才从普陀山回来，上次去05年，这次去也是为了还原。上次还是和DD一起去的。2年后再去的感触也尤其多，以后再写。先贴上照片，很臭美。

Insiders send bullish signals with stock sales
在这个时候还有人坚持bullish signal,需要用时间来证明了。
对于这个作者MARK HULBERT，我注意到他是因为他在10月底写的Memo to MEMC Investors: Seen Conergy Lately?，起码他能在别人为MEMC拿下一个USD7billion purchasing agreement而欢呼的时候注意到了买方Conergy公司其实已经是in a pretty bad shape, especially given Congergy is a germany listed company without any ADR traded in american stock market

For those interested in clean tech which in my personal view is quite volatile and highly dependent on government subsidity. But no doubt about the fact that it is a very promising and hot sector nowdays. It is amazing to know that "Renewable sources today produce only 2% of the world's energy, but they account for 18% of world investment in power generation."
Another article "Don't count on Spain on solar success" on seekingalpha.com may provide you with a clue why the demand for solar panel soars in the 2nd half of this year and overestimated demand in Spain may also impose a potential risk of sluggish demand for the later of 2008.

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CONSUELO MACK: This week on WealthTrack: whether it's sun, wind or water, the outlook for alternative energy investments has never been brighter. We talk to three power pros about their favorite power plays next on Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.
  Hello, and welcome to this edition of WealthTrack. I’m Consuelo Mack. This week we are focusing on what we are calling the green gold rush- the rush of governments, businesses, and investing to clean energy. You might feel like we've been here before. There was a rush to alternative energy investments during the oil crisis in the 1970s and during the tech bubble in the 1990s. But as our knowledgeable guests will tell you, this time they are convinced it is for keeps. It is not just that oil prices are going through the roof; it is also a combination of rising global demand for power, the precariousness of some oil supplies, and the growing concern about global warming and its connection to fossil fuels. This time, governments and businesses around the world are taking action. The European Union is mandating that 20% of energy use come from solar, wind and other renewable sources by 2020. Here at home, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an energy bill mandating that 15% of electricity from private utilities be generated from renewables by the same time. Governments around the world are providing subsidies, incentives and tax breaks to hasten the development of alternative energy technologies. And more energy companies are jumping on the green power engine. Last week, General Motors announced that 50% of its vehicles will use alternatives to gasoline within the next five years.
  Investors are also getting seriously clean. According to a recent United Nations report, last year investors poured $71 billion into companies in various fields of renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies. That is a 43% jump from 2005. Experts predict alternative energy investments will hit $85 billion this year. There is room for growth. Renewable sources today produce only 2% of the world's energy, but they account for 18% of world investment in power generation. As you can see from this chart, growth in alternative energy capacity is soaring. Wind power in particular and solar power expanding from a very low base. Meanwhile, Wall Street has joined the party. Several new exchange traded funds have been launched to invest in alternative energy companies, as well as a new crop of mutual funds. Where to invest is next on Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.
  How solid is the alternative energy industry and where are the best investment opportunities to be found? Our first guest has been covering the energy and environmental beats for many years. Bill Paul was a long time reporter for The Wall Street Journal and is now managing editor of EnergyTechStocks.com, a financial news site about the global energy tech revolution, and his book, Future Energy, was published last year. Our next guest is an energy analyst specializing in renewable energy and energy efficiency companies. He is Tom Konrad, who writes for several publications, including AltEnergyStocks.com, a website devoted to investing in renewable energy. And our third guest is chairman of the Ardour Global Index Committee, which develops benchmarking tools for the global alternative energy industry. Joseph LaCorte has helped develop and oversees energy companies deriving over 50% of their revenues from renewable energy sources. The Ardour Global Extra Liquid Index has five-year annualized returns of more than 30%, and is up strongly year to date. It is great to have you all here. What a timely topic, no question about it. I want to ask each of you the same question to start. Bill Paul, I'll start with you. What happens if oil goes down to $80 a barrel, 70, 60, 40, 30- what happens to the alternative energy cost advantage?

BILL PAUL: 30, 40, clearly there would be a hit. I don't think there are any analysts left who think it will get below 50 at any point in our lifetime at this point though, because we are starting to see demand surge ahead of available supply. When you stay above 50, especially 60, 70, it looks darn good. Get to 80, and where we're at now, above 90, it looks spectacularly good.

CONSUELO MACK: At what point, oil price, does alternative energy really lose its momentum, Tom?

TOM KONRAD: I think it has more to do with psychology. If people really believe that the oil price is down and it is going to stay down- so why did it go down? Why did the journalists say it is going down? I cannot imagine 30, as Bill said. That would be crazy.

CONSUELO MACK: Right. But what level do we again go back to the promise that is not fulfilled?

TOM KONRAD: You don't.

CONSUELO MACK: You don't. Okay.

BILL PAUL: You mentioned the other reasons earlier in the show. We have a consumer interest and a consumer demand for a healthier lifestyle that is going to drive a lot of this. It goes into the idea of non-polluting automobiles from electricity, energy-efficient light bulbs in your home. Everywhere you look, wind, solar, geothermal- the great advantage of these is it doesn't have pollution, and that is what is new about a lot of this stuff. It is not just bad old OPEC may cut us off from oil. It is we want to live our lives healthier.

CONSUELO MACK: Joseph, you come into this, too. Number one, the oil and alternative energy comparison has made a huge difference up until now. Where do you come out in this?

JOSEPH LACORTE: I think it is quite different as Bill pointed out in the '70s with OPEC constraining the supply. I think we have a demand issue to this with respect to energy in general. Between environmental concerns, oil security, and national security, there is a movement not just domestic, it’s global in nature, and it’s driven into the American economy by the price of energy, but I think it goes well beyond that as Bill pointed out. It’s a ground swell of concern about global warming, which drives the appetite for alternatives.

