY) celebrity endorsement BEBE (BEBE) SPORT celebrity endorsement Magnum ice cream brand owned by Unilever (UN) - celebrity endorsement Pepsi (PEP) celebrity endorsement Range Rover made by Land Rover, subsidiary of Ford Premier Automotive Group, a division of the Ford Motor Company (F) - celebrity endorsement Starred in Desperate Housewives produced by ABC Television owned by Disney (DIS), also starred in ABC's remake of Dragnet Starred in The ...