May 28, 2006
Interesting Bits in Barron’s — Week of May 29, 2006
Here are the (lightly edited) bits I found interesting in this week’s issue:
“An ounce of gold still purchases as much crude oil, essentially as it did 50 years ago, but that can’t be said about dollars … Normally it takes about 2.2 grams of gold to buy one barrel of crude oil. Now it takes about 3.4 grams to purchase one barrel of crude oil.” — James Turk, interviewed by Sandra Ward
“Unless you have public [investment] performance, that’s like playing tennis without keeping score … You can be a terrific investor and a very smart guy, but if you don’t perform in the first two years of your existence, you are out of business.” — Barton Biggs, interviewed by Lawrence Strauss
“Federal funds futures were pricing in a more than 50% likelihood of a quarter-point hike in June.” — Jennifer Ablan
“Almost $17 billion worth of stock in 74 IPOs has been sold in the U.S. this year, the fastest pace since 2000 … In a sign of the times, it’s notable that Hong Kong stock exchange can boast the most IPOs this year: $12.7 billion, slightly higher than the $12.1 billion executed on the NYSE.” — Jacqueline Doherty [ed. Of course $9.7 billion of that $12.7 billion in HK is due to the Bank of China IPO alone.]
“The inventory of existing homes available for sale on the market rose to an all-time high of 3.38 million. That’s up 34% year-over-year.” — Jacqueline Doherty
“There is an inverse relationship between the VIX and excess liquidity in Japan. An inverse of the VIX index eerily tracked the Bank of Japan’s current-account balance, suggesting easy Japanese credit smoothed out global volatility.” — Leslie Norton [ed. an interesting coincidence and nothing more?]
“Merrill Lynch says $100 billion of filings are coming from Asia, including $35 billion from China, $8 billion from Hong Kong and $10 billion from India. Last week, Bank of China, China’s second-largest and oldest bank, issued $9.7 billion of stock in the world’s largest IPO in six years, giving it a market capitalization of $96 billion.” — Leslie Norton
“Since Federal Air Marshals can’t fly every hour of every day, the percentage of flights with officers on board is small — 4% in the best of times, according to our rough calculation. And that might be optimistic. Other publications estimate coverage of 1% to 3% of all daily flights.” — Jim McTague
“The plus-size market (sizes 14-24) is outpacing all other segments of the apparel industry and should expand [ed. har, har] by 5%-8% annually over the next five years.” — Jennifer Ablan
“Nationalism is to South America what eyebrow-shaping is to men — a troubling recent trend.” — Kopin Tan [ed. my respect for Tan just went up a notch.]
“Since Oct. 10, 2002, the bear-market low in stocks, the S&P 500 was up 58% through Wednesday and the CRB Index was up 53%.” — Michael Santoli
“For seven long years small-caps have staged an incredible cycle of outperformance. Indeed, during that extended span, while the S&P 500 actually fell 5%, the SmallCap 600 climbed a rousing 121% — on average, 12% a year.” — Rhonda Brammer
“Our subscriber roster is 63,000 and rising, which makes Barron’s Online one of the most popular paid financial sites on the Internet.” — Ed Finn [Finn doesn’t reveal how many of those 63,000 paid full price (I grudgingly coughed up $20 to keep Barron’s as part of the WSJ.com subscrip.) Finn also announced the launch of three new daily columns, but I bet that they won’t have RSS feeds, in which case I will read none of them.]
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
May 29th, 2006 at 1:56 am
“Our subscriber roster is 63,000 and rising, which makes Barron’s Online one of the most popular paid financial sites on the Internet.” — Ed Finn
That means less than 9% of the folks who were getting it with their paid WSJ Online subscription ponied up additional dollars when they decided to charge extra for Barron’s Online. I don’t know if that is good or bad by Internet standards, but it doesn’t sound very impressive to me.
May 29th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Scott: The real test will be seeing how many people pony up the full subscription price ($80?) next year … I probably won’t.
May 29th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
This small anecdote might be of interest. I subscribed both to WSJ.com and to Barrons.com before (separately) and have canceled both after 2-3 weeks of trialing them. Since then, I’ve received several renewal offers from WSJ but never from Barron’s. Had I received a good offer from Barron’s I’d probably re-activate my subscription but I will not consider renewing WSJ at all.
May 29th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Eyal: That’s interesting. I usually read 1-3 articles a day in the WSJ, and I’m not sure that’s worth $99 a year. I read Barron’s for “sentimental” reasons, and will very likely not resubscribe to it.
May 30th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Is it just me or has Barron’s changed since 5-6 years ago? My memory could be playing tricks on me but I tend to remember they had much more insightful articles and also a slant towards technical analysis. Now they hardly have anything really valuable and it’s more fundamentally / economically oriented content.
May 30th, 2006 at 6:34 am
Babak: I’m not sure when Kathryn Welling left, but that might have marked a turning point. (The most valuable part of the magazine is the interview — I don’t even bother to read their features on stocks.)
May 30th, 2006 at 7:08 am
After my current Barron’s subscription expires, I will consider reading it at least twice a year - in the library.
The two issues of roundtables (beginning year and mid year prediction).
May 30th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Andrew: I’ve read many complaints that say the roundtable is in desperate need of “fresh blood.”
May 30th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Hmmm, my WSJ Online annual renewal either just occurred or will happen soon (it’s been on autopilot for the last 8 years or so, but I guess I really should check). This “conversation” has gotten me thinking about whether I really need it or not (as if I ever really needed it). Some of the basic “news” on the site is already free and the “good,” or interesting, stories always seem to end up on the “free” web eventually, anyway.
I used to read the whole paper religiously every day — but that was long, long ago. I can’t recall when I’ve actually had, or taken, the time to read more than a half dozen articles in a given day. I always start on page A1, working my way page-by-page, and always get sidetracked by something else after only a few pages. I almost never make through section A, much less sections B and C.
I suppose I’m really just hanging on for sentimental reasons, too, like CM (and, maybe, because at b-school they drummed the daily necessity of the WSJ into our tiny heads). It’s only $99/year, but now it’s just “nice to have” rather than a “must have.”
May 31st, 2006 at 12:28 am
Are you talking about this Welling?
May 31st, 2006 at 6:52 am
Babak: Yes, and now we can attach a date to things: August 27, 1999.