CONSUELO MACK: Let me ask you all because there is, again -- people and businesses are price sensitive, and there have been several articles recently, I think there was one in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago that people will not pay up for green. Across the board, if you give somebody a product that is cheaper than a green product, in general, they're not going to pay up for green. And certainly hybrid cars -- so have we reached the tipping point?

BILL PAUL: With all due respect to my former employer, The Journal, which I don't think is on the right track anymore with that. There is new report out from McGraw Hill Construction saying that green housing, in other words, houses that are built to be energy-efficient and water efficient, that industry is going to go from $2 billion today to $20 billion in five years. It is all due to consumer demand driving this. People are looking at this not just as a pocketbook issue, but, again, as a pure health issue. And they want to go green for that reason.

TOM KONRAD: And with housing, it is actually -- with the pocket issue, greenhouses, a built greenhouse is cheaper to live in. The cost of ownership is cheaper than a conventional house because of those low energy prices. And we could see a big drop in electricity prices and still have that.

CONSUELO MACK: Right, and of course the housing industry is in a recession right now, so at least in this country, we could see a delay in getting to more greenhouses because houses are not being built.

BILL PAUL: Joe is in a very fascinating situation right now because his group of companies, his indexes, are going to be ground zero of the whole carbon trading revolution we're about to see starting probably in 2009. It is already under way in Europe. Basically this is government regulation that requires every business to lower its carbon dioxide emissions. That is coming, according to no less an authority than Lehman Brothers, on a global basis. So that, too, is different than it was 35 years ago. Remember, 35 years ago, you could stop the crisis by turning the spigot back on over at OPEC. OPEC turned the spigot on, and it didn't do much because demand is out of control.

CONSUELO MACK: And the spigot doesn't have a lot of reserves.

BILL PAUL: There ain't a whole lot in the ground anymore. So now we’re looking at a situation that essentially has no relationship to the 1970s. We have consumer-driven demand and government regulation, and national security issues that we're talking about. They're all combining to create a situation where if the price went down to 50 or 60, it probably wouldn’t slow down the momentum for green energy very much.

CONSUELO MACK: So where should we be investing, Tom? What are you excited about? There are things that people talk about that are hot, biofuels, solar. What are you excited about? Where do you think the best values lie?

TOM KONRAD: I'm excited about what we were just talking about, energy-efficiency. People are not willing to pay for renewables yet. You don’t have to pay for energy efficiency. It pays for itself. Any of your viewers can go to the store and buy a compact fluorescent light bulb, put it in one of their sockets, and it would be like getting a CD that pays 50 to 100, maybe 200% per annum. If a bank were selling those, the Feds would close in. But if they were selling them legitimately, they would be Wall Street darlings, and that's the way I feel about it.

CONSUELO MACK: So energy-efficiency is almost under the radar screen. It is not particularly sexy. What kind of companies are involved in energy-efficiency?

TOM KONRAD: Improving the home -- Owens Corning is really nice. We're in a housing slowdown, but there are a lot of existing houses. One of the things you can do to your existing house is fill the attic with insulation. And if energy prices go up, there aren’t any new houses, there are tons of existing houses. Maybe 3% of houses are built every year, even during the boom. So there is a big one in energy efficiency.

CONSUELO MACK: Right. Joseph, you're basically putting together indexes that you hope will be the benchmarks for the industry. I mean -- and you specifically focused on companies that have, you know, 50% of revenues or more.

JOSEPH LACORTE: The question of what is the benchmark is always an issue when it comes to investment performance.

CONSUELO MACK: Right. Is there one right now?

JOSEPH LACORTE: We believe that the indexes we've manufactured and have been manufacturing for and publishing for the last few years is the benchmark at this point because it is the first one to be global, and the first one to hold a very high threshold for inclusion to be a percentage of the revenues that a company generates.

CONSUELO MACK: 50% of the revenues have to point to alternative energies?

JOSEPH LACORTE: It’s very high, 50% is the threshold. Some other indexes include utilities that generate 2% of their electricity from alternatives. We don't believe that really will give the performance of the alternative energy industry. So we decided to raise the bar, create a benchmark people could look at and say this is a good barometer, best barometer, for the industry as a whole.

CONSUELO MACK: And these are coming because you feel very strongly that it is not a dot-com type of bubble or industry is what?

JOSEPH LACORTE: What we do is measure the performance of the index. Just looking at the momentum of the price performances is not really a reason to invest in it.

CONSUELO MACK: No, we saw that in the tech bubble.

JOSEPH LACORTE: Exactly. The tech bubble proved that just following momentum is not a good reason to get in. We measured the earnings and the income from the companies in these indexes, and they're astounding. Over the last year, we have net income up over 200%. We have net revenues up over 80%. These are numbers that tell you that the fundamentals are real.

CONSUELO MACK: And you trust the accounting?

JOSEPH LACORTE: I've done it myself. Well, the reported accounting of course we accumulate. And Bill points out, there is a whole government mandate, and you pointed out, there is a government mandate to grow the industry. If you go from .2% of energy from alternatives in electricity production to 15% as is currently before the Congress, and 20% is mandated in Europe already, that is over 3,000% government mandated growth in the industry. That tells you it is sustainable.

CONSUELO MACK: That's a great tailwind.

JOSEPH LACORTE: Our index measurement tells you it is profitable now, it’s not a, maybe someday like the dot-com boom. And it is sustainable because of the environmental concerns for health, and the government mandate. We believe it is a sustainable return.

BILL PAUL: And not forgetting the fifth largest economy in the world, otherwise known as California, has a million solar roof initiative, among many other initiatives. They are basically setting up a game plan for maximizing the flow of wind and solar and geothermal into the existing power grid so it will come to your home. Even more important, probably, is that they're setting up mechanisms so that it is very easy for the consumer to participate in this. All you do is check off a box on your utility bill and you are supporting solar and wind power. Whether or not you're an investor, you are able to contribute financially to this movement, which in turn, is pushing this whole alternative energy field up.

