Took the words right out of my mouth. How about VXX? Despite all its flaws, a) it tracks the VIX futures, not the index itself, and b) it can suffer from serious value leak due to normal futures curve shape (what is mistakenly referred to as contango these days). Still it can't be a bad place to be over the long haul, ignoring for now that we've seen the VIX as low as 10 in the past, and VXX is now tracking VIX in the ~19 range.
Your wife maybe. No I'm just kidding. Well I think you could look at very broad things like some of you have (Japanese stocks, German real estate), or you could look at individual securities as most value investors do. There are always some good deals out there, personally I think JNJ is well below it's intrinsic value right now. And of course its a very good business that will be very profitable regardless if we have a double dip recession or a strong bull market. I also like Joseph A Bank (JOSB). They have weathered the economic storm very well, are very well run, have a lot of room to expand and steal market share, and is still cheap imo.
What about energy, especially oil/gasoline? Back in 1980, gasoline was as high as $1.50 a gallon. At that time, the average home in the US cost something like $40k. Now gasoline costs about 2.5 times what it did in 1980, yet even with the housing crisis the average home price is still 5 times what it was in 1980. Whether or not your believe that the world is going to "run out of oil" soon as the peak oil people suggest (and I personally do not), it still stands to reason that the cost to extract oil will increase as we extract the last of the "easy" oil. The price of other things may inflate as well. Its possible for example that real estate may see another boom/bubble. But if things are tight, people can always live in a somewhat smaller house in the long term, whereas people are not going to give up their cars and other heavy uses for energy no matter what. So unless there is some major technological breakthrough which can produce energy cheaply (cold fusion?), I think energy is a pretty safe bet for the next 10-20 years. bettles
UNG, GRU, COW and JJG are all things that I've bought in the past couple of months and plan on holding for up to several years if needed.
I'm bullish on the whole energy complex. There is simply no getting around our expanding need for hydrocarbons. Interest rates are very cheap, i.e. bonds are expensive. Hong Kong real estate remains cheap. Think Chinese soil, a real judicial system, and one of the last currencies pegged to the USD. Count me skeptical of Japanese equities and US real estate. Just because something goes down a lot doesn't mean its cheap. Japanese companies STILL earn single-digit ROEs, and Japan's population continues to age. Things continue to get worse there. US real estate? Detroit??? These cycles are very, very, VERY long. Much too early to be picking a bottom.
Yes, but the FED has basically said that they can borrow as much money as they need to get back in action. I'd say you can expect more shenanigans from them in the future.
http://aaii.com/stockscreens/allscreens.cfm#growthvalue Cutten, this is for how to pick value/growth combination stock. Just something I read to learn, but no stock pick from me for this thread.