by David Zeiler
While impressive in many ways, the Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) Nexus 7 tablet unveiled today (Wednesday) will struggle in a market already teeming with offerings from other tech titans.
Key competitors include tablet market leader Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), Samsung Electronics Co. (PINK: SSNLF), Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and as of last week, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT).
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by Don Miller
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With oil production soaring in the United States, shale oil stocks will be pumping out profits for years to come.
It's all thanks to huge deposits of shale oil.
At least four new major shale oil plays including the Bakken in Montana and North Dakota, the Eagle Ford in Texas, and the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and New York, may have more than 20 billion barrels each of recoverable oil.
Each of these new shale oil plays has the potential to double the total reserves we have today.
In fact, the "shale oil revolution" will soon make the United States the world's leading producer of crude oil, a report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) recently predicted.
The United States will produce more than 10.7 million barrels of oil per day by 2017, the report said. That's more than any other country, including Saudi Arabia.
And even though oil prices are in a short-term swoon, the glut of shale oil is about to make savvy investors a huge fortune.
That's why you need to take a hard look at a particular group of shale oil stocks that stand to benefit most from this boom.
But first, you need to know how this came about.
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JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) cannot escape its enormous loss on a credit derivatives bet gone bad.
The London Whale trade, as it is informally known, was originally reported as a $2 billion loss. But now The New York Times has reported the loss will total $9 billion — and maybe more.
But Money Morning subscribers were well aware of the possibility JP Morgan's losses would exceed $4 billion or $5 billion. Money Morning Capital Wave Strategist Shah Gilani repeatedly said this "hedge" was really a bet, and was among the first to predict how large the losses would eventually turn out to be.
Gilani, who hosts the radio show "On the Money!" in addition to his Money Morning duties, had this to say about JP Morgan's ill-conceived bet:
"What it does is shine the light on what is actually happening. It's not the loss in terms of the money, it's the loss in terms of faith for [CEO] Jamie Dimon, that he has been pushing hard against the regulators… in particular to the Volcker Rule, saying there is no need for it and it and that banks have a good handle on their risk… and that we (JP Morgan) don't have a problem with it because we are just hedging."
Just hedging? Gilani certainly doesn't think so.
Gilani said that statement is a flat-out lie and that Dimon has basically lied to Congress in his testimonies over the past weeks.
In the testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last week, Dimon said the London unit had "embarked on a complex strategy" that exposed the bank to greater risk even though it had intended to minimize risk.
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by Diane Alter
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U.S. President Barack Obama and his camp won a battle today (Thursday) when the Supreme Court handed down its landmark Obamacare ruling and upheld the constitutionality of the controversial healthcare law.
Just after 10 a.m. EDT word came that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld a key provision of the law that requires all individuals to have health insurance.
Starting in 2014, Obamacare, more formally known as The Protection and Affordable Care Act, is set to impose massive penalties (taxes) on young workers, small business and others who choose not to buy health insurance.
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After the U.S. Federal Reserve's announcement last week that it would keep doing Operation Twist, silver prices dropped 4% the following day.
Adding to the white metal's decline was weakening in U.S. manufacturing, a declining Chinese factory sector and worries about the Eurozone.
It wasn't a great week.
Jeffrey Sica, chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management LLC, said to Reuters, "When you see slowdown in China and in the United States and the debt crisis accelerate in Europe, it leads people to believe that we will have significant depreciation, especially when commodities and precious metals prices have been so tied into the monetary policy."
Since last week's decline, silver prices have been mixed and yesterday (Wednesday) they closed down 0.13% to $26.91.
The markets have a slew of economic data to review and mull over this week along with the two-day European Council meeting that begins Thursday in Brussels.
Despite last week's slump, there's still reason to be investing in silver. Its prices in the first quarter fared better than the other precious metals.
As legendary investor Jim Rogers told a financial advisor summit Wednesday, the likelihood of more central bank action around the world is bullish for silver.
"Governments print money – that's all they know," said Rogers. "So own real assets like silver… and you'll survive."
Rogers said of all the precious metals if he had to buy just one, it would be silver.
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Volatility in the stock market today is high due to several factors both domestically and abroad.
The Obamacare ruling is the main driver causing uncertainty in the market, followed by the start of the European Union summit today in Brussels.
The Obamacare ruling had been anticipated with such fervor that reporters camped in front of the Supreme Court for days before the decision.
They finally got one – and it may come as a surprise to many.
The controversial mandate that requires everyone to purchase healthcare by 2014 or pay a small fine was upheld. The vote came in at 5-4 with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito dissenting.
Chief Justice Roberts said that the mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause, but it will survive as a tax.
Republicans had been almost certain that the mandate would be stuck down and President Obama can now breathe a small sigh of relief that his healthcare overhaul has been upheld.
Back to the EU summit, which has been awaited with such pessimism that the yield on Spanish 10-year bonds has risen above 7% again and the euro slipped to a three-week low of $1.24 versus the dollar.
