Tuesday Aug 15, 2006

A kind of magic

Taipan Group's Dynamic Market Alert

-- A kind of magic

-- Clowns & Harlots:My Troubled Youth

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A kind of magic

by J. Christoph Amberger

Election years bring out the worst in people. Posters and lawn signs are popping up on suburban lawns like mold on old bread. Television interrupts its steady flow of escapist morphine with mug shots of politicians sugarcoating their mendacious claims with saccharine smiles. And during rush hour, every intersection is crowded by a bunch of buffoons shaking signs on sticks at passing motorists.

Over the past decade, I have noticed an interesting trend among Democrat candidates. Each election cycle, they start scrambling to discover some -- any! -- Jewish roots in their pedigrees. Not too close, mind you, so as not to put off the churchgoing electorate. Ideally, it’s a much-venerated aunt, or even a great-grandfather.

And there’s the thing with the miracle cures. John Edwards promised he’d make the paralyzed walk in 2004. And yesterday, Maryland representative and contender for the U.S. Senate Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin went on record with what the local press called “the mother of all campaign promises”:

“We are going to lick cancer by 2015,” Cardin told a group at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road.

We, too, support him in this... and command the foul demons of cancer to come OUT!

-- Occasionally, I receive mail from subscribers who are looking at the amount of stock recommendations and invitations to subscribe to our services (and those of our sister companies) with a sense of consternation.

In fact, given the sheer number of services the financial publishing companies which are contained in Agora Inc. publish, I sometimes get confused myself: The Taipan Group alone has about 15 different publications, each with numerous stock recommendations, and each headed by a type-A personality editor who operates in the brash consciousness that his approach to investing is the best. Add them all up and account for the factor that they all want to make a living, and you end up with a never-ending cycle of advertising that indeed resembles what the old Greeks must have heard on their “agora”... their marketplace.

But much as every editor and his approach are different, so are the publications. Our “cheap” publications, like Taipan, Material Profits, Diligent Investor, etc., provide a broad-based middle- to long-term approach to investing that gives subscribers the possibility to get acquainted with the respective editor’s way of thinking and style... at an annual rate that is a third of what my plumber charges per hour. (That doesn’t even include the free e-letters you get on top of your paid subscription, each of which costs a lot of money to produce.)

For those subscribers who feel a bit more adventurous, we offer our variety of higher-price trading services for fast trades. Here, too, the approach varies. Most of them are deriving their buy and sell signals from unique constellations of analytical catalysts that were developed over time by our editors and often represent millions of dollars in research money.

As much as you aren’t forced to buy each and every disposable razor or ersatz butter spread that is advertised on television as the newest and greatest, there is absolutely no compulsion for you to buy each and every service. (But you can, and we make that easy with our Taipan VIP Member offer.) You may test them, however, if you so desire, completely at our risk: We extend an unconditional money-back guarantee for the first 3 to 9 weeks, depending on the service and offer.

-- Inflation, stagflation, deflation... none of the three terms can be uttered by analysts with serious head wagging and shaking of the index finger. If money loses value, that’s bad. If it doesn’t, it’s bad. If goods keep getting cheaper, that’s bad too. And it’s looking like we’re heading toward a trifecta of finger shaking:

Prices paid to U.S. producers (minus food and energy) unexpectedly fell in July, by 0.3%, the first decrease since October, according to the Labor Department. (Oh no! Deflationary pressures!)

But energy and transportation prices are going to be up. (Oh no! Inflationary pressures!)

And if you put them together, they may end up evening each other out. (Oh no! Stagflation.)

Which is why at this point, I suggest you switch channels whenever someone starts talking prices: We’ve reached the point of complete absurdity in financial news reporting and will be better off watching Rep. Cardin cure cancer.

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-- Clowns & Harlots:My Troubled Youth

by Christopher Corbett
        
It always cheers me to read the advertisements for summer camps. I love the pictures of the reformed fat kids, standing goofy and triumphant inside their giant pants.  I love the football camp run by the guy who looks like Mr. T.  I am gladdened to know that there are places like Camp Joel (tennis and accounting for the future CPA).  And Camp Tally Ho, the girls bestride the sad-looking horses (one season away from the knacker) and learning to speak French, too, (or at least read a menu).  A friend told me the other day that her daughter had gone to “philosophy camp.”  Amazing.  But I especially like camps for “troubled youths.”
         
In my own troubled youth I was involved with an organization founded by Lord Baden-Powell and known on these shores as the Boy Scouts of America.
         
