Hope that Manny is working on his tan and enjoying a few days in the sun.
One of my guilty pleasures every year is the Oscars. It is nice escapist entertainment for winter, and I enjoy the pomp and circumstance, the ridiculous stars, the tacky gowns and seeing which of my favorite movies or actors win. This year's Oscar's was a bit boring, most of the A-list stars who weren't nominated didn't attend. Maybe they knew that this year the show was going to be a bomb and stayed away.
Ann Hathaway and James Franco were disappointing as co-hosts; he looked bored and was boring, she was almost unwatchable. If it were not for the 10 changes of gowns I would have fallen asleep. It got so bad that I kept thinking that it might be more entertaining if Franco would pretend to saw off his arm and beat her with it just for some comic relief.
Thank goodness Kirk Douglas was raised from the dead to add the most entertaining presentation of the night.
The homage to all of the dead stars failed to bring a tear to my eye even with Celine Dion's uninspiring rendition of "Smile". (Isn't rendition when they take people to foreign countries and torture them? It felt like torture to me. )
Then there was this tidbit:
James Franco's Rendition of Cher's Song Scrapped From Oscar Gala
Again, thankfully someone was smart enough to know that James Franco covering a Cher song at the Oscar's might be panned but somehow that same bit of sanity wasn't evident when they dressed him up like Marilyn Monroe and pushed him back on stage. Ugh.
The King's Speech - deserved to be Best Picture, Colin Firth was excellent as the stuttering King. I felt that Geoffrey Rush should have received best supporting actor. Helena Bonham Carter also was great.
The Fighter - we went to see the movie last night with the anticipation of seeing a great movie with Oscar nominated performances and were so disappointed. What a horrible movie. Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg were well cast and performed well, but the rest of the stereotypical cast over acted with nauseatingly bad lower class Massachusetts accents, and the story line was not credible. Who wants to see a movie about poor people with bad accents acting badly?
It was a shame that the plot didn't call for the murder of Melissa Leo's character as I would have paid extra money just to have seen her put out of her misery. I cannot believe she won the Oscar for that performance.
Ditto for Christian Bale. Horrible, horrible horrible. His portrayal of a crack addict was so painful to watch that we walked out half way through the movie. The entire movie was painful to watch.
My second favorite movie of the year, True Grit, was passed over which was a shame because it was so well done with fine performances all around. Jeff Bridges was superb.
The Social Network earned best Adapted Screen Play which was written by Aaron Sorkin, and it also won Best Score. That score is a perfect example of how music can make a good movie seem much better than it is and great writing can redeem a pedestrian plot.
All in all, it was one of the worst Oscar productions that I have seen, under produced, and really boring. To give you a clue as to how bad the Oscar's were this year, the funniest jokes were told via flashback by Bob Hope, hosting a show more than 50 years ago. A dead Bob Hope was infinitely more entertaining than a live Franco and Hathaway.
I forgot to mention that best documentary was won by Charles Ferguson, who filmed an expose about the financial crisis.
"Inside Job" director Charles Ferguson subjected Wall Street players, economists and bureaucrats to a fierce cross-examination to depict the economic crisis as a colossal crime perpetrated on the working-class masses by a greedy few.
His film examined the financial crisis of 2008. His speech lamented the lack of accountability three years later.
"Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong," Ferguson said.
It is make or break in the markets this week.
ReplyDelete@Dss
ReplyDeleteIf I got my numbers right, 18% of the best (by reason of pocketbook) don't have actors.
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm
Capitulating Bears Push Short Sales to Lowest in Three Years
ReplyDeleteChina Bank Share Slide May Persist as Inflation Hits Growth
Inflation talk everywhere again.
ReplyDeleteFrom marketwatch.com:
"Fed won't let inflation get started, Dudley says".
"India sees slower growth". due to rate hikes.
"Beihing applies the brake". Growth target for 2011-2015 lower than the objective set for the previous years.
