News roundup (we take the left turn at Albuquerque that others should have taken)

If Bananama Republic is voted the best blog in the whole of The Americas this year it wouldn't come as a surprise. BR lifts the lid off more Panama scumball doings and happenings in this great post today, today's best read. You get to hear all sorts of rumours about shady dealings in places like Panama, but very few people have the cojones to directly confront the nasties behind the scams and shine a light in their direction. BR has cojones to spare. Go read.

We agree with Cam Hui over at Humble Student of the Markets as he closes his thoughtful and balanced post on the crisis-talk with this line: "Barring some other unforeseen catastrophe, the problems of the Financials do not have the potential to return the major market indices to their 2008-9 lows."

La Jornada of Mexico ran a very insightful interview with Ecuador's President Rafael Correa this week, go read it here. You get to find out Studmuffin's views on the attempted coup, hear about just how much danger he was in at the time (a lot), his thoughts on how CONAIE has sold out, the CIA backing of the coup, his support for Obama, all sort of things. Top interview.

Old School US/LatAm relations 101: US Citizen comes to LatAm, "discovers" some site that the local knew about already, steals all the ancient treasures and artifacts from the site, takes them back to his Alma Mater "on loan", authorities let nearly 100 years slip by and refuse to give the priceless treasures back to their rightful owners, because.....well, because.....errrr.....well, they're all small and dark down there, aren't they? IKN gets you up to date with Yale University versus Peru in the matter of Machu Picchu.

Dear goldbugs: Are you embarrassed?

Cam Hui, one of the smarter bizbrains that shares via blogs, has written a thought-provoking post on gold, the miners and the goldbug legions.

Here's the link so go check it out.

Chart of the day is.........

...spot copper, 24 hour chart.

Normally I can ignore the intraday stuff to a greater extent, but there's a fight brewing in commods, I think it's coming to a head right now and copper is the normal lead indicator. But my fight isn't "goes up or goes down", rather "stays where it is (2 to 2.10) or goes down?"

Semi OT, I liked Cam Hui's note this morning. He did better than me and called the relief rally well, but now he's writing things like....

"The market has a way of saying “what have you done for me lately?” Now that a recovery is getting built into investor expectations, these negative fundamentals could prove to be a nasty surprise in the near term."

DYODD

Cam Hui on Ken Heebner

Over at 'Humble Student of the Markets' and linked right here (go visit), Cam Hui takes a good, hard look at the recent record of fund guru Ken Heebner and finds him wanting. Quite right, Cam. I have fond memories of Heebner at this time last year when I was shouting "short PBR" (that got me into the London FT I shouted so loud) and people would point out that I was taking a contrary position to the legendary Ken. And the rest, as they say, is history.


Now for a short Ottotrans™: This is what Cam Hui (obviously a gentleman) says:

"Ken Heebner has a bottom-up driven investment process but takes big macro bets as a result of his bottom-up analysis. This style can work well when the economy is showing a trend, but I believe that Heebner tried to call the turning point a little early and got hurt."

And this is how Otto (obviously less so) translates it:

"Any dickhead looks good in a bull market."

DYODD

Heebner's CGM Focus Fund track record

(click to enlarge)

A very nice article from Cam Hui

One of the smarter financial bloggers out there, Cam Hui today offers "A Rorschach Test for Investors" and puts Anvil Mining (AVM.to) in the spotlight

AVM.to isn't a company I cover or follow (cos it's non-LatAm) but a quick overview of its financials make it a very good test-case for investors to decide whether they really want in or out of this market. Go have a look at Cam Hui's full post linked here. An interesting intellectual stimulus and highly recommended.