Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

The upshot is that the points where defensive or aggressive investment positions are most effective are also typically the points where one will, at least briefly, look like an idiot for taking them.
-Hostile Trends, John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

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Long Beer Diplomacy

Crack reporting from the WSJ undercovers an industry previously unknown to me: Beer Diplomacy. The increasingly multinational nature of business will only increase the demand for beer diplomats and consumer products diplomats in general. We are actively seeking ways to increase our exposure to this sector and will advise readers appropriately.

From the WSJ.
Anheuser-Busch has been a sponsor of the World Cup since 1986. And it didn't expect to find itself in this bind when it paid an estimated $80 million in 1998 for exclusive alcohol rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cup tournaments...German newspapers were reporting that beer fans were furious about the prospect of drinking the American brew at the tournament...If Anheuser-Busch insisted on enforcing its exclusivity, it was clear it would annoy some Germans who wanted to drink German beer and generate bad publicity for the company.
So Anheuser officials undertook an unprecedented act of beer diplomacy. Tony Ponturo, Anheuser-Busch vice president of global media and sports marketing and the executive who signed the World Cup sponsorship deal...He proposed letting Bitburger [a chief competitor] sell its beer along with Bud at the stadiums and at some promotional events. In return, the American company would gain the right to use the name Bud, instead of just Anheuser-Busch, on billboards along the fields -- and visible to viewers watching on TV at home.

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Long: Death Squad Start-ups

Dedicated to providing our readers with the bloody edge of globally diverse venture opportunities, our recent research has revealed that multiple opportunities in the "Death Squad Start Up" business exist. This research supersedes our recent recommendations in the armed piracy sector.

Start up costs are extraordinarily small, given the strength of the U.S. Dollar in the region and the low cost of critical hardware (RPGs, AK-47 models, etc.) many of which are...

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Rotten Tomatoes in Movie Theaters for RGC and CKEC

Movie theater chain AMC has talked a lot about the potential causes of box office decline. This slide, filed with the SEC, shows that box office receipts have decline in tandem with the number of rotten tomatoes per movie. Quite frankly, I do not understand why movie audiences enjoy watching movies in theaters with rancid fruit but it begs the question: Why haven't the movie theaters increased their tomatoes per theater allocation?



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Smurfiest Smurf Investment Vacation Homes in Turkey

What would you say if I said that you could live like a smurf? Would you say was I acting a little smurfy? Or that I was positively smurftastic? If the latter, then we have a great investment opportunity which will allow you to take advantage of the Turkish real estate boom.

Smurf Village located in Akbuk Bay, Turkey, within 500 meters of the Aegean Sea.




There are five discreet reasons to invest in a vacation home within Smurf village:

...

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If Excel was a Drug, I'd Sell it by the Gram

Our research has uncovered conclusive video evidence that Glenn Hubbard's impersonator and business school hanger-ons look incredibly silly when dancing in suits. I eagerely await Dance 360: Business School Edition, which I'm sure will air right after The Apprentice: Dance 360 Edition on the CW.

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If Race Car Drives Have Corporate Sponsorships Why Don't Bankers?

In the past, we have talked about the huge underunderstood markets for Financial Mudpies and Emerging Market Pillows. We believe a similar contagion could break out in the underundertsood Advertising in Finance market.

It's all about eyeballs and disposable income, so why not place your advert in the areas where both are most concentrated?

The financial profession and its customers have more money than they know to do with, which is leading to private equity firms throwing billions to...

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Why does Google Talk Make the letters "BP" Blue When You Type It?

This now confounds us and we need it solved. Mail an email to misterjuggles@gmail.com and tell us why Google Talk makes the text "BP" blue in messages. We will paypal $50 to the best* answer as of a week from now. The criteria are both subjective and objective as determined by our advanced DCF Correctness Model. We reserve the right to republish the theories which are especially awesome, with attribution of course.