And "Spanish short fall quantified". $50 billion, more than govt.'s own figure.
Yet, the S&P gapped up.
ICan
Denise, they gotta bring Billy Crystal back. The opening was good though.
ReplyDeleteMorning all! Nice little bounce this morning!
ReplyDeleteMy wife watched the Oscars last night, I tried to read my book, I ended up leaving the living room and going someplace a little more quite.
ReplyDeleteWife was not happy with me.
Grrrrrrr those crazy Oscars.
Mutt
@Emmanuel117:
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess it's time to short.
Bloomberg had a vignette on which reviewed "Buffet wants to buy". I shorted his last 2 buys and made about 5% on the rail and about 15% on the other one I forget what it was.
greg,
ReplyDeleteAgreed, bring Billy back, or at least someone who is entertaining enough to carry the show.
You are right, the opening was very good.
Rock,
ReplyDeleteI looked at that list and realized that I had seen 97 out of 100 movies, but what was most surprising was that Shrek 2 even made the list, much less at number 31!
The movies I haven't seen are Shrek 2, The Passion of the Christ, Toy Story 3.
Here's a good link to a chart that illustrates the lack of fear in this market, the total put/call ratio did not exceed 1 since November.
ReplyDeleteSPY & P/C
Nice bounce
ReplyDeleteDenise - not at all surprised, I still say we go up from here (or very near from here). I don't think the high is in for the year.
ReplyDeleteAs I have said before, tops take months if not a year to form, and we have just come off a new high. The least likely outcome is a crash from here, more likely we will either see new highs or if the high is in backing and filling.
ReplyDeleteThere hasn't been any real fear in this market since last September.
I saw Obama's press announcement, and he's full of poo. He said that to bring jobs to the US, we need educated prepared workers, good infrastructure (transportation, etc).
ReplyDeleteNope. He's been told by CEOs that the corporate tax structure needs to be made competitive with other countries. He just won't listen.
There is also a very good interview with Jimmy Rogers at Emmy's Capitulating Bears link.
ReplyDelete@Dss
ReplyDeleteYou're better than I. There's about 18 I haven't seen, including Blazing Saddles (except for the Bean Scene) and Animal House. And, growing up when I did, there's no excuse for missing these 2.
I would not have seen many of the animated movies on my own, but when you have kids and they want to see The Lion King, you have to go.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of new jobs being created - in Asia. Tell me again how free trade was supposed to be good for the world. It's done wonders for international food prices.
ReplyDeleteNPR has a piece on right now on the need for more US students to be shifted into skilled trade schools rather than a four year college.
Oh, I forgot the best part of the whole night, the winner of the Best Documentary "Inside Job" which was about the financial crisis had this to say when he accepted his award:
ReplyDelete"Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong," Ferguson said.
Inside Job
I am going to put that in my post.
ReplyDeleteThor,
ReplyDeleteThe problem in training people for trades is that most trades are tied to the housing market, or manufacturing.
Not exactly growth areas in our "knowledge" economy.
The next financial fraud: private companies. JPM just invested in a pile of Twitter stock and is selling it overseas.
ReplyDeleteJPM is not a bunch of dummies. This is a great way to bring foreign investment into the US. And we all know there's no way Twitter can be worth what it's valued at, it's just the Advertising Dollar propping it up.
I notice they're not offering it to US customers. Isn't that interesting? Duh, I wonder why......
Denise - not really, mechanics and IT people come to mind.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure that you would consider IT people as part of the trades?
ReplyDeleteRock,
ReplyDeleteProbably because our laws prohibit them from marketing to Americans.
Denise - depends on the IT work - for what I do trade school is fine, for what Rock does, probably not
ReplyDeleteAm I hearing this correctly? GS is saying that the GOP proposal to cut 61 billion will shave off 2% from GDP? Wouldn't that throw us into a recession?
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's their point.
