A Simple way to avoid the fiscal cliff

Fiscal Cliff Drama and a solution for compromise:

I have listened to both the Obama and Boehner differences enough to see an easy way to compromise. These guys are letting "ego" get in the way of a solution to the fiscal cliff.

First off, Obama thinks that just cause he won the election we voted for every detail of his talking points. Sorry Barack, it aint so. We voted for your ability to be smart and to lead and to find a way to work things out. I could go on about the republicans and Boehner, but will forego that to get to the points.

Proposed Simple Solution:

On Revenues:

Obama wants to increase taxes on people making $250K and above while maintaining the Bush tax cuts for those under $250K.

Boehner does not want a tax hike on the "wealthy" and would rather raise revenues by putting a cap on deductions at $25 K.

The first Fiscal Compromise could be a little of both notions.

1. Raise Obama's $250 K  threshold to say $ 1/2 M to 1 Million income earners.

2. Keep Boehner's $25 K cap on deductions.

3. Forget that idea about higher taxes on dividends, at least for now.

That would likely gain MORE revenue from the fat cat wallstreet execs who already benefited from previous government bailouts.

On Spending:

I heard Timothy Geitner say something disturbing. He said on the sunday talk show, he said they are going to let the Pentagon determine what they need for the military. BAD IDEA!

Why do we have an executive branch? The President is supposed to LEAD not follow carte blanche whatever the Pentagon wants. You can't tell me thare is no waste in the huge military budget!  (Do I need to remind them here of President Eisenhower's ( also a Great  WWII general!) warning to future Presidents about allowing the military/ industrial complex from getting out of control?)

Spending Cut Propsal:

Cut the Military by 5% starting Jan 1, 2013. Let them find new and creative ways to save the taxpayers. 5% is not that much. More drones, scale out of foreign wars faster, less aide to Egypt that's trending back to radical muslim tendencies, etc.

Cut NASA by 5% also. What the heck are we trying to put a man on Mars for? When they actually find a place worth going to that can sustain life in another solar system, maybe. But in the meantime, unmanned space travel works but these high budget plans to put people on Mars is a waste considering our economic woes here.

The President should also push, no make that insist, for less subsidies to big oil already making billions.

Well, that's a start. I think that may do it.

simple.

If you agree, email this link to your Washington representative or to the White house.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Thank you



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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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Can ONVO's 3 D Printer be used to help the paralyzed walk again?

Stock Talk:

I have been looking into the $2 a share ONVO stock that has a 3 D printer for human tissue. Last night, a notion came to me about the possibilties. The ultimate idea of 3 D printing of human tissue seems to be organ repair.

But what about people that break their neck or back and are unfortunate that spinal cord severed nerve injury leaves them paralyzed?


Here is my idea.

If you had to lose something to gain mobilty again, what would you pick?

Ok, how about a toe?

I think they should look into this. Take a person who has been paralyzed by a severed neck or back nerve and amputate the toe next to the pinky. We need the pinky for balance in my opinion. But that toe next to the pinky? or maybe the middle toe, or even a finger.

Now pull the nerve out and then wrap it with the tissue glue from ONVO's 3 D printer and include the patients own stem cells too.

Now you have a protected nerve wire to splice around the patients severed nerve.

Will that work?

Not sure , I am not a doctor, but electrically speaking I don't see why it's not worth a try.

Anyway, the point is to share an idea I had in a dream and to point out that the 3 D printing of ONVO must have inspired the notion.

Hmmmm -- lose a toe to gain a walking life again? I'd go for it.

Well, I am sure that ONVO's new technology is going to inspire a lot of new experiments.


Well, I posted yesterday a few stocks on my radar and ONVO is a speculation. Sometimes it's fun to speculate if you don't have too much skin (excuse the pun) in the game.

PS: Note to ONVO's team. get working on my idea!

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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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When Green Mountain Coffee goes below $30, watch that one

Stock Talk:

A stock I have watched on and off over the years is GMCR. I don't have a lot of time today to expouse on it.    All I'm gonna say is when GMCR is trading below $30 a share --  put a watch on it.