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The Big V, the Big C and the Big WTF

The UK is a land of fear. Everything is geared to frightening the populace into a frenzied state. The free daily papers consist almost entirely of fear mongering journalism about violence in schools, poisons in foods, death by cellphone radiation, minicab rape, murders of Britons on Holiday, genetically altered crops. All of this is complemented by a steady torrent of T&A, usually on the same page. Mind the gap, mind the taxi, mind the man with the gun, mind the man about to violently rape you, mind the totty, mind the CCTV, mind the et cetera. Big Brother will never stop reminding you to mind while you are in the UK. Even the escalators have stop buttons positioned every few feet, as if escalator rides are a high risk endeavour.

This context will not help you when faced with the Creepy V.



No, this is not an educational ad warning about the dangers of "vagina" to young men (which are plentiful) nor is it an ad for outsourcing child molestation to letters of the alphabet. The Creepy V is the avatar used to market Virgin's new Cancer Cover product which "can give you a cash lump sum to help you financially if you’re diagnosed with cancer in the future." I'm not a big believer in insurance...


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Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?

Harry Lime: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.
-From the movie version of Graham Greene's The Third Man:

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When You Know You've Been Shorted

My GF: How do I make it so I'm invisible on Google messenger?
Me: But I'm the only person on your Google Talk buddy list...
My GF: So how do I do that?

Recommendation: Market underweight me.


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"Smith Barney, Why do you hate your customers?" A Play by JD

A tale of dinosaurs in the age of robots.

"For the customer, who doesn't enjoy high levels of service and has no respect for their money, Financial Management Account, by Smith Barney"



JD: I have a brokerage account with you. A relative used to work there and having a live broker helps for things like buying producers of Japanese toilets or Russian Petroleum on their native exchanges rather than illiquid domestic ADR's.

Smith Barney: Yes, I am a well-known, venerable brokerage house, built upon the philosophy that customers should be rich, have low expectations and a deep self-hatred...

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Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.
-Leo Tolstoy

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McDonald's Gets It

McDonald's (MCD) is known for supplying products so good that they're dangerous, whether they be steaming hot coffee or obesity causing french fries. But they should be known more for getting it. Yesterday, McD's announced that they will be selling exercise DVD's along with their fast food. They get 'em coming and going...

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Short Coca-Cola Blak

My position is so short, it may actually go negative short, which would be a long and would be terrible for all. Just like this horrendous disgusting concoction from Hades. Coke with double the caffeine, half the carbs and infinitely more "rich coffee essence."

Just as a service to the Coca-Cola Company (KO) here are some other combinations which, if you care about your shareholders even a little, we recommend you should never combine.

• Mayonnaise, beer and walnuts.
• Corriander and Bette Middler...

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Long Japanese Bathroom Technology

Returning from a recent trip to Tokyo and enamored with Japanese technology in general -- and bathroom-related technology in particular -- I recommended that an acquaintaince of mine pick up a few shares of Toto. Two weeks later, I find out that he has invested in a comeback attempt by Toto, the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning band responsible for the hit, Africa.

I suppose I should have been more specific, especially since US investors are typically skeptical that a toilet maker can sustain a $3.6bn market cap and a 37x P/E. To clarify and rectify my mistake, I hereby formally recommend a long position in...

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I Will Teach You to Be Rich: Clean Tech Pure Play

Readers are always emailing me, asking me to explain exactly how I maintain such an enviable track record. So here's a step-by-step case example of how to make money on a startup.

Step 1: Find a hot sector
Investors often talk about the "rising tide" law of investing: better to own a mediocre company in a great sector than a great company in a terrible industry. When a sector gets hot, the crap often rises as fast (or faster) than the cream.
No sector is hotter right now than "CleanTech." How hot? Big name venture capitalists are now raising cleantech-only funds. Bush discusses clean energy in every address he makes. And solar power -- solar! have I gone back to the future? -- stocks like Evergreen Solar (ESLR) and SunPower (SPWR) are doubles coming out of their IPOs.