I think that I need a new definition of trade school or it should be called "vocational school", which covers most job categories.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg just reported that we are sending $700,000 overseas every minute.
ReplyDeleteFor those of you worried about $140 oil:
http://alternativefuels.about.com/od/naturalgasvehicles/a/cngconversion.htm
@Thor:
ReplyDeleteGovernment spending is 40% of GDP. Cut spending, cut GDP by 1/2 of your spending cut.
See
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html
@ICan:
ReplyDeleteI will answer your question from the weekend, but the answer got too long, so it will be my Wed. post.
I can hear the cheering from here: no charts!!!! No review of Moving Averages!!! YAY!!!!
Rock - that sounds awful high are you sure? Am in my car so can't check. Yes yes I know :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm all for reducing government spending, just not these cuts. Cut military first, second, and last.
Make sure everyone reads last week's article on TBP with Paul Desmond.
ReplyDeleteIdentifying Market Tops
There is a link to part 1 that talks about market bottoms.
The article explains why monitoring market internals is the key to success in the markets.
ReplyDeleteBR:
ReplyDelete"So, it sounds like this is really a fascinating way not only to look for market tops, but to think about market tops. Meaning that, when the market is actually topping out by these narrow indexes — be it the Dow, or the Nasdaq — it really means that a lot of other stocks have already started to fall off the trees, as you suggested. And the highest profiled, best-known stocks are the ones that are continuing to go up, and that is reflected in both the breadth data and the new 52-week high data. Is that a fair way to describe it?
Desmond: "That is exactly right."
Denise - reading now . . ..
ReplyDeleteThis interview was from 2006 but it is just as pertinent today.
ReplyDeleteFrom PragCap -
ReplyDeleteCHICAGO ISM: “TOO MANY FRICKEN SPECULATORS”
This morning’s Chicago ISM jumped to its highest reading since 1988. The recovery in manufacturing is robust and appears to have continued this month. This bodes well for tomorrow’s ISM manufacturing report, however, the commentary in the Chicago ISM report shows deep concerns about margin compression. The sampling of survey comments shows an almost uniform concern over rising prices:
1. ―Costs continue to escalate. Tight inventories still slowing down supplier response and stretching out lead-times. Sales are robust causing challenging inventory balancing act when combined with the aforementioned lead-time issue. Do more with less policies more prevalent which, for now, positively impacts the bottom line. However, the resulting burnout and multitasking are starting to take their toll on quality of work and respective yields.
I'm still at a loss as to how manufacturers are going to be passing off these rising prices to consumers in this country. There's no wage growth at all.
Thor - If I understand things correctly, there has been no wage growth for over 10 years now, as many people used their houses as a means to "increase" their standard of living.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I am sitting quite well on not owing any (Very little) debt, but it seems like the vast majority of Amenricans have a lot of debt. However I am still thinking of ways to cut monthly expenses in order to absorb the potential increase in gas and food.
I guess the answer to your question "How are manufactures going to pass off raising prices" Is they will find creative ways to increase the amount of debt we have.
Intrest free, in store finacing, specialty finacining, stuff like that.
Heck if I had the money I would allow people to buy their gas today for 5% extra tomorrow.
But eventually people will end up squeezing themselves out of being able to purchase anything.
Mutt
Mutt - Food for thought! I think I've figured out how some of these higher prices are going to be passed on to consumers. . . .smaller sizes perhaps?
ReplyDeleteDenise - About half way through that article, you're right, it's VERY good, highly recommend it, and thanks for the link!!
Great points, Mutt.
ReplyDeleteThor,
ReplyDeleteThe points Desmond makes are the keys to understanding the ebb and flows of the market, why even though the indexes are going higher, your stocks are not. And why many stocks made bottoms months before the bottom in 2009, Ford, for example.
By examining the market's internals over time you can get a feel for where the market actually is, as opposed to what the headlines or the averages say it is.
These are the same concepts that are outlined in Justin Mamis' books.
I like his analogy of fall foliage as well. . .
