Ned Schmidt's Blog

Apples are, according to many nutritionists, good for us. However, one has to be sure to choose the right ones as AAPL has demonstrated in recent months. AAPL, despite the Street’s claim of working its way toward $1,000 by now, has fallen hard from the tree.

To date seems only one group truly loves the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Largely, that group is comprised of bankers and bond dealers that profit from selling bonds to the Federal Reserve. Bernanke and the bond dealers have become BFF, Best Friends Forever.

Beef prices are moving higher for a variety of reasons. The falling prices of this Summer set up conditions that would lead to higher prices. That decline in beef prices during the Summer was due to continued liquidation of the cattle herd as a result of dry conditions and herd reductions at feed lots as feed grain costs rose to unprofitable levels.

J. Wellington Wimpy was always one of our favorites. The guy was somewhat of a gourmet as his favorite food was hamburgers. He was also a pal of Popeye, an individual addicted to spinach.

With the U.S. mired in the longest running period of high unemployment since the last great failure of Keynesian economics, the Great Depression, this jobs report should have been welcome news. Instead, Gold, and most other markets, seemed to plunge into a black hole.

Technology businesses have always seemed to this researcher to be a losers’ game. Soybeans, in the past decade or so, have been converted to a winning game. Why play with losers when one can play with winners?

Owning Gold as wealth insurance is so widely accepted now as to make it a mainstream investment. A portfolio without Gold is like owning a home without insurance in a region where hurricanes are a normal weather event.

One of the secrets to successful fishing is to fish in a lake with fish in it. Fishing in a lake void of fish is not likely to be a worthwhile venture, though it still beats a day of work. That simple reality is something much of the investment community has never really understood.

Wow! The hyperventilating hyperbole on hyperinflation to be brought about by QE-3 was near overwhelming. From some of what we read, QE-3 is to cure all the economic woes of the U.S., cause hyperinflation, crash the U.S. dollar, prevent male patten baldness, push $Gold to $2,400, and cause the death of our favorite pet.

Most investors never heard of WASDE until recent years. With origins in the need for an understanding of U.S. grain supply during World War I, the first reports were created that came to be WASDE. The USDA’s report, World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, has become one of the key reports for investors and governments around the world.