European orders increase more than expected… Was Cash for Clunkers necessary?… Roubini sees a ‘W’ not a ‘V’… Lessons from Mary Poppins…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And welcome to another week, the last one in August! The weather here in St. Louis has shifted toward fall, which is my favorite season. Chuck is flying back home from San Francisco today and will be back in the saddle tomorrow. Both he and the big boss, Frank Trotter, sent me some great Pfennig pfodder over the weekend so lets get right to it.

The dollar continued to drift lower throughout the trading day on Friday, with the commodity currencies of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand leading the way. Confidence is returning to the markets, and investors are once again moving out of the ’safe havens’ of the Japanese yen and US dollar. The reports coming out of Jackson Hole indicate that central bankers believe

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Perhaps the mishmash of numbers floating around the housing market have you confused.  For those who follow the market closely, the daily news seems to bring a never-ending stream of contradictory data. 

Here are just a few statistics in the news lately from respected market mavens like the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices and the National Association of Realtors:

The “average” price of homes in the U.S. is down almost 35% from the record highs of 2006. “Median” housing prices are down 19% in 90% of the major markets in the United States. Building permits were up 4% in April from last year, and homebuilder confidence increased from 16 to 18.

So what do these numbers mean to you?

Probably nothing.

“It’s like a weatherman who combines conditions in Nome, Alaska and Clearwater, Florida and issues an “average” national forecast of 45 degrees,” according to

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When it comes to the U.S. stock market right now, the story continues to be about earnings. And this week will be no exception.

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), which reports today (Monday), remains among the last financials of note that has yet to announce its first-quarter performance, and the big bank figures to get a lot of attention as investors look to see how well Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (formerly known as “The Bull”) and Countrywide Financial Corp. have fit into the BofA family fold.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) (today) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) (Wednesday) will give investors a better idea of just how well the tech sector – which up to now has been quite hot – is really doing. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) (Thursday) will give investors an inside look at the

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Wall Street created the U.S. housing bubble and now it’s missing the real estate rebound.  And Andrew Waite understands why.

Waite is the publisher of the Personal Real Estate Investor, a glossy magazine that focuses on investors who buy houses or condos to manage for income or to fix up and sell for a profit. But he’s not some industry cheerleader whose statements are nothing but spin.

He’s a true expert on the U.S. housing sector who goes out of his way to “educate” journalists about the true state of the American housing market, and who criticizes most of the “indicators” in use as useless and irrelevant. Plus, as a onetime Wall Street venture-capitalist who subsequently joined Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road private equity crowd, Waite really understands how the Wall Street investment game is played - and, in the case of the

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Much like I did with Ctrip.com (CTRP) last week [May 2: Cutting Ctrip.com to Almost Nothing] I am going to cut these 3 positions to almost nil; they are small positions at this time as I cut them at lower prices, but the gains (% wise) have been huge, and the stocks are not near any major support. Fundamentals remain strong in all the stocks so there is no change in that area. Further, this does not mean the stocks need to pullback anytime soon but consistent with my strategy, I am simply going to take the last of these gains off the table and wait for meaningful pullbacks, after some staggering moves. These positions are in the 0.5-0.7% range of the portfolio, so I am essentially dropping them to what I call "holding positions" aka tiny positions (0.1% or 0.2%), but not selling them out ...