CONSUELO MACK: Bill, we are investors here on WealthTrack, and we're trying to make money over the long-term. You're focusing on new energy technologies on your website.

BILL PAUL: Right.

CONSUELO MACK: What are some are the major new energy technologies that you're most excited about that you think have good investment potential?

BILL PAUL: There is something called thin film solar technology. Not those panels that you see on the roof. What you've got now is new technology which is entirely flexible, like clothing, almost. So that you'll be able to put solar electric generation capability into roofing shingles, side panels, and essentially, you'll be able to turn your entire house into a power plant. That's number one.

CONSUELO MACK: Who makes that stuff?

BILL PAUL: There is a company called First Solar, which is very big. Sharp electronics, you might not think of them--

CONSUELO MACK: Any of those companies in your indexes?

BILL PAUL: First Solar is 50%, and Sharp doesn’t, obviously because it does so much else.

TOM KONRAD: It is the biggest TV manufacturer out there.

CONSUELO MACK: Is there something wrong with his index that it will not include a Sharp or a Siemens or some of the bigger names?

JOSEPH LACORTE: Nothing wrong with it, but the question whether or not you're getting solar panel performance when you buy Sharp. It’s like GE has a solar panel group and wind production group- are you getting alternative energy performance? Our objective is to measure the performance of the industry. Not necessarily to capture every company that has a small part of their business in that space.

CONSUELO MACK: Tom, what are you most excited about? Where do you think the money is going to be made in renewable energy?

TOM KONRAD: Because this is such an exciting industry, there is a lot of emotional investing. Solar draws a lot of attention. I’m with Bill on thin panels.

CONSUELO MACK: You told me actually that it's hard to generate electricity, right, and then to make money in both solar and in wind, I think, is what you mentioned to me.

TOM KONRAD: Well, that's what I'm leading into. Transmission is sort of an outside the box way of thinking. It is not really alternative energy, but it is an enabler to alternative energy. So if we’re going to bring a ton of alternative energy on, we need transmission to get wind where it is needed, and to diversify basically a utilities portfolio…

CONSUELO MACK: That's transmission, the lines that carry the electricity to various places, right?

TOM KONRAD: Right. And the other thing we need it for is concentrating solar power which I think is going to be really, really hot very soon because of its enormous potential, the ability to store the power and the fact that it is very inexpensive compared to almost anything else.

CONSUELO MACK: And are there major players in the transmission area that you think investors should add to their portfolios?

TOM KONRAD: Definitely. The nice thing about this, again, is that it’s a very safe play, which you wouldn't associate with alternative energy. ABB is one of my favorites. It makes a product you see every day.

CONSUELO MACK: And ABB is based in?

TOM KONRAD: It's a German company, but you can buy it on the NYSE. They make transformers and green boxes like this. Some people have them in their driveways, I have near my driveway, but they also make high voltage DC transmission, which is probably the best existing way to transmit electricity long distances. And that's what we'll need to bring on all of this renewable energy.

CONSUELO MACK: Joseph, you’ve identified about 300 companies worldwide that meet your criteria for being renewable pure plays.

JOSEPH LACORTE: The primary criteria is 50% potential threshold for revenue. And then we have a set of objective rules that are applied by Dow Jones actually against that screen for primary listings, liquidity from a trading point of view, market capitalization hurdles you have to overcome so they’re investable. We call out from the 300, a composite of 98 names that make up our composite index, and most of our products, whether it be the GEX Market Vectors ETF that trades in New York, or other products based on the Extra Liquid theories --

CONSUELO MACK: The liquid, are those the bigger cap?

JOSEPH LACORTE: They’re the highest cap in most liquid securities. It is global in nature, so you've got companies that trade all over the globe, but most blue-chip that meet that criteria and most liquid.

CONSUELO MACK: So if you're looking at the 300 and you're going down to the 30 or so that are the most liquid, which is what you have your ETF based on now, is that for investors who want to hold this group long-term, is that where their best bet is? To go with the most liquid at this point because it is such a volatile and new?

JOSEPH LACORTE: We think it is a great way to get the exposure with very little market impact or cost of trading. You have the blue chip names so if there are any marginal technologies or R&D that you're concerned with -- clearly in the 300 there are companies still living off their R&D. The companies that are in the 30 blue-chip extra liquid series are by far the most profitable, and generate the greatest revenue and completely, that is probably the best place to put your money today.

CONSUELO MACK: Time for the One Investment. One minute each. Bill Paul, you're looking at some miracle material?

BILL PAUL: Maybe not quite that elevated. There is something called carbon fiber. Carbon fiber goes into windmills, cars, it's going into that new Boeing --

CONSUELO MACK: The dream liner?

BILL PAUL: The dream liner. Why? It is as strong as steel, but lighter, hence, increases the energy-efficiency of all of those things. You put carbon fiber into those wind turbine blades and you have propellers that are like a gazillion feet long. There are about seven or eight companies, and another reason to like this is it is a tricky little manufacturing process. The barrier to entry is very high, so that you only probably will have seven or eight companies ten years from now who are the market leaders, whereas, carbon fiber is going to be in more applications. Within two or three years, most of the high-end automobiles will have a significant quotient of carbon fiber.

CONSUELO MACK: And we can find those companies on your website?

BILL PAUL: The three or four that are in the U.S.

CONSUELO MACK: And we'll have a link to that on our website, wealthtrack.com. Tom Konrad, you identified one company.

TOM KONRAD: I like one company because, GE (GE) it is not one company. It is like 15 companies. And it's in all of my favorite sectors of renewables. Great energy-efficiency arm, a great solar arm, and they're really one of the leaders in wind turbines in the U.S. so there is a lot there. And they're part of what I call my blue chip alternative energy portfolio. I wrote about this in March on AltEnergyStocks.com. They're sort of a safer way to get in and still have exposure to this great sector. And Jeffrey Immelt said, the CEO of GE, said we're going to own renewable energy. We're going to own energy-efficiency. They may not own it ten years from now, but they're going to try. So I want to own GE.

