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  • Quarterly Forecast: Third Quarter 2008

    As we begin the new quarter, now is an excellent time to take stock of your basic investment thesis. Ask yourself if your allocations still reflect what you think the world is going to look like over the next several months. And as part of that process, I'm here to tell you that making "financial" decisions based solely on "financial" inputs grossly oversimplifies the way the world really works. As I've said before, investing in debt, equity, or commodity markets without geopolitical intelligence is like trading juice futures without getting a weather forecast. You can do it, but good luck to you. I get my geopolitical intelligence from Stratfor. My friend George Friedman and his team have just published their 3rd Quarter Forecast. I got George to give me a copy I can share with you in this Special Edition of Outside the Box. As a Stratfor Member, you can get the 3Q Forecast - as well as their other forecasts and daily analyses - at a preferential rate available to my readers by clicking here. I strongly encourage you to add this valuable weapon to your investing arsenal....
  • The Road To Revulsion

    What does a bubble look like and how do they end? In this week's Outside the Box, James Montier of Societe Generale in London looks at not only the psychological analysis, but also at the propensity for commentators to continually proclaim the end of the problem and a resumption of business as usual. He includes a fascinating piece from Marc Faber documenting the various quotes about how well the economy was doing from 1928-32. This makes for fun, if a little sobering, reading. I think you will find this letter very interesting....
  • Fooling With Inflation

    This week in Outside the Box we look at Bill Gross's recent essay on measuring inflation. How you measure inflation makes a difference not only in social security payments but also in what your real returns on bonds are. As Bill notes, there is a...
  • The Shadow Knows

    This week in Outside the Box we will look at Bill Gross of Pimco's latest essay, addressing the ever expanding economic repercussions of the poorly understood CDO/CLO market, the off balance sheet structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and the economic...