Pumpkin Head Market
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I’ve found a bipartisan effort I invite you all to get behind. Yes, that was me, invoking the word “bi-partisan.” Harken quickly and not so lightly, as this will surely be a rare occurence not often repeated.
What I’m talking about is Representative Jeff Flake’s idea to “Staple Green Cards to PhD diplomas” so as to make sure we don’t cede any of that freshly minted U.S.-educated talent back to the Third World and worse (in the case of the Red Chinese). Even President 0′Bama has gotten behind the idea, despite his telling Steve Jobs that he couldn’t sever the Gordian Knot of immigration reform gumming up the Congress.
And why not, I ask you? Post-secondary education is one of Americas remaining differentiating advantages, and smart children from the world around come here to take advantage of it. Why shouldn’t we make it easier for those bright individuals to enhance our quality of life here, not to mention add to the employment ranks by creating new businesses and hiring even more people? Did you know that half of Silicon Valley start-ups over the last two decades have been started by foreign born individuals?
Howabout this — we wouldn’t even have Steve Jobs were his Dad not here on a student visa. Serendipitous, no?
Maybe we should take the cue?
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Well that dollar bounced severely today, and so did my Skiffles, which are my one remaining hedge. They weren’t enough to make up for the blood on the ground from my newly minted mining additions, but I’m not even yet half invested, so I’ve got a lot of room and a lot of dry powder…
And a lot of patience.
I will be adding to my Skiffles tomorrow, however, if the dollar continues it’s climb. Gold is holding up strong here, and so is silver, which bodes well for the miners. If this were a real commodity sell off, silver would’ve been bludgeoned far worse today. BAA is a quarter shorter than yesterday and I might add to my holdings there in the morning, as I really liked the way it looked like it was being accumulated at the end of the day.
If you want to play with more generic pieces, keep GDX (large cap gold), GDXJ (junior gold) and SIL (silver miners) in mind to play the ETF field. For the more adventurous, like m’self, I also like NUGT on a pullback here as well as AGQ. RGLD, last of all, is showing nice relative strength.
See you tomorrow, I hope.
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39 Responses to Pumpkin Head Market
Not sure I support an outdated 14th amendment when it applies to “anchor babies.” Guess that makes me a right wing conservative now.
Besides illegal immigrants (mostly Mexican) we now have wealthy Asians flying into America to have their children born here at great personal expense … for what? To escape Chinese law re “1 child” and the ensuing penalties or for the bragging rights?
Apparently Chinese can do math too and they’ve decided that paying $30K to come here and give birth far outweighs that personal expense and inconvenience when it comes to the long term benefits that come to a child born on this soil … public education, healthcare and future citizenship for relatives without paying a dime of taxes for those benefits.
I understand the founding fathers’ rationale at the time and even your point of not losing those we educate but please … are you willing to raise taxes on the “job creators” to pay for the added cost of these benefits for foreigners when you are opposed to helping our own?
We might as well just discriminate as to who is eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship based on their IQ. Those less than 125 need not apply …. Corporate America can pick up the tab … Agreud?
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The anchor baby issue is a different one than the one I discuss above.
Not sure if you got that?
I happen to agree that the law should be more formalized and that the parents should be here legally.
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“I understand the founding fathers’ rationale at the time and even your point of not losing those we educate …”
I got it … just pontificating after seeing a report somewhere about the inordinate number of Chinese coming to CA to give birth at great expense to the parents as well as the US taxpayer.
Bet you didn’t expect one that you label “Democrat” taking that side of the issue, eh?
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No, a lot of Dems are anti-illegal immigrant because of the jobs issue. Most union folks as well.
Seems like the only people who are FOR it (or at least for turning a blind eye) are the damn politicians.
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When your system ejects PhDs earned at your top schools because of stupid immigration rules, then clearly it’s the rules that have problems. People who do cutting edge research in human knowledge, scientific or otherwise, should be kept in the country because they are what propel growth. If you’re thinking about the benefits paid out to them (by the way, ever occurred to you that these people will probably be working given their skills, and therefore paying taxes that probably exceed whatever benefits they get?) you’re already thinking along the wrong lines.
Not to mention the US tax system is such that even if these people eventually return to their home country, by being holders of the green card they’re on the hook for US taxes even when they’re overseas. Food for thought.
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You sound like you are arguing with someone. With whom are you arguing?
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My political comment “awaiting moderation” as usual ovah heah … please provide a menu of trigger words and phrases such as “right wing”, “Chinese”, “jobs creators” or “taxes” so posters can comply with opaque regulations going forward.
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I think it’s just bizarro Word Press randomness.
Go look at the last post… Yogi’s post was in moderation when I got home tonight and it’s totally innocuous.
Jeremy doesn’t even know what triggers it.
I shall free your post….
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just giving you a hard time …
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Off topic: My wave guy has gone LT neutral from bear as there are two potential scenarios at this juncture.
