Short-Term Key: Negative  Long-Term Key: -81 (Neutral-to-Negative)Read more...

November 16, 2009 Read more...

Three seemingly disparate news items last week strongly suggest that the investment world is bifurcating into commodity and non-commodity investments – or if you will long-term winners and long-term losers.

First, India's central bank announced that it had bought 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund. That's half of the total amount the IMF had planned on selling. For a relatively small central bank to buy that much in one fell swoop is a big deal. It promotes gold from the status of a “barbaric relic” to that of an alternative reserve currency. Moreover, it leaves China – and other Central Banks – with egg on their face.

If India does not buy the rest (and they have not ruled that out) it is almost certain other Central Banks, Sovereign Wealth funds, all those who are underinvested in precious metals to join a prospective scramble for gold et al. that far exceeds what the IMF is willing to sell. No wonder. Money supply in so-called non-inflationary countries have climbed 15 fold in the past generation or so while the total value of all above-ground gold has only doubled.

But we are not just bullish on precious metals. The second announcement was Warren Buffett's biggest investment of his career... Read more...

Yesterday, Warren Buffett stormed back into the headlines with the largest deal in his 44-year career at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway. The “Oracle of Omaha” announced that he was buying the 77.4 percent of Burlington Northern Santa Fe that he didn’t already own – paying $26 billion or $100 per share of the railroad (a 30 percent premium over the previous day’s closing price), and assuming roughly $10 billion in Burlington debt. Including his previous holding in Burlington, this is a $44 billion investment for Mr. Buffett, and is quite a bet for the investment icon.  Read more...