CONSUELO MACK: We have a surprise from Joseph LaCorte because I said none of you can recommend your own funds or index.

JOSEPH LACORTE: You posed the question to me, what would I buy for my kids? And I did buy the GEX (GEX), which takes advantage of the alternative energy performance based on our index but I'm not supposed to be touting that. But another stock I bought is Apple (AAPL). It’s established a brand new distribution pattern, new technology, and anecdotally, my colleague bought his daughter an iPhone and he called and asked how it is, and she says it is wonderful but I can't get a hold of it because everyone I know wants to try it, touch it, use it, and I think it will make for a very interesting Christmas season for Apple.

CONSUELO MACK: And how clean is it? Apple?

BILL PAUL: It is actually is clean. And Microsoft and the rest of them are jumping into the same territory.

CONSUELO MACK: Thank you very much for joining us, Bill Paul, it’s always great to have you here. And Tom Konrad, and Joseph LaCorte, thank you for being new guests on WealthTrack. I'm sure we have a lot to talk about in the future.
  Every week on WealthTrack, we leave you with one piece of advice, one action you can take to build and protect your wealth. You just heard from some experts about the opportunities in alternative energy. This week's Action Point is: consider investing in alternative energy companies. What's the best way to do that? We've been talking about that, but since many of the most promising companies are still small and many are foreign, the simplest way is to buy a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund or ETF. If you prefer investing with an active fund manager who is familiar with the companies in the field, a mutual fund is the way to go. Alternative energy is an emerging field, so most choices are relatively new. However, there is a granddaddy of all of them, and it is a four star fund rated by Morningstar called New Alternatives (NALFX). It was started in 1982 by a father and son team who are unabashedly liberal, who also apply social screens to their selections, and it's 9% annualized returns over the past ten years have beaten the S&P. New Alternatives was recently profiled in Kiplinger’s magazine, it’s Green Issue, and we will provide a link for you on our website to read more about it.
  There were several other funds mentioned by Kiplinger’s as well, but none of them are yet rated by Morningstar. For those of you more comfortable with an index fund, you’re in good company. As a general rule, our guest Tom Konrad prefers them because of their lower fees, cross-section of global alternative energy companies, but again, the pickings are slim. His favorite is the Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF (GEX), just launched this May. It is based on the Ardour Global Indexes made by our guest, Joseph LaCorte, and his colleagues. Now, one caveat for any alternative energy fund or ETF- many of the companies are young, and they're small, so if you invest, get ready for substantial volatility.
  And that wraps up this edition of WealthTrack. Next week we'll be talking about that other asset class, bonds, with the PIMCO bond manager and strategist Paul McCulley. And we'll take a tour around the world’s financial markets with BlackRock’s global fund manager, Dennis Stattman, and take a closer look at ETFs with Barclays iShares guru, Lee Kranefuss. To watch today’s program again, just go to our website, wealthtrack.com. Starting on Monday, you can view it as a podcast or as streaming video. Until next time, make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.

孟小冬和梅兰芳的过往.大多数介绍梅兰芳的生平,都几乎把他完美化了.

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天堂地狱都一梦

Life After Securities Fraud

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这个故事让人嘘唏,因为他的真实性.自由,健康和受人尊敬,我们常常take it for granted.
中学6年时间,都是在监狱旁边度过,因为中学的旁边就是成都的一个大监狱.每天,我们做课间操的时候,就能听到他们在唱狱歌.中午,我也是到监狱里面吃中饭,他们的监狱职工吃的饭菜比学校提供的还要好.每周都有一两天,会是探监日.可以看到那些父母和妻儿风尘仆仆却神情悲伤的站立在大门外.
有一次因为什么机会,大概是学校团组织的活动,我看到了他们一个人的囚犯单间,狭窄的空间,回让人觉得这是世界的尽头

从周洛华的博客里转贴的.BoBo,你老看看,有没有道理? "通货膨胀从本质上讲是稀释了人民的财富，用稀释人民的财富去创造就业机会，去养活人民，这样的逻辑走得通吗?"这句话不好听,但是道理好象是这个道理.

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李焜耀是不是很像Andrew Grove,总是determined的样子,让人怕怕的.

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逆境中男人最重要的支柱是誰？明基友達集團董事長李焜耀和台中市長胡志強不約而同地說：「太太！」李焜耀回憶去年放棄西門子手機部門之後，除了同事、朋友的鼓勵，最溫馨的還是太太與子女的支持。

明基友達基金會贊助勵志電影「深夜加油站遇見蘇格拉底」，昨（31）日邀請李焜耀和胡志強對談「逆境勝出，下一站的精彩」，兩人都曾遭遇人生的起起伏伏，談起如何面對逆境、如何定義成功都有特別見解。

至於李焜耀「下一站的精彩」是什麼？李焜耀則沒有直接回答。他說，沒有到下一站，沒有人知道風景是什麼，不過，他只知道燈塔就在前方，靠近的路途中會慢慢發現哪裡有淺灘、暗礁，再一一思考避開對策。

由於電影中，男主角經歷嚴重車禍，但還是繼續挑戰體操訓練，過程中一位被他暱稱為「蘇格拉底」的加油站長者扮演關鍵角色。李焜耀昨天開玩笑問：大家猜蘇格拉底的「蘇格拉底」又是誰？真實世界的蘇格拉底，正是一天到晚被老婆詰問的思想大師。

李焜耀感慨地說，去年決定放棄德國員工後，各種外界責難排山倒海而來，工作同仁和朋友也給予很多鼓勵，但再多宛如教條式的加油聲，都比不上太太的支持、大女兒的簡訊或小女兒的長信，小女兒甚至懺悔說：「老爸以後我會對你好一點。」都讓他格外窩心，每天回到家裡都是一種空間與心情的轉換。

