I have made the case on numerous occasions that the Global Financial Crisis was not a “failure of capitalism” or “free markets”. I’m reading a great little book called Shakedown Socialism by Russian emigre Oleg Atbashian which I think sums it up very nicely, I hope Mr. Atbashian does not mind that I plan to post some choice excerpts from his excellent book here.…

Consider this for a moment.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently received a letter from Republican Senator Pat Toomey.  In the last week of January, Senator Toomey (a member of the Tea Party caucus) introduced into Congress what he called the Full Faith And Credit Act.  It has since come to be known in US media circles as the Debt Doomsday Act. …

It was only yesterday I wrote “The Problem with Marketing” and today a friend sent me a link for the pitch page for some guy named Trey Smith and his “Software System”. My friend asked me to watch it and tell him what I think.

I never made it through the video, because frankly, life’s too short to sit through something you already know the ending for, especially when it’s a marketing pitch for a bullshit marketing course teaching you how to make “big bucks”, in this case on my home turf…the software business.…

I randomly punched up a podcast on my iphone this morning on my way to the office and it was a short “introduction to information marketing lesson” from Joe Vitale for Nightingale-Conant. I’ve got a few Joe Vitale books and audiobooks (that marketing “works” is not being disputed here), and while I find some parts of them interesting and instructive, there’s a common theme running through them which I find indicative of online marketing gurus: marketing as an end unto itself.…

A friend of mine, Aram Fuchs runs a fund called FertileMind Capital out of New York. We met online through a mutual interest in examining new media companies and assets from a value investing framework and have since met in-person. He recently sent me a copy of his annual letter to shareholders, his fund returned 21.99% in 2010 (compared to %15.06 on the S&P500 and %11.02 for the DJIA).…

I hope everyone had a great holiday and new years!

It’s time to reset our profit counter to zero and start looking for new profitable trades along with managing our current open positions on our small cap stocks which we continue to hold with gains of 66%, 35% and 10%.

Last year was a tough one as the stock market chopped around in a very large range giving off buy and sell signals every week and some times every other day… If you understand how to trade options then these conditions can make you a boat load of money.…