Our scoutmaster was Mr. Fitch, an eccentric but basically harmless bachelor who toted a metallic briefcase and coiffed himself with exotic hair-care products.  He was an Aqua Velva man who favored black shiny shoes of the sort worn by security guards, white socks and a paramilitary outfit of his own design that incorporated bits and pieces of the scoutmaster’s uniform with some stuff he’d pick up at an Army/Navy surplus store.  In full regalia, Mr. Fitch looked like a melding of Don Knotts, G. Gordon Liddy and a French Foreign Legionnaire.
         
Adults openly hooted at Mr. Fitch and his paramilitary guise, but he was our leader and our complete acceptance of him reminds me that I was once truly innocent.  I suppose today he’d be living off the grid a la Unabomber in the wilds of Idaho, but in those sweet years before Vietnam he was a molder of youth.
         
Each summer, our troop went to Camp Bomazeen in North Belgrade, Maine, a facility that was dizzyingly seedy.  Chief Bomazeen was said to be an Abenaki Indian sachem who’d drowned.  An omen, now that I think back on it. 
         
The camp was staffed by professional scouts, men who would just not grow up, and human driftwood, old guys who in some cases literally washed ashore each season.  Too old for the carnival life or the Men’s Training Center, too young or too proud for the Poor Farm, they washed dishes, peeled potatoes and sat around behind the cookhouse and smoked.
          
We had, in the great tradition of scouting, financed our trips to camp by conducting paper drives.  This, eons before there was recycling.  Under the tutelage of certain wily and enterprising adults, our troop earned the most money recycling newspapers of any troop in the Western Hemisphere, chiefly because we placed bricks inside each bundle of newspapers, thus considerably increasing the bulk weight of our efforts.
         
Our troop was a particularly undistinguished group of lads, nearly all incapable of performing even the most basic sort of outdoors skills.  Building a fire in the rain, for instance.  Why would you want to build a fire in the rain?  Knot tying.  None of us knew a sheep’s shank from a half hitch.  Or is that a sheep hitch from a half shank?  Our ranks were swelled with malcontents, malingerers, the overweight, the underweight, the couldn’t wait, the myopic, late bed-wetters, chronic mama’s boys, budding sociopaths.  There wasn’t a single boy in our troop who could do 10 push-ups or chin himself, although several had more than one chin. 
         
Our annual sojourn at Camp Bomazeen was a marathon of food poisonings, ear infections, broken limbs, lacerations, contusions, concussions, abrasions and abscesses.  The camp van made at least one run to the hospital each day.  We were calamine lotion poster boys.
         
In the parlance of today, we were losers.  We shirked cleanups and lived only for free swim.  Our evenings were spent round the campfire hearing scary stories.  According to the camp staff, the woods around us were aswarm with psychotics, ax murderers and zombies.  We stayed out of the woods.
         
When the “grueling” five-mile hike was called for (heart patients could have done this), we headed straight down Horse Point Road to a little mom and pop store where were gorged ourselves on Fudgsicles, Butterfingers and Humpty Dumpty potato chips.  We then returned in ragged formation, wandering the roadsides like stray dogs, collecting empty soda bottles for the nickel deposit money, vandalizing mailboxes and tormenting all creatures great and small as we encountered them.
         
Later in life, I never had any difficulty understanding the men’s movement, for many of our scouting rituals -- running naked through the woods, faux sweat lodges, rubbing ourselves down with bear grease (we used Crisco) and engaging in ersatz Native American rites -- were forerunners of the things confused grown men would later do in middle age.  I always figured that the men’s movement was for guys who hadn’t been to Camp Bomazeen.       

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Earnings Announcements for Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Aeroflex Inc, BEASystems, Big Lots Inc, Blue Coat Systems, Daktronics
Inc, Gymboree Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hot Topic Inc, MGP Ingredients, Ross Stores Inc, Salesforce.com Inc, Urologix Inc, and
Zumiez Inc are releasing earnings.

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Unlock Dates for the Remainder of August 2006
8/14/06 - Morgans Hotel Group Company is unlocking 18 million shares.
8/14/06 - Spark Networks PLC is unlocking about 33.3 million shares.
8/21/06 - Mariner Energy is unlocking 33.3 million shares.
8/22/06 - Liquidity Services is unlocking 7.6 million shares.

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Upgrades and Downgrades

Applebee’s downgraded by Matrix Research from Hold to Sell.

Gamestop downgraded by Matrix Research from Buy to Hold.

Kraft Foods downgraded by UBS from Neutral to Reduce.

Netease.com downgraded by Citigroup from Hold to Sell.

Verizon downgraded by Rochdale Securities from Buy to Hold.

AMR Corporation upgraded by Citigroup from Hold to Buy.

KongZhong upgraded by Brean Murray from Hold to Accumulate.

Redback Networks upgraded by RBC Capital Markets from Sector Perform to Outperform.

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Quote of the Day

“The conflict in Lebanon is part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region.”

- President George W. Bush, August 14, 2006

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