Jimmy V Day on ESPN Radio

Every year ESPN Radio sets aside one special day to raise awareness and money for cancer research for The V Foundation.  The foundation is named for legendary North Carolina State men's basketball coach Jim Valvano.

Here is the link to the ESPN Radio site where you can donate.  I have also enclosed Valvano's emotional ESPY award speech where he received the Arthur Ashe award for courage.

In the words of Jimmy V, "don't give up, don't ever give up."

Searing Sun and Drought Shrivel Corn in Midwest

I had noted the drought conditions in the Midwest in our Week 27 Performance post that would at some point begin to affect both consumers and corporations.

As we noted in our post higher crop prices will ultimately get passed onto consumers exactly what some struggling Americans do not need.  However some of the price increase could be absorbed by corporations thus lowering their earnings putting pressure on stock prices.

One of our main investment strategies at DWCM is the long-term belief in agricultural names as the world population continues its growth spurt.  This drought condition in the US may create a buying opportunity for those interested in the Ag space for the long-term.

The New York Times touches on the drought conditions in the Midwest with this piece

• Crop insurance agents and agricultural economists are watching closely, a few comparing the situation with the devastating drought of 1988, when corn yields shriveled significantly, while some farmers have begun alluding, unhappily, to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Far more is at stake in the coming pivotal days: with the brief, delicate phase of pollination imminent in many states, miles and miles of corn will rise or fall on whether rain soon appears and temperatures moderate.
• For farmers, especially those without insurance, the pressure mounts, they say, with each check on the morning weather forecast, with every stifling walk through a cloudless field. But the worries have quickly spread: corn prices have risen on the Chicago Board of Trade in recent days on the likelihood of a smaller crop, as analysts weigh the broader prospect of rising prices for food and effects on ethanol production.



Aaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times

• “You wake up every morning with that churning in your stomach,” said Eric Aulbach, a farmer here in central Indiana, who gazed out across a field of corn he ought not to be able to gaze across by now.
•  Some experts are less pessimistic, saying the fate of the nation’s corn crop, the largest in the world, cannot be known until later in the summer, after pollination, when it is clear whether kernels or empty spaces fill the ears of corn and whether enough ears appear at all. They note that the driest, hottest conditions have steered clear of some crucial Corn Belt states, including Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and western Iowa, the nation’s most prolific corn producer. In those states, the crop appears healthy and strong — not to mention increasingly valuable. And while much of the nation’s corn is not protected by irrigation, some of it, especially in Nebraska and Kansas, is, though those areas have felt the effects of drought, too, requiring more water and, potentially, driving up costs.
• American farmers had high expectations for corn this year, planting 96.4 million acres of it — a number 5 percent more than the previous year. High prices and an expectation of strong returns made this year’s planting the largest corn acreage in 75 years. Those were heady times in farm country, with farmland prices rising on and on, even as the recovery moved sluggishly in other realms. 

Here's How Often AT&T, Sprint, And Verizon Each Hand Over Users' Data To The Government

Congressman Ed Markey released a collection of letters he received from major phone carriers in response to a query he sent them earlier this year, demanding that they reveal how often they give users’ data to the government and under what circumstances.   Andy Greenberg of Forbes compiled the report into the following bullet points below.


It’s important to remember that the information revealed Monday includes “tower dumps,” too, says Chris Calebrese, an attorney with the ACLU. “Just the sheer volume of orders is amazing, but a significant chunk are dumps from entire cell towers,” he says. “That means tons of people’s information is being grabbed with a single one of these orders.”

• Sprint received 500,000 subpoenas for its data from law enforcement in the last year. That doesn’t include court orders for wiretaps and location data, which Sprint didn’t track annually but which added up to 325,982 requests in the last five years. The company also says it doesn’t have the resources to track how many of those requests it responded to or rejected. The company has 221 employees dedicated to processing and responding to government requests for its data.
• Verizon received 260,000 requests for its users data in 2011, including wiretaps, calling records, text message information, and location information, but doesn’t add how many were fulfilled.
• AT&T received 131,400 subpoenas in criminal cases for its information in 2011, as well as 49,700 warrants or orders that it hand over data. It rejected 965 of them. The company says it employees more than 100 staffers full-time to respond to law enforcement demands.
• T-Mobile told Congressman Markey it “does not disclose” the number of law enforcement requests it receives or complies with.
• MetroPCS says it received fewer than 12,000 requests a month on average for the last six years.
• Cricket received 42,000 requests last year, and U.S. Cellular received 19,734 requests in 2011.
• The New York Times counts a total of 1.3 million requests for users’ information in the last year based on Markey’s data.
• The number of data requests seems to be growing quickly across the board. The major carriers who measured the growth in requests over time agreed that law enforcement demands have risen 12-16% year-over-year.

Into the Matrix

This is a follow up to John Mauldin's Thoughts From The Frontline edition last week where he and Ed Easterling of Crestmont Research dive into the secular bear market that we are not close to getting out of.  Between this week and last week newsletters,  Mauldin gives us allot to contemplate given their analysis that shows we are in store for some serious declines.

I was listening to a conversation last week on CNBC since no one watches it any longer [see CNBC Ratings Fall to 7 Year Lows] and the conversation revolved around how low US treasury rates could go as they currently stand at roughly 1.5%.  It wouldn't surprise me if they get below 1% and eventually approach 0.5%.


I can't imagine what a scenario such as this would look like expect for utter chaos or hanging onto the cliff by a finger nail.  begins to assess the accuracy of his best selling book Bull’s Eye Investing that was released 10 years ago.

Here is the PDF link to Mauldin's newsletter this week.