BerkAdvisory

$AZO: 12 consecutive quarters of 20% EPS growth; 21 consecutive quarters of double digit growth.

AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE:AZO) today reported net sales of $1.9 billion for its first quarter (12 weeks) ended November 19, 2011, an increase of 7.4% from the first quarter of fiscal 2011 (12 weeks). Domestic same store sales, or sales for stores open at least one year, increased 4.6% for the quarter.

Solar vs. Natural Gas: Why are we investing billions as a country in a technology that is economically not competitive?

Facts on the cost of generating electricity (per kilowatt hour):

Natural gas: 3.5-4.5 cents

Coal: 4-5 cents
Hydro: 4 cents
Nuclear: 8 cents
Wind: 7-9 cents
Solar: 15-50 cents

Question: Why as a country are we investing billions of dollars in the most expensive option (solar) and ignoring the cheapest (natural gas), especially when the U.S. is the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas"? 

HT: Warren Smith

via mjperry.blogspot.com

Gap to Slash Namesake Store Count: Never Too Late, I Guess

Gap Inc. plans to shut more than a fifth of its Gap stores in North America over the next two years, a comedown for the struggling retailer and a stark symbol of the way the tepid recovery and rise of online shopping have altered the landscape at shopping malls.

Once the world's largest specialty apparel chain by revenue, Gap pioneered the strategy of developing a popular store and expanding it to every viable shopping location in the U.S.—then beginning the process all over again with a new brand.

But that approach, which produced heady growth as Gap and other retailers raced to build a coast-to-coast presence, came back to haunt it after the recession exposed an oversaturated market, with far more stores than shoppers to fill them.

Don't believe the small intellectual elite in a faraway capital,, Buddha style.

Do not believe anything because it is said by an authority, or because it is supposed to come from angels or from Gods, or from an inspired source. Believe it only if you have explored it in your own heart and mind and body and found it to be true.

Gautama Buddha

via shilpaunalkat.typepad.

BERK: If I have one message at BerkAdvisory it is this..."experts" don't know and can't predict the future but they do influence perception which changes today's stock prices.  

BerkAdvisory's ValueAligned Portfolio Up +17% Last Twelve Months

Little do many people know, the stock market is up 9% over the last 12 months. If you don't look at the market and manage it every day like we do, with all the negative news and general malaise out there, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the stock market is the last place that you would want to park your money.

But as Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman said to a fancy boutique clerk that had snubbed her in her store earlier in the day - "Big Mistake!".

Most investors have left the stock market due to fear. This exodus is happening when treasury bills yield less than 1% and money market funds yield even less. Those returns are not going to meet your savings' goals.

Our tactical allocation approach to buying ValueAligned® companies has yielded +17% over the last 12 months - even better than the stock market.  As you can see from the graph above we have suffered along with the market lately, but we are still up nearly +8% over the index.  

On September 8 we put out this post (Click Here) that said it was time to BUY stocks now.  Since then the market is up but you have not missed the move yet. 

The reward to risk ratio over the next 18 months is about 20% up to only 5% down - that's 4-1, about as good as it gets.

What to do? Put money into the stock market now - If you don't know how to do it call me and we'll do it for you.  It's easy to open an account over the phone and our broker Folio Institutional will transfer an account from another broker - without you doing much of anything.  

CALL ME NOW 732-800-2375 

Berk

 

The Courage to Undo Will Create Jobs and a Boom: Why Government Spending Can't Create Jobs

Government spending cannot create jobs because any spending with the objective of creating jobs, not surplus value (sometimes called wealth or the expanding pie) will destroy "unseen" jobs - that's what we are witnessing. 

Watch the short video to see why all this bluster out of Washington is nonsensical but dangerous.  The President and the Republicans need the courage to undo the mess they have made over the past decade.

1. Immediately cut government spending by 20% (It's up 30% just since 2008!)

2. Pleadge no new taxes on capital or labor

3. Freeze regulations

 

 

6 Killer Apps to Create General Prosperity

Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture -- call them the 6 killer apps -- that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.

Black Gold Rush in North Dakota - Why Not Everywhere Else in the USA?

Even MSNBC Admits Big Oil Creates Jobs

Drill, drill, drill = Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

 
Amazing facts: The Williston, North Dakota Walmart sells out of merchandise every day, and the local McDonald's is one of the busiest in the country and pays $15 per hour to attract workers. 

HT: Americans for Tax Reform

via mjperry.blogspot.com

It's All About Regime Uncertainty and Investment Surplus

The Reason None of the Government Intervention Works - It's Not About Putting More Money In Consumer's Pockets to Create Demand -"Consumption Spending HAS Already Recovered," 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Higgs makes an important point that "Consumption Spending HAS Already Recovered," and it's private investment spending that is lagging and holding the economy back:

"Commentators and pundits, some of whom ought to know better, continue to harp on the idea that the recession persists because consumers are not spending. Every Keynesian seems to believe that because consumers are in a dreadful funk, only government stimulus spending can rescue the moribund economy, given (to them, at least) that investors will not spend more because the Fed, having already driven interest rates to extraordinarily low levels, cannot use conventional policies to drive them any lower and thereby elicit more investment spending.

People, please look at the data. They are conveniently available to one and all at the website maintained by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. According to these data, real personal consumption expenditure recovered from its recession decline by the fourth quarter of 2010 (see chart above). Continuing to grow, it now stands (as of the most recent data, for the second quarter of 2011) even farther above its pre-recession peak.

The economy remains moribund not because consumption spending has failed to recover and not because government spending has failed to increase, but because the true driver of economic growth—private investment—remains deeply depressed. Gross private domestic fixed investment fell steeply after the second quarter of 2007, and in the second quarter of 2011 it remained 19 percent below its pre-recession peak (see chart above).

Here is the true reason for the recession’s persistence.  Private investors, despite the full recovery of real consumer spending, remain apprehensive about the future of new investments, especially new long-term investments. I have argued repeatedly during the past three years that an important reason for this apprehension and the consequent reluctance to make new capital commitments is regime uncertainty—in this case, a widespread, serious fear that the government’s major policies in areas such as taxation, Obamacare, financial reform, environmental regulation, and other areas will have the effect of depriving investors of control over their capital or diminishing their ability to appropriate the income that the capital generates. President Obama’s harping on the desirability of making “the rich” pay their “fair share” of the government’s ever-rising costs only exacerbates regime uncertainty. Business leaders have spoken again and again of how the present political environment is discouraging risk-taking and entrepreneurship.

In any event, it should be crystal clear that the problem is not the failure of consumer spending to recover. Let us please have more respect for the facts than to continue singing that old, thoroughly worn-out tune."

via mjperry.blogspot.com

 

 

The "Unseen": How many jobs have the Obama Administration's policies destroyed?

The Courage to Undo

After more than 30 months of record unemployment, the question arises: How many jobs have Obama's policies destroyed?  This short video while political in nature is also good real-life economics as it puts the administration's policies on a timeline - the seen is slow job growth; the unseen is all the jobs destroyed by government intervention.