I will offer my view. I don't agree with short Einhorn.

People are very finicky about their coffee.  I brought the wrong brand home once and took a lot of grief over it.  Looking at even the low estimates of earnings puts GMCR  much higher than where it is now trading in the 20's. Competition on K cups may not be as much of an impact as the shorts have made out and there's a new Riva machine coming.  GMCR is a volatile stock. Thinking about some call options as a lower risk way to play the volatility. GMCR is undervalued on a fundamental basis in my opinion.

Market timing is not always very easy though. In any case, I have a watch on GMCR.

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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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The Chicken Industry has growth.

Stock Talk ..

People need to eat. The long term trend is towards an amazing prediction for a serious growing demand for food over the next 40 years. There was a recent prediction by scientists the world will require more food in the next 40 years than all of the food produced over the last 8,000 years. Read that again... !!!

And yet we hear reports of a growing practice of cattle herds being taken down to small numbers here in the US. This brings me to the chicken industry. Chickens are going to be in high demand and I predict the demand could skyrocket exponentially over the coming years. There are two stocks in the Chicken industry I am watching.

 Pilgrim's Corp (PPC) in the $5's and Tysons Food (TSN).

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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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I don't tell people what they "should do".

Market Talk:

Over the weekend, we see the Euro finance ministers stepping in to provide Spain with 100 Billion Euro's to resolve their near term crisis. The market will be relieved at first until Spain reports what they really need. There are an estimated over 180 BILLION  in so called "Zombie loans" outstanding. A zombie is what they call loans made to defunct builders and such that will never repay and they just sit on the books. So while the market will liklely respond in a short covering rally with new bulls pounding their chests, this weekend deal is still a kick the can down the road approach. Until the next crisis. It is what it is. The market may respond in bull mode for awhile. However, the economy remains weak and  jobs data is trending poorly.

Stock Talk:

Stocks are so volatile that I don't even want to bring up particular issues that are pumped daily on the tv shows. Like take WPRT for example. This co is the on and off darling or dog of wall street depending on your view. WPRT is into natural gas engines that are seen as a way to address the high cost of trucking. Cramer, the Motely fool and newsletter guys pumped WPRT all the way to 50 a share before the reality set in that WPRT has NO earnings and is not expected to have any until next year. So the market hype has already factored in the early success anticipated.  Recently WPRT bounced off the low of the 20's as Cramer and Motely continue to pump the caterpillar deal that was made with WPRT.   Is it time to jump on WPRT and ride the hype? Natural gas is at historical lows due the abundance of supply. If the trucking industry converts to natural gas, you can bet that the natural gas industry will respond by jacking up the price of natural gas. However related to WPRT, there's so much hype around it that it may go higher. One dynamic that helped tank WPRT's share price was when a partner, Cummins, announced they were introducing their own engine in a line of products.

WPRT is mainly a think tank and relies on the engine manufacturers to produce. Then there's China. But China is not always up front about the way they operate. They are known to steal ideas and spread them around. So anyway, there's the bull and bearish side of wprt. maybe it will be the darling of wall street awhile but the present fundamentals are still weak. In between now and the future growth, companies like to dilute the promise and cash in on the hope we have already seen many times.


But what does the Kick the can down the road approach in Europe mean to our market? We may or may not be in a few weeks of blissful denial but the issues are still there. Trade it or invest at your own risk and reward tolerance to your own peril or glory. I will not tell people what they "should do". Me? I will stay in some of the stock of no name and wait to see if the long term survivor group on the shot of hope beat their odds early next year. This is a no name stock for now because of shorts that bashed it into the desert camp and because the Interim analysis resulted in a continue of the study as traders pulled out.

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/cancer-vaccine/#clip194521

In the meantime, some ten year fighters keep on getting the shot of hope every six weeks.

