New Product Idea: Titanium-cut Oatmeal

Most fancy restaurants and hotels offer steel-cut oatmeal. But, last time I checked, steel is not that hard a substance. On the absolute hardness scale, it rates an 80 or 90 as compared to 1600 for a diamond. Until I can feel diamond dust in my bowels, there's good money to be made in oatmeal.

Exotic Plush Pillowmakers Upgraded to Maybe Buy

Continuing with our earlier analysis of a potential pillow pair trade, our staff has recently upgraded our position on exotic plush pillow makers from "Do Not Buy" to "Maybe Buy." Reasons for the upgrade include strong YOY growth in plush pillow sales volume, especially in the very competitive food facsimile space, despite tough comps as well as the broadening demand as people recognize the excellence of novelty plush. It doesn't hurt that Kaiser sleeps on this every night.

Hamburger Pillow:

This is the biggest Cheeseburger ever! With this big Cheeseburger pillow, whether you are watching TV or taking a rest, it will provide you with the best comfort! It is very soft and cuddle! There are cheese, lettuce, and beef inside.

Recommendation: We maintain our "Long" rating for pillow makers with emerging market focus, and our "Short" rating for domestic pillow makers, while upgrading Exotic Plush Pillows to a "Maybe Buy."

Incredibly True Quick Serve Restaurant Truths

The CFO of Burger King is named Cedric Burgher. Link BK CFO. This incredibly true turth is even more incredible when you come to grips with the fact that the suffix for Burger King employee emails is @whopper.com.

The founder and CEO of McDonald's is not the Hamburgler as some people mistakenly presume. Although, it is true that he did attempt to "hamburgle" McD's in a failed early 1980's LBO.

JD's Favorite Soup Recipe

1) Order cheese pizza from your finest local supplier.
2) Put it in a bowl.
3) Eat with spoons.

Serves 2.

Monopoly Board Game: Playing with Real Money and a Developed Capital Market

How does one play Monopoly with real money and a functioning capital market with an an interest rate based on the "Trip Around the Board" unit of time all the while maintaining the quirky board specific events?

This is our project.

Long or Short Capital has established these preliminary rules following our initial dilligience.

1. The game should use some set a ratio as an exchange rate of dollars to monopoly dollars as an initial buy-in. Players should not be able to exchange money in or out of the game until the game is finished.
   
   
2. Players would have to start with very little money forcing them to have to raise capital for anything but the most marginal investments.
   
   
3. All asset transactions as well as mergers are permitted, with the stipulation that terms under which all transactions occur are upheld and honored.
   
   
4. There should be at least 6 players, 2 of which will be bankers (see below).
   
   
5. The game would definitely need one permanent banker, perhas two to prevent monopolistic banking practices. The bankers would have to be judged by the same scale as the players --profits generated through savvy banking. The wrinkle is that you would probably have to judge one banker's profit making against the others.
   
   
6. Game Duration: Time delimited or turn delimited or until one player has a made amount of money or until only one non-banker player is left standing?

Long or Short Capital will continue to revise the game by thinking "Big Thoughts" and by listening to input from both readers and the illiterate, until a proper Capital Market Monopoly Board Game (CMMBG) has been resolved. Then we we will host a game. Possibly online and to a flurry of lawsuits.

Are Diamonds Marketed at the Idiot Demographic?

Say Forever I Do with an uncut bag o' diamonds "mixed with the natural elements they are found." Perhaps the missing link from diamonds to the Idiot Demographic.

Счастливого отпуска!! or Is Russia A Place to Invest or a Place to Fear?

This will be a point/counterpoint analysis. Kaiser, unbeknownst to him until now and fresh off a trip to Germany, will supply the counterpoint.

A common investing theme is that Russia is the place to put your money. Why?

Burgeoning middle class!!
Favorable demographics!!
Heavily educated human capital base from which to draw!!
More oil than T. Boone Pickens!!
Business friendly, and otherwise unfriendly, Dictator Tsar General-Secretary President Putin!!
Tradition of outlining and executing 3-5 year plans!!
Tradition of strongly protected property rights, economic openness and political stability!!
Literature with greats like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn!!
And for the kids...GULAGS!!

Well sorry to be the turd in the blinchiki but Russia is jockeying to try and do the only thing they know to try and do: nuke the USA and rule the world. They don't care about economic openness. They don't care about working hard and they don't believe in capitalism. They want three things, in no specific order.

Vodka.
World Domination.
To do evil.

It is an entire nation which channels the ethos of lazy ammoral kleptocracy. When I was there 11 years ago, my main takeaway is that if there is one redeeming quality about Russia it is the null set. When I have studied Russia, it has seemed like a good place to be unhappy, or to be purged, or to be evil, or to die from nuclear fallout, or to have your loans defaulted on and your money swindled.

And Russia is not a place to invest money for these very same reasons. They don't have ethics. They refuse to live without corruption which would make a Chinese Judge blush. They are both willing and able to expropriate any foreign direct investment. And don't think they aren't still cooking up ways to drop Cuban paratroopes into small unsuspecting Coloradan towns.

Russia is a place to FEAR. Avoid buying stocks, bonds, derivatives and any other security or financial interest which are dependent upon Russian assets....Unless you look forward to waking up a year or two for now and opening your personal portfolio account and wondering "Hey where did my Gazprom go!" as you look at a 'Thank you Comrade' note signed "Sincerely, V Putin."

Recommendation: Ask your financial advisor about low cost index funds which track the Moscow Stock exchange. Then, "do not buy" them.

Piratery fka Piracy: Primer to Investing in Cutlasses, Rum and Pillaging

Pirates.

Piracy used to be an important industry providing raping and pillaging services for emerging market economies and sovereign states. Fine countries such as Trinidad and Tobago were built on the pirate economy. Can you imagine England if pirates hadn't been around? It would now be the United Kingdom of Mexico and London would be New Seville, had it not been for an enterprising fleet of bucaneers.

Pirate Opportunities

Over the past couple decades, shipping companies, luxury cruiselines and international boating have all seen large increases in net profits. However, there has not been a commensurate rise in piratery.

Piratery provides a compelling ROI for the entrepeneurial seaman. For an investment of $20-30k in a boat, some deckhands and rental cutlasses, a pirate captain can realize a 50-60% ROI in one year. Given the proper locale, of course. For example, the coast of Somalia is a competitive, if fragmented, market. See Somali Pirates Out of Control or Somali Pirates Free Ship After Month of Captivity or Pirates Attack Cruisership or the free daily paper's headline from yesterday simply titled "ARGH!" for more details.

But setting up a lair in a place like Isla Margarita, located off the northern coast of Venenzuela, would be an environment with relatively low piratery penetration but proximity to major cruiseline and OPEC oil routes. An added bonus, Isla Margarita is where non-pirate berserker Lope de Aguirre reached his crescendo.



You need to strike while the iron is hot and not be heedin any naysayers or scallywags. Piratery is your path to financial freedom. You'll be flying the skull & crossbones over a Jupiter, FL mansion in no time.

Recommendation: Depending on your investing horizon, commence pirate raids on commercial trading routes immediately or ask your financial advisor about low cost index funds which track the piratery index. Swig a few shots of Mount Gay, if need be.