Towards Prosperity: August 2010

Most folks are about as happy
as they make up their minds to be. 

~Abraham Lincoln 

 Not happy? Economy got your down?  Looking for positive signs?  Let me help; it’s pretty easy:

1)   Good news in global merger and acquisitions (M&A) in 2010: a whopping 68% of these M&As included cash in the deal versus only 62% in 2009.  This says to me that corporations have cash and are willing to spend it when they see an opportunity.

2)   This past week’s (it was really a couple weeks ago when it hit the press) biggest deal was all cash: the Intel $48 per share cash offer for McAffee.

3)   Now, to be fair, this M&A activity might just...

And we both feel lost. But I remember what Susan said:
How love is found in the things we've given up.
More than in the things that we have kept.
And ain't it funny what people say;
And ain't it funny what people write;
And ain't it funny how it hits you so hard
in the middle of the night.
    
     ~ Rich Mullins, 1993

Wednesday was another joyride in the market.  We gapped down, but then closed up after retracing the losses most of the day.  Bonds hit a new two-year high, so participants in our Ultra Income and Equity Income programs are doing nicely, even when Tuesday was down over 1.2%!  We will get this uncertainty, one...

When we are angry or depressed in our creativity,
we have misplaced our power. We have allowed
someone else to determine our worth, and then
we are angry at being undervalued.  

     ~ Julia Cameron 

And so it is on a day of remarkably low trading volume and remarkably high anxiety, we find it is easy to see (on the quote screens) the price of everything traded, and yet we know – in some ways the value of nothing out there.  And stocks seem undervalued to me. 

You may sense a little political thought in here tonight, but the reality is that we are waiting for so much government data – and wondering about too much government intervention in the free markets...

 The trees and I are shaken by the same wind.
 But, whereas the trees will lose their withered leaves
 I just can’t seem to let them loose…           
    
     ~ Tony Banks of Genesis, 1980

The market had a tough time shaking off a spate of bad news this week.  The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 0.4 percent to 1,071.69 at 4 p.m. in New York, the lowest level in a month and extending its weekly loss to 0.7 percent.

The good news, as my title opines, is that the U.S. Dollar was strong against all sixteen major currencies today.  With all the bad news, investors and traders are still flocking to...