Another stock to watch is ARNA.  In the near term,  it will rise or fall on the basis of exactly what the FDA decides to do on approving it's weight loss management pill, lorcaserin.  If they do not delay it for a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy , ARNA  could be on deck for a nice run on an FDA approval.  But if the drug is delayed it will not be pretty for the stock as the risk of losing title as the first weight loss pill approved in a long time could go to VVUS.  My some money is on approval after reading some views that examined the perceived health issues and it appears that they have been addressed adequately.  HOWever , that's my take.  Exactly where  the FDA will weigh in on the matter  seems like a wonderland of wonder until they actually announce something.

I feel that my record has not been the best in predicting biotechs lately so if I am in some,  that alone is  probably not a great sign. (sigh). 

enough self examination and further self flagellations be damned!

I am in some ARNA and will wait out the decsion..

My current positions are some:

a stock of no name, ONTY, in the desert camp waiting, we have provisions.

some ARNA waiting on what's gonna happen with the FDA decsion.

Dry powder that may or may not go to work, under the radar.

I don't tell people what they "should do"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nizxZImh5N8

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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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Food, Gas and other stock talk

Market Talk:

The market is easily spooked. The market has support, legs. The market this and the market that. The market is smart and looks ahead, it's anticipatory. The market is made up of a sea of fools all chasing each other. There's a few sayings, I've heard or just made up..You pick it. The best saying that has stood the test of time, buy low/ sell high.

Stock Talk:

Today, I want to cover two themes that I have been pondering.

Food and Gas.

I am watching Tyson Foods (TSN) in the food sector and Western Refinery (WNR). Not buying TSN, and holding WNR. More later... I think WNR is in the sweet spot for awhile. more sometime later...

In other stocks, I am watching ACHN. It has a similar air about it that VRUS and INHX (in the Hep C treatment space) had about them before they got suddenly bought out at huge premiums. These two had a class of drugs in clinical testing stage known as "nucs". But yesterday, Bloomberg reported again that Gilead's drug is showing relapses in 8 out of 9 patients where they previously touted a cure. This brings the nuc class into serious question in my view.

Enter ACHN -1625 a small molecule Protease Inhibitor (PI) that may represent a lasting cure for Hep C by Achillion Phamaceuticals (ACHN). ACHN is trading much like INHX did. After hitting the 12's on the excitement, INHX backed off into the 10's and 9's as shorts piled on. Then suddenly over a weekend, INHX got bought out in the 20's on a Saturday.

I was watching INHX to pull the trigger and buy some that Friday but got busy and said I'd wait till Monday.

With the latest news about the nuc class that Gilead paid about $11 BILLION for and the relapses .... I am growing more convinced that large Pharma is taking a keen look at ACHN. Looking at the share structure, something on the order of $ 35 a share may be what it takes if one of the large phamaceuticals acts fast. I am sticking to my guns for awhile to see what happens on ACHN. If large pharma does not step in there are a lot of newly rich investors from  VRUS and INHX that , I believe, want to do it again and ACHN is a prime candidate for investors to be wanting in.

Well, pick your saying today, tomorrow it will change. The moon was full last night did you howl at it or look up and talk to the man in the moon and the one above us all and say thank you for life. Speaking of that, well I'll come back to that someday.
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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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Market Talk and "Known Unknowns".

Market Talk:

Hello February. Now that you are here I can only say that there are knowns and unknowns...

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

... Donald Rumsfeld

Seems similar to another quote I heard somewhere on the street of hard knocks ...

"If you were half as smart as you think you are , You'd be twice as smart as you are right now".

Well with these odd quotes I will proceed into stock talk..

Stock talk:

I am watching a few stocks and will offer my opinion on if they are good trades or not.

ONTY, This is a long stock I am in for years n tears since BIOM days. Stimuvax is licensed to Merck KGaA and it's now in the 6th year of the global phase 3 lung cancer trial called "START". Anybody who reads me here knows I am long some ONTY. The key decision point for the Interim look of the "events" (fighters that passed away either on Stimuvax or placebo) is approaching soon. Although there are people that insist they "know" what the outcome is gonna be one way or another, put me in the "I donno" category. I admit don't know , I HOPE. I look at the Phase II data and think the large Phase 3 trial  has a fair to pretty good chance of doing something NEVER done before against the leading cause of cancer death in the world.