他也建議，肉體的健康絕對有助於為心靈加油打氣，他在去年以來，爬山、走路、跑步機等各項運動都做，讓自己可以忘掉一些心裡的束縛，尤其在同仁與社會一片絕望之聲中，更要提醒自己：「沒有失敗，只有挫折」，公司領導人絕對不能露出挫敗的訊息，而要想辦法穩住在激流航行的船。

不過，談起過去一年的心路歷程，李焜耀建議大家遇到逆境，專注當下即可，不要思考太多成功經驗，或擔心下一步又是挫敗。他說，過去一年來一步一步思考對策，旁人也有很多人「獻策」、予以佐證，只要每個當下都認真以對，留得青山在，將來絕對有燒柴的機會。

Risk takers and risk averse both gives us investmnet strategy in a context which u.s. may get into a mid-cycle recession whilst the globe may still have the growth esp. those BRIC countries. I cannot help laughing when i read "it's just your money, it's not your life; the people who loved you a week ago still love you today." What a wise!

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Consuelo Mack WealthTrack - Original Air Date: October 19, 2007

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CONSUELO MACK: This week on WealthTrack, growing your portfolio crops with three seasoned gardeners: the Bond Bible's Marilyn Cohen, Buffett scholar Robert Hagstrom, and contrarian investor Steve Leuthold plant the seeds next on Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.
  Hello and welcome to this edition of WealthTrack, I'm Consuelo Mack. It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since the stock market crash of 1987. "Black Monday"-- October 19, 1987-- still stands as the largest percentage decline in the market's history. As Barron's pointed out in its terrific cover story last weekend, the 22.6% plummet was double the two worst single day declines experienced in the crash of 1929. But as Louis Rukeyser famously noted on “Wall Street Week” at the time: "it's just your money, it's not your life; the people who loved you a week ago still love you today." And the ever optimistic Lou would have loved where we are today. The Dow is up nearly eight fold and trading near record highs, interest rates are half what they were back then, emerging markets are reaching new peaks as they proceed on their five year climb, and free trade and capitalism are spreading far and wide, bringing new wealth and new aspirations to literally billions of people around the world. That said, as investment great Bill Miller told us on an earlier WealthTrack, quoting Warren Buffet, "a cheery consensus is not the friend of the long-term investor." That should reassure WealthTrack viewers because the once cheery consensus on Wall Street is running into some hard realities.
  This week, we received more evidence that the housing slowdown is worsening. Housing starts plunged last month, the value of the dollar hit a record low against the euro, and oil rose to the $90 a barrel range. The stock market has been remarkably resilient up to this point, but the pressure is building. Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen admitted it now looks like the housing correction will "continue to adversely impact our economy, our capital markets and many homeowners for some time yet." But if you are interested in climbing a wall of worry, we have a sector of the market that is doing just that. One of the most notable trends of the last decade is starting to reverse itself. As you can see from this chart, value stocks- those lower-PE, slower growth, less volatile companies like Altria, Exxon Mobil and Bank of America- have been outperforming growth stocks for nearly seven years. Well those tortoises are being passed by the hares. This year the higher-PE, faster growing companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Apple, and Google have taken over the lead. Will they last? And where is the money to be made over the next multi-year stretch? We'll ask three crack investors next on Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.
  Well, this was the week the bears finally came home to roost. The Dow fell for five straight days, capped off by a 360 plus point decline at week's end. Is this the time to become more defensive or go on the offensive? We have two new WealthTrack guests to ask. Our first guest has been called the contrarian's contrarian. He has been an investment strategist, researcher, portfolio manager and prolific writer for over 40 years. His home base is the North Country, in Minnesota. He is Steve Leuthold, founder and chief investment officer of The Leuthold Group, where he leads the team overseeing five mutual funds; two are rated five stars by Morningstar. And our next newcomer runs the Legg Mason Growth Trust Fund and is the author of a bestseller, The Warren Buffett Way as well as several other popular investment books. He is Robert Hagstrom, and he has been overseeing a Buffet-inspired growth portfolio since 1995 with sterling results. He has far surpassed the S&P and other large cap growth funds over the past five and ten-year period. And we're welcoming back an experienced bond investor. She is Marilyn Cohen, president of Envision Capital Management, managers of bond portfolios for private investors, and she is the author of The Bond Bible, and writes the column for Forbes on bond investing. So welcome to all of you. What a lovely week to be here looking at what is happening in the bond market and the stock markets. Steve, you run a quantitative historical research shop, that’s how you described it to me, with models using some180 plus indicators. Your trend turned negative in August. What is it telling you now?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Actually, it was in mid-July, it was negative.

CONSUELO MACK: Good timing?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Well, it was. It isn't always right. It also turned negative a year ago, and it wasn't necessary to get defensive, but this time it looks like it is going to be quite necessary. And our whole business and money management, 85% of it is managing money not to lose. Making it and keeping it. And so we are asset allocators, and we're currently sitting with only 30% net equity exposure with our typical account.

CONSUELO MACK: You're sitting here with a bond investor, so where are you investing in your asset allocation portfolio for protection?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: We have a hard time with bonds because the yields aren’t very attractive.

CONSUELO MACK: Marilyn might be having a hard time with bonds, too. We’ll find out in a minute.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Sometimes there’s not a lot of places to go. We own some Australian governments, we own some New Zealand ones, where you got a currency plus interest rates and then we own special notes based on metals that pay us 4.75%. But I can't find much attractive in the bond market. And how we get defensive is by hedging. We use short sales or we’ll short ETFs, because when we get positive again, it is very easy to take off the hedges, and you don't have to rebuild your equity portfolio.

CONSUELO MACK: And what would turn you positive again? Is it easy to say or is it just too complicated?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Well, you could have a swing based on the differential we have now between positives and negatives. Say if gold took a big decline, we would pick up 200 points with that, because it is an important contrary measure. Gold is a measurement of investor fear is what it really is. When that subsides, it becomes positive. But right now it is pretty negative. If we had some strength in the economy, it probably would help. There are -- but we're not seeing that.

