Jul 24, 2008, 3:02PM While some people continue to debate whether or not we’re actually in a recession, Apple (AAPL) went a step further in the 10Q it filed yesterday, using stark new language to describe the state of the economy in its risk factors section:The Company’s... [#]

Jul 24, 2008, 11:00AM Cars, plasma TVs, fancy new clothes. They are all assets that start falling in value the minute you buy them. Add to that list old leveraged loans that financed the big buyouts of the credit boom and are selling for around 80 cents on the dollar. [#]

Jul 24, 2008, 10:23AM Geoffrey Rogow of Dow Jones Newswires has this report on what short-sellers are doing to maintain their bearishness.The Securities and Exchange Commission’s move to curb “naked” short selling may have blunted some of the selling pressure on financial... [#]

Jul 24, 2008, 6:13AM Consider a hypothetical world economy with assets denominated in dollars and euros.Define the exchange risk premium on dollar denominated assets as: rp = iUS - i* - E(ds)where E(.) is the expectations operator, and ds is the change in the log exchange... [#]

Jul 24, 2008, 12:23PM I found this article about Dow Jones and Brookfield Asset Management collaborating on a series of new infrastructure indexes that have been created to be licensed into investment products.I called into the phone number on the DJ Brookfield PDF to see if... [#]

Jul 24, 2008, 9:20PM DJ Indexes has rolled out an entire family of indexes covering the global infrastructure sector. [#]

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Jul 23, 2008, 9:32PM Political scientists roll out their predictionsIF THIS summer is any indication, November's American presidential election will be an exciting opportunity to test the latest political models. Not long ago, Justin Wolfers described a wager he'd made with... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 1:59PM Rob Curran of Dow Jones Newswires has this report on commodities and related stocks, and what may be in store.If there is a speculative commodities bubble, we’re in the early stages of its deflation. To some investors it may already feel like something... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 3:34PM Pundits tell us that it’s too early to give any credence to general election polls, but what about economic models?Source: Macroeconomic AdvisersMacroeconomic Advisers today released the results of its election model, predicting that Democrat Barack... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 7:21AM Let me start off with two Columnist Conversation posts that talk about crowded trades:David MerkelWhen Is a Trade Crowded?8/9/2006 9:35 AM EDT At the end of every day, every asset is owned by somebody. If you want to count in the shenanigans that occur... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 12:18PM This is a shot of our tool shed, a long way from Norm Abram. You might notice a nail gun and compressor, a couple of cordless drills, a welder, somewhere in there is a chop saw and, well you get the idea.All that stuff allows us to take care of most of... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 8:52AM Below we have updated strategist price targets for the S&P 500 from the weekly survey done by Bloomberg. The most recent firm to drop out from forecasting is Wachovia. Since we last updated the list below, Lehman, Merrill, HSBC and Credit Suisse have... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 7:03AM The New Yorker looks at the GSEs. One tidbit:It wasn’t until 1968 that Fannie was privatized....The main reason for the change was surprisingly mundane: accounting. At the time, Lyndon Johnson was concerned about the effect of the Vietnam War on the... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 12:21PM After carefully reviewing the current status of supply and demand for crude oil, thoughtful minds might reasonably conclude that the price of crude oil has peaked.For starters, airlines are going bankrupt left and right, and the level of route reductions ... [#]

Jul 23, 2008, 3:06PM Rising food and energy prices have received a lot of media attention lately, along with concerns about the threat of inflation. The chart above (using BLS data via Economagic) shows a sample of products that have experienced significant deflation in the... [#]

Jul 21, 2008, 11:32AM The world is coming to an end. We know that already.But for a world that is coming to an end, a lot of companies are doing remarkably well. The current crop of earnings reports has been nowhere near as bad as many Wall Street observers—us... [#]

Jul 22, 2008, 6:48AM As someone who works with traders across a variety of settings, I've learned to be sensitive to their self-talk: how they process markets and especially their own performance. We do not experience the world directly; rather, we actively interpret... [#]

Jul 21, 2008, 9:40AM Note:My continuing weekly commentary on Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis is being bumped for this roundtable; the commentary will appear here tomorrow morning. Sorry for the inconvenience.This is a new format for Gannon On Investing – a... [#]

Jul 21, 2008, 9:06PM Apple is just over overowned.Nobody owned it until it hit $170 on the way to $200. By than it was a foregone conclusion to the media. Apple could do no wrong. Every mutual fund had to have it on their sheets. [#]