Admittedly I haven't read all the other articles you link to yet, but I'm curious, and most hesitant, about the commodities aspect e.g. cost of rubber itself, which I think has been beneficial for the tire companies lately - but the fact that a few not-entirely-stable Asian countries control so much of the commodity worries me. Do you happen to know offhand how GT manages that? (owns rubber plantations etc?)

It sounds great, it even sounds possible...except that there seems to be no more possibility in this country that any kind of taxation or wealth sharing could be enacted than that any gun control could be.

Hi Chuck, I've been seeing some mixed commentary on MGA lately - it seems to make some people nervous, could you give me some context on that? Thanks for a terrific article.

Seems a bit odd to me you can talk about Asia and not tie in any of the problems going on with China...how does that affect what you are talking about?

Thanks, Doc! Agricultural commodities are not something I know a lot about, but I'm very interested. To invest, whether in futures or in ETFs, do I need to be prepared to day-trade, or is there anything that works for buy-and-hold?

Can you give at least one example of a decent investment? What about ETFs like MUB? This would be so much more useful if there were something concrete.

I think Sherlock would be hesitant to use that one small clue as an indicator, but he certainly would file it away for future reference! It's a tiny blip in an otherwise downward slide but to mix metaphors and fictional characters ... 'curiouser and curiouser!" Thanks for all this info.

I wish you'd drawn clearer inferences between energy and freight as it affects transports. You talk a lot about energy but less about the other consumer discretionary issues and how they impact trucking, delivery services etc.

Walmart had responded with its own Black Friday, anybody know how Walmart did?

Waiting til you retire is generally too late - unless you've done an IPO and retire with your millions at 30 :-)