CONSUELO MACK: Right.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: We're looking at maybe 2% real GDP growth over the last year. We figured that the GDP deflator probably understates inflation by 1%. So that is really probably about 1% real GDP growth in this country.

CONSUELO MACK: All right, Robert Hagstrom, do you agree with Steve Leuthold? Are you negative as far as the investment outlook and also the economy?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: No, no, not at all. I certainly respect Steve's observations, and it is true the economy is weak and there is a lot of negativity in the marketplace, but I think those are also the seeds of the future excess returns. I think it is a time to be cautious, I think it is a time to stay with quality. But I think oftentimes, if you look back at periods like this, these are the opportunistic periods that allow you to build a portfolio that will generate very high returns, much better than the market rate of returns, when we get on the other side of that.

CONSUELO MACK: All right, would you then -- do you think this is an opportune time to place some bets now?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: Yes. We're 100% invested in the stock market right now. We upped the quality of the portfolio, and we've upped the market cap of the portfolio, moving to the bigger cap stocks, the ones that have more of their revenues coming from overseas. So when, perchance, as Steve pointed out, the U.S. economy does slow, we can get a bigger chunk of our revenues from economies doing a better job than we're doing here in the U.S.

CONSUELO MACK: What intrigued me, you're applying the Warren Buffett way to growth stocks, which can strike some people as an oxymoron; as a value investor applying it to growth, how do you do that?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: I've always written and argued that I thought Warren was a great growth investor. Anybody who could buy and hold companies and make as much money as he did; obviously he owned growing companies at a high rate of return. The newspapers- we don’t think of them as growth stocks today, but in the heydays, in the '70s and '80s, they had pricing power and were doing really well. Coca-Cola- it’s hard to think about Coke as an outstanding growth company, but it did extremely well as a growth stock in the ‘80s. Warren made ten times his money. So I always argued that he is a great growth investor; unequivocally, a great value investor, but he applied valuation to great growth companies.

CONSUELO MACK: But you are applying it to a different category of stock that he wouldn't touch. A new economy, right?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: We have taken the Warren Buffett way and the Warren Buffett process and tried to move it to the new economy, to apply to what we think are sensible processes- to think about stocks as businesses, find the cash return on capital, value them and buy them at a discount. But now we're applying them to the internet and the wireless and other areas of the market.

CONSUELO MACK: Marilyn, the bond market; Steve is laughing. I've never seen anything like it in my two decades of being in the market. The liquidity crunch -- the crisis that we had in August. I mean we’re seeing a flight to quality again this week, treasury yields are dropping, and treasury bonds are going up, people are going into the short-term treasuries. And they're very risk adverse -- how is this going to resolve itself? And how optimistic or pessimistic are you about what is going on in the economy and in the bond market?

MARILYN COHEN: I think the economy is definitely slowing down; whether we go into the absolute definition of a recession, I don't know. But I know we are slowing down. People need to look at, what is my risk versus my potential reward? And the dicier part of the bond market has all risk, and very little reward at the moment. I think that is going flip, probably, by first quarter next year. So I take a look at, what really gives you value now? And it is municipal bonds. Boring. No growth. But, you know what, it preserves your capital in a time like this. No matter what your political persuasion is Consuelo, there is no question in my mind that tax rates are going up after the next election. Your federal tax rate, your dividend rate, what you have to pay for earnings on dividends, and I think your capital gains rates are going up. So munis are going to be more valuable, not less valuable. Yes, I understand earning 4% is not exciting, but if you're 4% in a state like New York or California and you're in a low tax bracket, that's a 770 taxable equivalent yield. If you have the state income tax like we do, it boosts it up more than that. So munis, I have been actively buying for my risk adverse clients. That's the way you insulate yourself, and yes, it is boring, and that's the point. That's what I'm doing.

CONSUELO MACK: You wouldn't near -- the whole concept -- and, again, this asset allocation point, and you manage private bond portfolios, so I'm sure you're allocating among the bond world -- what should the people do who own junk bonds, who own high yield bond funds? How dangerous is that segment going to get?

MARILYN COHEN: I think it will get worse before it gets better. There is a lot of risk out there, and I think the default rate is going to go quite a lot by next year. We have been living in Alice in Wonderland in which we’ve had such a low default rate because the economy was rocking. I think default rates will go up significantly next year, and we'll have a tremendous opportunity as the spread that you can earn in junk bonds versus treasuries starts to widen out to more historical levels. We were at historical tights in May and they blew up in July and August, now it’s going back to, not historical, but it’s gotten back a little bit overbought. So I think anybody who is in high yield bond funds needs to be very careful. They need to be, number one, traded. You cannot buy and hold, because there are credits, no matter how smart your bond manager is, there are credits that are going to default and have problems.

CONSUELO MACK: Steve?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: I would agree with everything you've said about that. At one time, we had 15% of our portfolios in junk bonds. That was about four or five years ago. But during the last few years, we've had zero. And what is the default rate now, 1.3%, something? And I think you're going to see it go up to 7%, 8%, or 9% within the next 12 months, and then we'll really see some opportunity.

MARILYN COHEN: Exactly. But you have to be quick because there is so much money waiting for those opportunities with the opportunistic funds that you have to be nimble and quick and you have to trade them.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: When you said there would be a thousand point basis point spread, our current models would indicate them being attractive at 9.5% to 10% yield based on where we’ve got our --

CONSUELO MACK: This is junk bonds you're talking about. They have to get up to 9% or 10% yields before --

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Before they do, what we view as being an attractive zone.

MARILYN COHEN: I want to be sure we don't paint the whole high yield market black.

CONSUELO MACK: Right. So how do we differentiate?

MARILYN COHEN: It is like stock picking. It’s bond picking. It is companies whose balances sheets are not levered to their eyeballs. It’s companies that won't be taken down with the mortgage market. You have to really pick and choose and you can be rewarded on a very judicious basis.