ReplyDeleteWell, if we were in the fall foliage season prior to winter, what we would tend to see in the trees up north, we’d start to see leaves dropping off the tree one at a time. And the stock market is very, very similar, that as you get into the latter stages of a bull market, individual stocks tend to peak out and begin to drop into their own individual bear markets, while there are still a lot of stocks continuing to advance.
Thor - That is for sure.
ReplyDeleteMutt
To me, this tells you all you need to know about "professional portfolio managers": (where are all the customer's yachts?)
ReplyDeleteWell, I had a group of professional portfolio managers that we were addressing, and I wanted to tell them about this new study that we had just done. And I asked them, ‘What percentage of stocks would you expect would be making new highs at the top day of the bull market?’ In other words, when the Dow Jones was making its absolute high, what percentage of stocks were also making new highs?
"I asked, ‘How about 80%?’ and there were a lot of hands. Then I said, ‘How about 70%?’ and there were a slightly smaller number of hands. ‘How about 60%?’ and smaller number yet. And I think I took it down to about 50% or so.
ReplyDeleteAnd I said, ‘would you believe 6%?’ There was this complete silence in the room. Of the 14 major market tops, between 1929 and 2000, inclusive, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its absolute peak, the average percentage of stocks also making new highs on that day was 5.98%."
I cannot imagine that so many professionals are so clueless.
Denise - He was off a bit though for 2006 . . .we went up another 2 years before the market topped, an this technique give false alarms?
ReplyDeleteActually - there was a pretty decent correction in the middle of 2006, I missed that.
ReplyDeleteThor,
ReplyDeleteThe primary points from his research is that the indexes can mask deterioration in individual stocks as measured by lagging in the AD Line and new highs and that there are easy to read signals of a market top or bottom.
I think that he doesn't use these signals in a vacuum, that there are other proprietary signals that he has developed that he uses in conjunction with these 90% days and isn't going to reveal what they are.
Things heating up in Yemen again now too. So much for Al Quaeda bringing freedom to the Arab world. I wonder what the longer term implications of all of this is going to be for our "War on Terror".
ReplyDeleteWar on Drugs, War against Poverty
ReplyDeleteIt seems like every time we turn around they are declaring a war against something.
What is the objective of a war? To win it, yet they keep labeling things that can not be won, a war.
Why can we have a War against declaring things a War?
Mutt
Mutt - hah, I'd go for that. Our War on Drugs sure seemed to work out well for us hasn't it?
ReplyDelete"Singh puts burden on RBI to tame prices as India plans spending, tax cuts". bloomberg.com
ReplyDeleteIndia's budget, 12.6 trillion rupees($278.3 billion).
"India plans to lower income taxes, increase wages and boost spending, risking (further) price gains that will force the central bank to raise interest rates further".
I guess Indian govt. is trying to create internal consumption, less reliance on exports.
No wonder Jim Rogers is a long term commodities bull.
@dss,
Thanks for that JR video link. Rock's neighbour!
ICan
Tomorrow is Ist of the month, 401k inflows? Yet also Turnaround Tuesday? Last month of Q1. Thinking of all the reasons.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Dan?
ICan
Emmie - Have you read this article on China? Very sobering stuff.
ReplyDeleteWill 'Chindia' rule the world in 2050, or America after all?
George Magnus, UBS’s global guru, writes in his book “Uprising” that China faces a “triple whammy of ageing”. The number of children under 14 will fall by 53m by 2050; the work force will contract by 100m; and the over-60s will rise by 234m, from 12pc to 31pc of the total.
Mr Magnus is scathing about the “muddled thinking” of those who fall for BRICs hysteria, or who succumb to the facile conclusion that the global credit crisis finished the West and served as catalyst for a permanent hand-over to Asia.
I would agree with the article as well.
Anyone ever pay attention to the flag counter? I wonder who all these people are. . . Australia is number three?
ReplyDelete