Step 2: Create a pure play
Investors love pure plays. When a sector is hot, they want as much exposure as possible. Take online advertising. Sure, News Corp (NWS-A) owns MySpace -- the fastest growing web site and community -- but you have to buy a whole bunch of newspaper, cable, and satellite TV assets too. The performance of those assets will drown out any positive developments at MySpace. Instead, investors clamor for stocks like Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) ...they're pure plays.

So for cleantech, I will start a company from scratch to ensure it's a pure play.

Step 3...

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It's Direktanlage Wednesday!

Everyone post your insider information in the comments section of this post. There is no way the SEC will find out about us this time! Make sure your comments follow our specific Direktanlage Trader checklist as outlined below.

Comments must:

• Contain insider information that will let us reap fraudulent (and likely abstract) profits.
• Be highly illegal.
• Be sourced from a Croatian, German, Russian or someone of evil descent.
• Give guidance on alleged inside-trader Monika Vujovic...

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Disruptive Jobs of the Past

The new X-Men comes out this summer and on scanning the cast list, I noticed that Psylocke will be played by Mei Melancon, who has done little other work of merit, except for an appearance on Deadwood. Her exact role:

"Deadwood" - Childish Games (2005) TV Episode (as Meiling Melancon) .... Chinese Slavewhore

If ever there was a disruptive industry, slavewhoring would have to be it. Back in the good old days, being a land (capital) owner meant you would have your labor done by your slaves and your sexual needs satisfied at the local whorehouse. This was just how it was done, and...

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Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

From Ruminations on Russia

"The job of a Russian man is to plant:
His house in the ground (sic).
His seed in a woman.
His neighbour in jail."

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Short Dick Grasso

Today, a recurring Dealbreaker feature involving Dick Grasso has spurred our analysts to break another aspect of the scandal involving David Delainey and Mark Davison, first exposed by Long or Short and threatening to engulf Wall Street: Star Trek Celebrity Imposters on Wall Street.

The Dick Grasso article clued in one of our staff who, on further investigation, has revealed that Mr. Grasso is also involved in the imposter scandal. Mr. Grasso has reportedly been taking fees for appearances at various Star Trek functions as "Arturus," a guest character on Star Trek Voyager played by Ray Wise...



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Awkward Moments in Marketing

From a very earnest, deep-voiced P&G (PG) advertising executive on a recent conference call:

"When a girl starts menstruating, we want to be there...on the radio, in print, and on the web sites with relevant advertising."

From a very earnest, eager McKinsey consultant:

"Now we're focused on figuring out what it is about Metamucil that makes it so attractive."

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Satan's Portfolio: MO, RMBS, DLM

Here is an explanation of Johnny's Satan's Portfolio Investing Thesis.

Altria (ticker: MO)

Why would a $145bn market cap company change its name? If it's business was selling products to slowly kill its customers through addictive fire-lit tobacco. Satan knows that even that kind of mortal churn is capable of generating a stream of free cash flow to reward its stockholders. He also relates personally to the business strategy implicit behind the name change:

“They are trying to bury themselves. This is a name and brand the objective of which is to make themselves invisible.”

Invisible merchant of death. Play to the Dark One's ego, Altria, while selling your murderous and addictive maccaroni & cheese......

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Biopiracy Downgraded to "Not At All Pirate Like"

The recent Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy do not play into the piratery investing series, because they are not truly piracy. If so-called "Bio-Pirates" were using frigates, sloops and galleons to plunder the likes of Genetech (DNA) off the Barbary coast, then aye, we could approve on the basis of demonstrated piratery...

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Short Cocaine, Heroin, Microsoft

Recent research by Long or Short questions the purchasing power of the Family of Four ("FoF"). During the process of investigating pricing changes relevant to the decline of FoF purchasing power, Long or Short also identified several trends in the wholesale and retail drug trade.

Increasing prices in Cocaine and other "A-List" narcotics have jump-started online disintermediation of street dealers and spawned...

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Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing Abraham Lincoln

That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
-Abraham Lincoln

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