The Obama honeymoon did not last as long as it took him and Chief Justice Roberts to stumble through the Oath of Office, requiring them to take a “mulligan.” There is a lot of hope among average citizens and high approval ratings for the new President, but plenty of skepticism from the Wall Street pundits.

Trading Obama

The market is waiting for specifics on TARP, housing, and the stimulus package.  A large portion of the punditry is prepared to criticize any plan as one or more of the following:

Too large or too small;
Adding excessively to debt or crushing revenues;
Laden with pork or not aimed at real projects;
Emphasizing tax cuts (where people will not spend) or emphasizing government, where public spending crowds out private expenditures;
Restoring normal lending versus doing more of “what got us here.”

Viewed from this perspective, it is pretty clear that no policy …

 

 

Jane Bryant Quinn On ETFs

The renowned financial columnist, now writing for Bloomberg News, focuses her attention today on exchange-traded funds and their advantages over active mutual funds.

The headline says it all: "Lame Fund Managers Head for an ETF Thumping."

You can read the column here.

 

Follow-Up On Inverse & Leveraged Returns

In case you missed it, or didn't read this column, TheStreet.com ran a guest piece last month by Eric Oberg explaining how inverse and leveraged funds don't always provide the exact returns they're shooting to mimic in any given index.

The piece spawned a flood of copy cat articles, trying to pick up on the fact that providing 200% or 300% leverage is tricky since working with futures on a daily basis is more art than science. 

The original by Oberg, a retired Goldman Sachs managing director in fixed-income, commodities and currencies,  still might be the best. Now, he has a

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Unless you are playing daily swings, the short sector ETFs are victims of volatilty and aren't working for investors who don't have the time, money or risk to day trade.  Be like Whitney and say -- Ah Hell to the No. Great article on theStreet.com by Eric Oberg - Given that the double-levered long-side ProShares Ultra ...