1) The recent highs have put into motion the possibility that we are in the early stages of Primary Wave 3 of a 5 wave (Primary) bull market rather than WaveB of an ABC bear market.
2) If we break support at 1225 then the current “impulsing wave” trend will be broken and one may conclude that the bear is alive and well, that we are in WaveB with one more rally before the slide continues with WaveC.
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guess we’re off to wave C now…
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In a bid to counteract the impact of a high A$ on foreign student enrollments Australia has recently decided to grant seven years visas to foreign PhD students, 3 Years for the qualification and 4 year for work experience. At that age seven years must seem like forever.
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Why 7? why not give them permanent visas… or better yet, fast track citizenship?
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I have a better idea – how about we create some incentives for AMERICANS to get PhD’s in science and engineering from US universities?
Foreign grad students are an almost free labor pool for the private business interests of tenured faculty members. Remove the economic incentives to import grad student slaves, and you’ll see more Americans filling those spots.
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What are you talking about? Are you saying that the American citizen EE and PhD candidates are intimidated by the presence of foreigners.
Please do not BS me with an argument about pay, as grad students have ALWAYS been paid schit for their labor.
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Intimidated? Of course not.
No BS about pay. If you want to see more Americans with graduate degrees in engineering and hard science, the comp structure needs to be closer to what those kids could make in the private sector if they got their BS and walked.
Americans who are smart enough for those programs are (by and large) not stupid enough to stay in grad school a few more years and work for peanuts.
Handing out green cards to immigrants when they work their way off the plantation is not the solution!
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That’s just ridiculous. I had to forego two years of very lucrative IB (or even LBO firm) pay to go to business school while I made nada, but I did it.
Why? Because it was an investment in my future.
Same thing goes for graduate programs in the sciences. If you want to teach, then it’s a necessary step, and if you want to go into higher applied sciences on the for-pay side, it’s a potentially lucrative leap.
If you model the cash flows, the investment is often worth it.
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If you want to model cash flows – the only strategy that I see working in science / engineering is get the BS, go straight into the defense sector (less h1b slave labor competition), then get one’s employer to pay up for grad school.
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That’s an alternative, for sure. But maybe not the one all those EE PhD’s working for Google took.
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Yep, all what, couple thousand of them?
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Of all the capital that is leverageable, human capital is the most valuable — AND the most leverageable!
Look at Gates/Jobs/Edison… how many jobs have those three minds created?
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Completely agree. A friend/co-worker of mine from China was in the US as an “exceptional researcher” to get her engineering PhD. Not many are allowed here in that category. She’s highly intelligent, hard-working, and pleasant. It took a long time, corporate lawyers, and a dozen letters of recommendation from us for her to be allowed to stay in the US after graduation.
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Ridiculous. They should roll out the golden carpet for her, and find her a guy to marry as well, so she’ll have nice American (smart) kids, who will play the violin and whom she can Dragon Mother.
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Hey Jake, got a target for Silver? It is getting demolished right now and doesn’t look like it’s going to stop going down anytime soon.
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I’m hoping the 20 day EMA holds here at $33.18. If not, then there is strong support at both $32 and $30.
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Hi Jake, Is AG a buy here ? Thanks for your thought.
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Certainly appears to be rallying right now. However, to be safe, I’d wait until it’s safely back above the 20 day EMA — @ $17 or so.
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did you pick up some BAA this morning?
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I am not going to add there until I see either a touch of the 200 day EMA (@ around 3.80-ish) or a break of the 20 and 50 day EMAs, which both reside at about $4.22.
Until then, I’m eating samitches.
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Jeff Flake is one of the few politicians worth their pay. He is a staunch conservative that allows common sense to dominate his thought process. Hopefully Arizonians will vote him into the Senate. He will make a fine presidential candidate one day as well.
I’ve been accumulating RGLD and SLW along with smaller amounts of the AG, EGO, ANV, KGC variety in my IRAs. Mostly I’ve been buying silver bullion.
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Here is a 2 year chart of junior gold miners vs gold itself . They do seem fairly undervalued.
At least if you buy the junior miners , you get the dividend too ( in many cases)
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Thanks!
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These foreign PhD’s are an inspiration to us all;). They often don’t get the credit they deserve
If you havent seen it already here is my post in the IBCbloggernetwork just the other day on a very similar topic.
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Good post.
FYI — “Emotive” is not the word you want in that first sentence. “Emotional” is fine.
I understand, you are a left brain type, so all is forgiven.
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What do you think of platinum at these levels? It should be playing catch up with gold sometime soon.
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I can take or leave platinum. It’s kind of a niche metal. I do have a small position in PTM, however.
Junior gold is where you should be looking right now.
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Senator, the BRD is looking pretty good these days. Picked up some this morning along with some BAA. And glad that I added some AGQ yesterday. Are you still in AGQ? Tks:)
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I have zero AGQ at this point… only because I haven’t had the time to grab anything new.
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Mr Wolfe is too busy expediting/cleaning I guess.
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