There is an unusual and detrimental air of division and discord among the European leaders heading into the summit. The continent needs to work towards more integration rather than fragmentation if they are to lay down a framework for better fiscal, financial and political union.
U.S. unemployment claims fell slightly from the 392,000 initial claims reported last week to a still alarmingly high number of 386,000 for the week ended June 23. The final estimate for the first quarter's gross domestic product (GDP) came in at the expected 1.9%, but that estimate had already been lowered last week by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Looking beyond these reports, here are some stocks in the headlines today.
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One day in 1983, my dad asked me a question over dinner after a long day at work.
He wanted to know what I knew about a little computer company called Microsoft. It was the brainchild of the son of one of his partners at Bogle & Gates, William H. Gates, Sr.
"Not much," I replied.
But I did tell my dad that I loved using MS-DOS in the computer lab with my friends. I was a card-carrying member of the nerd herd back in the day, so I spent a lot of time there and knew Microsoft's fledgling PC-based software pretty well.
My grandmother Mimi, though, had a different point of view. You've heard me mention her before.
She's the one who was widowed at an early age and became a savvy global investor long before people ever thought to look at the bigger picture.
Mimi didn't care that the buzz was about the MS-DOS language or even about computers. Having grown up in the Depression, she believed that what people would do with the technology was far more valuable.
She said she had confidence that Sr.'s son, Bill Gates Jr., understood this — which is why she invested heavily in the Microsoft IPO in 1986. Enough said.
Today, though, I think she'd voice an equally strong opinion about Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer. In fact, I think she'd fire him. Here's why….
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by Shah Gilani
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The markets are broken.
And what has to be done to fix them likely won't get done. That's because the folks capable of fixing them are actually captives of the folks who like them the way they are.
That's the bad news.
The good news is, if you understand what's wrong and who's responsible, you can actually make a lot of money playing the game the way it's been set up.
Let me explain.
First of all, what's happened isn't by some grand design. There is no great conspiracy to screw the public. (Not this time.) Rather, incremental changes in various corners of the capital markets manifested innumerable unintended consequences.
The net result is this: Our capital markets aren't functioning for the greater good of the economy and the nation. And the public is getting screwed. But you knew that.
The markets have become a kind of stacked deck in a rigged card game.
A game being played by a bunch of whispering pros against mostly deaf, dumb, and blind amateurs (yeah, I'm taking about too many people you know) in a shady casino overseen by pit bosses who work for the house – which is owned by the pros who set up the game in the first place.
I'm not going to break down what the incremental changes were that got us here. I've done that over innumerable articles I've written for, Forbes, Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch and right here.
This isn't about how we got here. This is about proving where we are now by means of a kind of grand supposition that hopefully is going to open your eyes. It's probably going to scare the you-know-what out of you.
Earlier I said the public is getting screwed, but you knew that.
How do I know that you know the public is getting screwed? Most people are out of the market. They are either on the sidelines or out of the game for good. They know the markets are a casino, and most people have come to realize that they have no idea what the game is, let alone how to play it.
And that, children, is the unhappy ending.
Precisely because the public is so leery of losing their shirts and knickers in the strip poker club, investing is a thing of the past.
Long-term investing is dead. Long live short-term trading.
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Investors impatiently waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court Obamacare ruling have just hours to go.
The Court is supposed to announce its decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, tomorrow (Thursday).
No matter what the ruling, there will be an immediate pronounced reaction in the markets.
This can already be seen with the movement in insurance company stocks as traders prepare for the Supreme Court action.
After rising 17.2% for 2012, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) has fallen 5.8% in market action over the last month. Up 5.2% for 2012, WellPoint Inc. (NYSE: WLP) is down 1.7% for the past five days.
The Supreme Court will likely act in one of four ways for the sweeping healthcare overhaul that was signed into law on March 23, 2010. Let's look at how each of the four Obamacare ruling outcomes could affect the markets.
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by David Zeiler
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U.S. President Barack Obama's chances for re-election in 2012 are increasingly tied to the fate of the U.S. economy, poll results show.
Meanwhile, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney hasn't gotten as much benefit from the weak economy as one would expect – a sign of his inability to connect with voters.
The past month has not been kind to the U.S. economy – or President Obama's standing in the polls.
The barrage of bad news has included:
"The economy is going through a rough patch, and that more than anything is going to determine President Obama's future," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson in comments on a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in early June. "People's unhappiness with the economy carries over pretty directly to the president's numbers, and we see those weakening."
In that poll, President Obama's job approval rating slipped from 50% in May to 47%, and those saying the country is on the wrong track jumped 6 points to 68%.
Meanwhile, Romney gained 6 percentage points in the head-to-head matchup, making the Election 2012 race a statistical dead heat (Obama 45%, Romney 44%).
Although President Obama's argument that he inherited economic problems too severe to fix in three years resonates with his liberal base, the moderates and independents likely to decide who sits in the Oval Office next year aren't so sure.
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