So I hope, until we know.  When/ if we get the words "it works" either from the chief of the large Phama partner Merck KGaA  or ONTY's  Kirkman then  I will celebrate with MANY on the LIFE of the matter and what it may mean for all the future fighters of lung cancer and possibly other forms as well.  But until then? I stay tempered on the Mountain path.  Also the fly on the wall? Earlier today, I was a little harsh about FlyontheWall reporting stuff and said they are BS. What I really meant is that the Fly reports high volume activity and they sometimes assign a reason, even if it's a rumor. Often these are  false rumors which have the effect of getting people all excited in a buying frenzy and it serves as a setup for the shorts to enter into large short positions  and then bash in a coordinated way, followed by bear raids on a stock.  That's what happened in ONTY's run to the 11's before.   Well, Fly on the Wall may not be responsibe  for the initial volume, but  people start repeating rumors and the action can get frenzied.  All I'm saying is if they post something is a rumor, take it for what it's worth.  It likely may or may not be the actual truth of the matter. Yup, call it more known unknowns, thank you Donald.

Other stocks of interest.

I watch many stocks, some I get right , some not.  Some are trades some are buy and stick around to see if the long thesis works out. For example, I was watching and trading Western Refinery (WNR) and traded it for a small gain, now only to see it breaking out moving higher.  I will watch that one maybe on a pullback may buy in some.

Then there is the shipping sector.  I picked one stock that earned my respect in the downturn.  They still have my respect, but I sold with a small gain.  There are a lot of growing unknowns in the shipping sector.  One is how these giant sized ships being built will affect the sector.  It seems crazy to me as to why they would build giant ships that require ports to dredge deep gaps in the river beds.  Yes, the Panama canal is being widened. So what. The shipping sector's Baltic Dry Index (BDI) has me concerned . I'm out for now and will watch the sector on the sidelines. There's those known unknowns again.

Now back to Biotech, ACHN has the Protease Inhibitor (PI) reported to show very favorabe results in treating Hep C strains in albeit early trial.  It's not a "nuc" compound,  it's a PI.  BUT those with Hep C virus may not care if they can get treated and have an excellent prognosis for a CURE, even if a course of interferon goes with it.   The unknown is :  Is large Pharma thinking like that too?  I am gonna stick around awhile in some ACHN to see what happens. You may recall I traded IDIX for a 50% gain in about a week awhile back?  Sometimes I do get it right, eh?

Back to the energy sector,  Two stocks of note are again WNR in refinering and WPRT as an engine company in the growing hype of using Natural gas for transportation of the future.  Both have run well.  WNR has improving fundamentals in an old industry.  WPRT has bad fundamentals but a positive projected revenues and hyped up growth story.  Will WPRT grow into it's lofty share level pumped up by the newsletter guys and Cramer? beats me.  I'm gonna watch these known unknows awhile, maybe pull the trigger on some on a dip, maybe not.  

Of all the above, I am most  interested in what will  happen to ONTY from the anticipated  outcome in the the dmc's Stimuvax Interim Analysis (IA) of the 529 events in the START lung cancer trial.  Yesterday, we saw an 11% spike in the share price and volume.  Coupled with a similar spike in Merck KGaA on the Frankfurt Germany market may or may not be a positive sign on Stimuvax.

But those that say they know 100% for sure,  one way or another, until the readout is officially announced - are just plain pissin' into the wind in my opinion.

I'll stay long with some ONTY and my hope and WAIT on the Mountain path.

This site is my opinion and not buy/sell advice.   I may  trade into or out of any stock at any time.

Maybe we are just fighting unseen dark forces like devils or maybe we are  in the arms of angels. "I donno".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbAjj80NIM

Thank you.
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ALL in my humble opinion, scroll down and read more..

This site does NOT make Buy / Sell recommendations.
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