TraderWise

When I was a kid, each year my Christmas stocking had a large orange in the toe. I always thought of this as a bit strange, so when I was a bit older, I asked my parents about the orange. It turns out that oranges were pretty hard to get ahold of when my father was young, so an orange in the stocking was considered a magnificent treat.

A little post-Christmas stocking stuffer for fans of Wall Street literature and stock market lore.

Here are the online book versions of Wall Street Stories, a collection of short stories written by Edwin Lefevre in 1901. Click the link and choose your preferred reading format: a scanned flip book copy, PDF, or text file.

At this point I am just going to start cutting and pasting all my 2008 posts about food inflation - they are almost all repeating in identical fashion.  [Apr 3, 2008: Corn Hits $6, Start Stocking Up on Soda Pop]  Only edit I have to do is I was stressing about $6 corn in 08, now we are about to touch $7. 

Morgan Stanley (MS) said what everyone already knows. It cut earnings estimates for Apple (AAPL) and several other hardware stocks. This holiday season will be a bitter one, even for those children who have been good.

Do you remember the childhood wonder of looking at all the colorfully wrapped packages under the Christmas tree, trying to guess what fun was inside? If you were like me, your eyes were drawn to the biggest presents. And if they were too big to wrap, sometimes Santa would just leave them out in the open for us to find in the morning.

After awhile, I figured out that some of the best gifts came in small packages, nestled among the big boxes.

I’ve long been an advocate of using coupons at the grocery store. I often clip coupons for toiletries and household products and, when there are opportunities, for some food items like organic milk (I had a great coupon for this a while back). I’ve also used coupons for bigger purchases as well in the past.

It has been a remarkable year. It has been year that many of us would just as soon forget. The cascading effects of deleveraging have been rampant across all markets.

It has been a remarkable year. It has been year that many of us would just as soon forget. The cascading effects of deleveraging have been rampant across all markets.

"Everyday low prices" are getting out of hand. Wal-Mart (WMT) already is cutting what it charges for toys and the holiday season has really not begun.