S&P/ASX 200 Sector Returns Month and Year to Date. The ASX continues to power higher, climbing a wall of worry with a helpful leg up from from those looking to call a market top. Yeah the market is overbought, but the trend is your friend and you don’t want to fight your friends.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation Amend Agreement to Develop and Commercialize Telaprevir in Asia

Vertex to receive $105 million from Mitsubishi following signing, plus the potential for additional milestones upon commercialization. Phase 3 registration program for telaprevir in Japan expected to complete enrollment in the third quarter of 2009.

International investors should consider the Australian stock market as part of both their stock and currency diversification.
Let’s get cracking with all that’s bonzer, beaut, ace and corker with investing in Australia. I’ll start with the big picture, the Australian Share Market since 1900.

What does history tell us about the possible velocity of interest rates in the USA? I wondered about this after reading this scary prophecy at Matterhorn Asset Management, The Dark Years are Here.

AFSI will release 2009 second quarter earnings following the close of the market on Wednesday, August 5, 2009.

Amgen knocked the socks off analysts estimates. Consensus eps estimate was $1.16 within a range of $1.11-1.25. Amgen reported adjusted eps of $1.29 and GAAP eps of $1.25 on $3.7B.
On top of the good figures and growth in key drugs like Enbrel the highlight of the release is the forward guidance. Amgen raised its earnings guidance to $4.80 to $4.95 a share from $4.55 to $4.75 a share.

My son left this picture on my desk this evening. I can’t wait until tomorrow to find out his thoughts behind it. He regularly leaves these presents for me and I treat them like rosarch ink blots.

Today I see a man hanging over a chasm, slowly being strangled. He can cut the rope that hangs him, but in doing so he will fall into the bottomless chasm below.

SMSI closed at $11.36 last Friday, a triple off the March low of $3.64.
The Forward P/E (fye 31-Dec-10) of 13.90 and PEG Ratio (5 yr expected) of 0.74 are SMSI’s best stats, though the $40M in cash and no debts also looks good.

The main story continues to the massive growing tornado that SMSI stands in front of. The explosion of wireless devices, 3.5 and 4G, and wireless data subscribers represents a massive opportunity for SMSI.

Today I wanted to get down from my pulpit and dive into some actual research and analysis. I was planning on a comparison of three Australian telecommunication companies, Telstra (TLS.AX), iiNet (IIN.AX) and M2 Telecommunications (MTU.AX). However, “The China Bubble’s Coming — But Not the One You Think” by Vitaliy Katsenelson has delayed my decent into details.

Over at PazzoMundo I noticed the following comment, which is typical of numerous comments and posts I’ve been reading lately. “This market is exasperating – I’ve been expecting the rally to lose steam for a while now but it seems that it’s quite happy to ignore economic reality”.

In the Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham said “In the short-run it’s a voting machine, but in the long-run it is a weighing machine.” For some reason most market participants focus on the second part of that statement, they concentrate on the weighing maching.