Headline of the Day: Buffet and Goldman

The headline from the Associated Press reads: Buffett's Berkshire betting $5 billion on Goldman

Since when has "betting" become synonymous with "investing"?

Quarter Mintage Economic Indicator

Another interesting fringe indicator- The State Quarter Mintage Indicator.

The theory goes that coin demand follows economic activity. In times of prosperity, more money circulates and the Mint produces more coins to meet the demand. In hard times, less money circulates and the Mint produces less coins. In addition, during a downturn, people start cleaning out their couch cushions and cashing in jars of coins to help make ends meet. This further reduces the need to produce new coins.

Throughout history, most low mintage key date coins have been produced during tough economic times.

The mintage trends for State Quarters seem to have bottomed at the start of the year. The Oklahoma State Quarter had a combined mintage of 416 million. This represents the lowest mintage in the entire nine year history of the series.

Following the Oklahoma Quarter, the New Mexico and Arizona Quarters have had mintages of 488 million and 510 million.

Note that the highest mintage State Quarter was for Virginia. The coin was released on October 16, 2000 and had a combined mintage of 1.6 billion.

Hat tip to this guy.

Fannie & Freddie: The Stock Market Will Go On

"Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you,
That is how I know you go on."

Today's action is worth noting.

As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take another giant step towards zero, the stock market has stabilized and is currently posting some respectable gains.

While FRE and FNM are down more than 15% a piece, but other financials are taking an opposite path. BAC and WB are chugging 3% higher, LEH is up more than 6%, and even C has posted a 1% gain.

As recently as Monday, declines in Fannie and Freddie took the whole market for a swoon. Are the recent "jitters" coming to an end?

Woes & Jitters Stock Market Indicator

One thing that periodically irks me is financial website headline writing. At the close of each day and usually throughout the day, Yahoo Finance proudly displays a single headline to sum up the action of all of the thousands of stocks that make up the stock market.

The headline will usually point to a single identifiable reason which explains everything. Barring a single identifiable reason, the headline may simply proclaim that stocks are "fluctuating."

When the stock market declines, two words that appear in financial headlines with uncanny frequency are "woes" and "jitters."

After experiencing several days of recent declines, you may have witnessed the following headlines:

• "Stocks Lower on [ Fill in the Blank ] Jitters"
• "Stocks Fall on [ Fill in the Blank ] Woes"

Could these ridiculous headlines be utilized as a tool for identifying temporary market bottoms?

Let's look at some charts:


Source: StockCharts.com


Source: Google Trends


Source: Google Trends

You'll see that the "jitters" chart has provided some clear signals for when sell offs were approaching their extremes. The "woes" chart sends less clear signals, but also displays the appropriate spikes.

We are recently coming off a double "woes" and "jitters" spike. Is this ridiculous indicator worth noting?

Find me elsewhere

I decided to start fresh with a more focused concept.

Since things are looking absolutely abysmal, I decided it would be a great time (sarcasm) to select a group of particularly punished stocks and buy them.

View the stocks in the portfolio and follow the performance at 8 Stock Portfolio.