Upcoming Week

Well, I just read Barron's cover to cover. Not ordinary reading for me, but this wasn't an ordinary week. Overall gist was that tough sledding ahead remains. The editorial made some sense. Many people are pulling for the Fed to lower rates soon. But the editorial commented that this problem was caused by cheap credit and will not be solved with cheap credit. The front page had some Greenspan bashing. Basically saying that perhaps his best timing of all was wehn to retire, suggesting he kne he was leaving BB with a mess.

There was a real good article on quant funds. It suggested that many had similar approaches, including buying low p/e stocks and shorting high p/e stocks. Sound familiar? I don't know if that was the only cause of our crunch as some value indices were going up last week while MFI was dropping, but it could very well be that some quant funds were focusing specifically on MFI stocks, and using leverage. When margin calls came, they had to liquidate some positions.

A positive comment was in 13d filings. It appears that an activist fund is taking a position in KSW. Might be interesting to watch.

I see Korean and Japan are up early tomorrow (today for us). That is good to see.