CONSUELO MACK: This is arguing against buying an index fund, a bond index fund. This is arguing for active management. Of course we have three active managers here.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: It could be a high yield bond fund, but the time to do it isn't now.

MARILYN COHEN: I agree with that.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: A SIV is a great name, isn't it, because that's what they’ve been.

CONSUELO MACK: Sieves and SIVs, structured investment vehicles. Steve, you mentioned asset allocation of how you protect yourself. What about sectors? What kind of sectors can we find some protection in and hopefully some appreciation?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Well, where you can find -- we run, as Robert said, most of our research clients, institutions, are basically equity people, and they are pretty much 100% vested. They don't have the flexibility we have in terms of what we do internally.

CONSUELO MACK: Right.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Within that, within the portfolios we have, our biggest holding right now is still industrial metals, which are an inflation hedge -- it has been five years we've held these, so it’s been a long run.

CONSUELO MACK: So copper, nickel, lead --

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Copper, nickel, lead, tin. Not gold though, gold is not an industrial metal. Silver is, but not gold. And then we have the first derivative of that which are mining equipment companies that provide the machinery and the equipment that these miners need. Everything is in short supply. The cost in terms of operating a mining operation has been skyrocketing, and I think the real beneficiaries could be the people supplying the equipment.

CONSUELO MACK: Caterpillar got hurt badly today.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: That is a stock that, I mean, we do own it. I'm not supposed to say what stocks we own.

CONSUELO MACK: Oh, yes you are. This is WealthTrack.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Take that.

CONSUELO MACK: Thumbs up or thumbs down on Caterpillar?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: I think thumbs up.

CONSUELO MACK: Thumbs up.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: And also we do the same thing with oil. We have the deep well drillers, is what we have there with about 11% of the assets. And that is kind of the same thing. The oil companies themselves aren't benefiting as much as you would think from this rise in the price of oil because 80% of the oil is controlled by governments. Whether it is the Netherlands -- whether it is Norway or the UK.

CONSUELO MACK: Or Saudis and Venezuela.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: And the royalties go up, but the operators don’t get the piece of it. You may have pretty disappointing earnings coming out of the oil companies because the cracking spreads have narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and they're not really benefiting from this rise of oil up to 87, 88 bucks.

CONSUELO MACK: But not the drillers. The equipment --

STEVE LEUTHOLD: The drillers, the equipment providers are the ones you can be pretty sure are going to be winners.

ROBERT HAGSTROM: And under that scenario, you have to argue there will still be growth in the economy for that to work, globally speaking. If the drillers are going to work, the machine companies are going to work and the metals are going to be demand, it is because global growth is still happening.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Exactly. We could have a U.S. recession while we still have global growth.

CONSUELO MACK: Are those growth companies? Do you own any?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: We do own Caterpillar in our portfolio, and if you look at the results today, they were growth earnings results. But with the U.S. economy and housing market slowing, we're going to be somewhat cautious. That's all you need in this stock market to take a stock down 3% or 4%. But I think Caterpillar is a wonderful growth company. And what is interesting today is the U.S. economy is 30% of the world GDP; in 1987, it maybe was closer to 50% of world GDP. So today as the U.S. economy is less participant of the total world economy, you can have the BRICs, which are now 30% of the world GDP, do very well, and we could have a slowdown and the world economy could do very well.

MARILYN COHEN: I would like to dovetail onto your commentary and Steve’s. One way to play the global growth market and get some yield besides that is with the Canadian Royalty Trusts. They're stocks. They don't have bonds. They issue stocks. They pay very high rates of return. They are volatile, no question about it.

CONSUELO MACK: Didn't they run into some problems with the government --

MARILYN COHEN: Last year at this time.

CONSUELO MACK: Exactly.

MARILYN COHEN: The government is saying, well, we're going to have to turn them into corporations, and they're going to have to pay corporate tax rates, but you know what, they're prepared for that. They took their dive, they’re not back up to their highs, but the yields are running between 9%, 10%, 11%. I don't think this is a buy and hold situation, but you buy the crème de la crèmes. You buy the ERFs, you buy the PVEs. I think that people can make a decent rate of return as long as they stay on top of it.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Hasn’t the government backed off a little bit on this?

MARILYN COHEN: Yes, they have.

CONSUELO MACK: Robert, before we get to the one investment, as far as growth is concerned, if the market is really going to slow a lot, I’m looking at your portfolio- Yahoo, Amazon, Nokia, E-Bay- do those stocks offer protection in a weak economy?

ROBERT HAGSTROM: The trick to being a good growth manager is to have those stocks in a portfolio; it works as long as we don't go into a recession. I think if you go into a recession, there’s not much of anything you can own that will do exceptionally well. If we get this mid-cycle slowdown, and I think we should keep it in context, the markets are discounting maybe a 30% recession. If you believe we can get to 1% type growth and the Fed responds and cuts interest rates, which two days ago the probability of an interest rate cut in October was 30%, and today it is 92%.

CONSUELO MACK: That's a change.

ROBERT HAGSTROM: So if the Fed responds and keeps us out of a recession, we get a mid-cycle slowdown, and growth stocks do swimmingly well in that type of environment.

CONSUELO MACK: It is time for a one investment for a long-term diversified portfolio. Steve, what is so interesting is you chose something you don't own. And tell us about this?

STEVE LEUTHOLD: That's right. From our operational standpoint, we have a strict quantitative discipline. If someone said to me, what would you buy today, and you couldn't touch it for ten years, what would you buy? And I'd buy Big Pharma. I would buy drugs. Because we know that the pharmacological treatment of illness is cheaper. We know there are huge margins now in the drug companies that are going to come down, a huge return on equity that is going to come down. But it is a growth industry. And if there was one thing I could bet on over the last ten years, we're going to have a lot more older people.

CONSUELO MACK: Exactly, the present company excluded, and we picked an ETF, the Pharmaceutical HOLDRs (PPH), Morningstar highly ranked.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Absolutely the kind of stocks I would put in.

