A small sip of water

A tip from Carl- invest in water. It's getting hot out there (well, not here, but in

the Al Gore PANIC! sense) and people are thirsty. It seems logical. I think there will be a simple desalination solution soon, but it will take a big company to connect it to the infrastructure.

There isn't an easy way to directly invest in water itself, unless you build a resevoir or something, and that's not that easy. So, I bought 250 shares of a global "water industrial complex" ETF today. (CGW). A small sip of water, but the fund seems to be a fairly close proxy for the global stock index, it's not really performing as a sector. Still, the chance of one of the major holdings have a big up year soon seems pretty good.

We'll see how it goes.

Why not give Markopolos a job?

Bloomberg Story on Madoff Proceedings in Congress

"The officials, in joint testimony, said the regulator may stiffen audit requirements for money managers and inspect firms more frequently. The SEC is also examining how it evaluates risk and may require investment advisers to provide more information than it currently requires, according to the testimony."

This ignores the fundamental problem with Markopolos/Madoff. Markopolos gave them everything they needed, they did the investigation, and they still didn't admit that anything was wrong. They don't understand the global financial system. (Really, who does?) They don't understand hedge funds and other complex strategies.  Why don't they just hire Markopolos? Well, for one, he doesn't want to move to DC and they don't pay enough. However, with current financial industry salaries going downward ($500k salary limits!), they could meet in the middle geographically and financially. Pay $300k for SEC employees to live in New Jersey.  I'd move to NJ for $300k.

Odd afternoon

My investment strategy is looking bad today...tech stocks up. Oil way down. Gold down. Agricultural commodities down. Really confusing- most news today was pretty bad, and most of the stuff that I sold because it became overvalued continues to go up.  The long term outlook for the US dollar is still really scary. We could end up losing reserve currency status if we inflate too quickly. The hard question remains, what is going to go up?

I think I need to start making more stuff so I can sell it to people to buy in other currencies. I just don't know if any of them will be worth anything. Is there a PayPal for gold?