CONSUELO MACK: And your team is going to have a nightmare listening to this, as you said your model does not favor this. At any rate, Robert Hagstrom, clearly you think we should all have some growth in our portfolio.

ROBERT HAGSTROM: Certainly humility prevents me from recommending my own fund where I have all my money. But I would pick the Russell 1000 Growth Index (IWF). It’s something that I think will work well over the next couple of years. Growth has underperformed the value indices for seven years, as you pointed out, wondering if we’d ever get back into the favor of the market. If we avoid the recession, which I think is the hands-on probability that we get a mid-cycle slowdown, which could have a very positive stock market for the next two to three years, and growth will have the upper hand and do very well for us.

CONSUELO MACK: And Marilyn Cohen, tax deferred bargain is what you’re recommending.

MARILYN COHEN: And having said all of the negative things about high yield, this is a high yield aggressive item. It’s General Motors Acceptance Corp Zero Coupon Bond. It is for people that are risk takers. It is not for widows and orphans. It is a zero coupon deferred bond. You don't pay tax on the imputed interest annually, like you would if you bought a treasury zero. And I think GMAC is a survivor. I think they have more problems ahead because of the residential capital mortgage company, and I think that the auto sales are going to be awful, but having said all that, you make your most money when things are down and out, not when they’re good. GMAC Zeros right now are yielding 9.25%; you put up $63, that is $633 for every $1000 face value. If they get their act together and things get better in the economy by the end of 2010 could conceivably call them at a premium, and the return would be 15%. I like them if you're a risk taker.

CONSUELO MACK: Risk takers and risk averse, you all gave us some suggestions for both groups. Steve Leuthold from the Leuthold Group it is great to have you here on WealthTrack. Thank you for traveling in from Minnesota -- actually Maine. And Robert Hagstrom from Legg Mason Growth Trust, and Marilyn Cohen from Envision Capital Management, thanks for joining us on WealthTrack.
  Every week on WealthTrack, we leave you with one piece of advice and one action you can take to build and protect your wealth. This week’s Action Point is based on the wisdom of Warren Buffett from our guest Robert Hagstrom's excellent best-seller The Warren Buffett Way. So this week’s Action Point: buy stocks the Warren Buffett way. Buffett has said that investing in stocks is really simple: find great companies run by honest and competent people that are selling for less than what they intrinsically worth. That sounds simple, but we’re going to break that down a little bit. What is a great company? According to Buffett, the key to investing is determining a company's competitive advantage and the durability of that advantage. He looks for companies with what he calls big moats around the business that makes their turf difficult to invade. What I love, Buffett once wrote, is a big castle with a big moat with piranhas and crocodiles.
  Next, look for honest and competent managers who behave and think like owners and are candid with shareholders. Then don't focus on earnings; Buffett calls them a smokescreen. Look for companies with high profit margins and focus on return on equity, that’s a measure of a company’s financial efficiency. And finally, the question of value: does the company measure up in terms of its business, its management and its financial traits? And is this a good time to buy it? Buffett says, in his own words, “It is bad to go to bed at night thinking about the price of the stock. We think about the value and the company results. The stock market is there to serve you, not to instruct you.”
  That ends our service and instruction this week. Thanks for visiting with us. Next week tune in for advice from Vanguard’s Joel Dickson on how to cut your mutual fund tax bill; David Darst from Morgan Stanley will discuss whether emerging markets fit into your asset allocation; and we'll also talk investments with noted global value investor Tom Russo. To revisit today’s program, go to our website, wealthtrack.com, and starting on Monday, you can view it as a podcast or as streaming video. Until next time, make the week ahead a profitable and productive one.

今天电视里也在讨论说Greenspan又在说中国的股市泡沫问题，其中一个嘉宾认为这是外国人别有用心，Greenspan只要管好美国的事情就差不多了。民族主义用到纯经济领域，是不是我们的mental已经比股市更单边主义？日本就是一个很好的例证，我们可能还在吹泡泡的初期，自大一点也不用怕伤及自身，可是保持随时的警惕确实不可少，“我们之中的一些人过于空想或者过于财迷，没有远见，无法在痛定之后，反思未来可能发生的过高估值和愚蠢行为。”。今天还有一个广泛讨论的话题就是全世界市值最大的公司里面，中国占了5家，美国只有3家。其实看看最大销售额的全球50强，中国只有2家而已。所以能支撑这些市值最大的公司的基本理由就是：
1。太多的钱--可是后果是什么呢？会不会作为SWF去承接击鼓传花的最后一棒？"股票牛市所需的最后一个因素已经到位：新资金来源。我指的是主权财富基金，媒体上已经有很多关于它们的评论了。一个传统信号预示着长达10余年的牛市即将见顶：资金充裕但缺乏信息的投机者入场。外国机构通常在牛市结束时进场，为最后一轮游戏买单。" 如果真的如此，就要佩服我老爸的立场，他除了马克思的资本论以外没有学过太多的经济学，可是他说他坚决不排队去申购QDII，不为别的，就因为他深信中国人到外国股票市场上戏水就是给别人送钱去了。他说他已经为我支付了美国的学费，不愿意帮政府去为别的年轻人再支付一次学费。可是，我们的政府却为了解决国内流动性泛滥的问题，还在鼓励QDII，暂不论QDII风险管控，想象那么多钱被一些30多岁的海龟/土鳖的金融新晋才俊管理，也许他们连97年的downcycle都没有太多应对经验。
2。成长的动量
3。稀缺的流通股和对外投资渠道的相对不畅
昨天我和一个朋友还说其实中国的工商银行，中国银行和建设银行可以说最好的bschool business case for turnaround。不过3-4年前，才有国家bail out,现在就可以成为世界上市值最大的大蓝筹之一，超过花旗银行。但是反过来看，只要中国还实行资本管制，在相对封闭的资本市场中这个泡泡应该还有继续狂欢的时间。

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