Skip to main content

The Oscar goes to....

It's Oscar weekend and to make watching Oscar awards program interesting, what is better way than to pick winners and see how one does in predicting. Last year I had 75% success rate (3 out of 4). So this time I decided to predict 14 winners as follows:
  • Best Picture - Argo 
    • Lincoln has good shot but after seeing both movies, Argo deserves to win
  • Best Director - Steven Spielberg (For Lincoln). 
    • This should have been Ben Affleck but nomination process blew up this time. So it would be one of those years when Best Picture and Best Director could go to two different movies
  • Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis (for Lincoln) - no competition here
  • Best Actress - Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) - this could be only award this movie may win due to controversy surrounding this movie
    • Jennifer Lawrence (for Silver Linings Playbook) could be surprise winner only because of "feel good" factor vs "controversy" 
  • Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)
  • Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway (Les Mis) - no competition
  • Best Adapted Screenplay - Lincoln
  • Best Original Screenplay - Django Unchained 
    • Here ZDT should win but most likely not due to reasons mentioned earlier
  • Best Visual Effects - Life of Pi
  • Best Original Song - Skyfall
  • Best Costume - Les Mis
  • Best Animated - Brave
  • Best Cinematography - Life of Pi
  • Best Foreign Film - Amour
  • Best Documentary - 5 Broken Cameras
Looking forward to Oscar evening tomorrow to see results of my prediction index (I have asked Yash also to pick winners so there is little family competition)

Last week markets started feeling little anxious over upcoming "sequester" cuts as well as some possible European uncertainties especially around Italian elections and Spanish corruption scandals. In Feb markets have gone up less than 1% after a big Jan. That would mean that momentum is coming to end at least for short term and at this time it is more likely that DOW would touch 13500 before it touches 14500. Having said that I particularly got interested in Solar sector recently. Over last few months some of these stocks have gone up by 100-200%. However some basic industry level changes such as reeducation in oversupply due to many companies going BK, lease options becoming popular and big utility projects (Mr Buffet invested)  seem be turning and could provide further upside to these stocks. My picks are FSLR ($33), SPWR ($11-12) and WFR ($5). Be careful investing in any Chinese solar manufacturer - they are alive only because of Chinese bank support.
Have a great Oscar weekend
/Shyam

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clicks to Tokens: Will 2026 Echo 1998's Boom or 2000's Bust?

My "blogging" was in hibernation last 8 months due to my self-imposed restraint given the environment as well as built-in inertia to get started despite so many interesting events and markets reaching all time highs after taking a big dump around "Liberation Day" in Apr...Around that time I had the blog ready that it would be repeat of Mar/Apr 2020 panic and recovery during onset of Covid Pandemic. The hunch happened to be correct and I was glad that I could keep and take some positions which I am still holding especially around AI theme. But that was then...as 2025 is about to wrap up in 10+ weeks, let's look at what's in store for rest of 2025 and 2026. And what's better time than to start writing again just before one of the most important week on the calendar with multiple key events coming up next week... Fed meeting to decide the course of interest rates - it's almost guaranteed that Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points (2nd time in 2025) and...
Post a Comment
Read more

2026: The Year of Convergence – Melt-up, Moonshots, or Mid-cycle Correction?

Happy New Year! After another period of self-imposed hibernation from the blog—partly due to the festivals, travel, intertia and partly to watch the dust settle on a chaotic 2025—I decided to use the quiet of this New Year’s morning to finally reboot.  Looking back at my October post,  “Clicks to Tokens,”  the hunch about the AI theme held firm. We spent much of 2025 debating whether we were in 1998 or 2000. As we enter 2026, the answer seems to be "neither and both." We have the roaring optimism of the 1920s fueled by "Silicon Spirits," but with the high-speed volatility of the 2020s. So, as the calendar flips, what is in store for 2026? Markets may experience melt-up (S&P touching 8000),  with some moonshots (like SpaceX and OpenAI) IPOs or even see mid-cycle correction bringing down S&P to 6000. That's a wide range and will be decided by Four R's... Here are my thoughts on the " Four R’s ":  Rates, Robots, Rotations, and Real Assets. 1. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rockets, Relics & Roaring Markets: The $4 Trillion Crossroads of 1927 and 1999

Happy (almost) Summer! After watching Kevin Warsh get sworn in at a White House ceremony two days ago, tracking three S-1 filings that could collectively hoover up more capital than every U.S. IPO since 2022 combined, and watching 26-year-old stock charts finally break to new highs — it felt like the right moment to ask the uncomfortable question out loud. Are we at a party that ends gracefully, or one that ends with the furniture on fire? The market is simultaneously flashing the neon signs of 1999  and  the orchestral excess of 1927. Most commentators reach for the dot-com playbook. I think the original Roaring Twenties is the better map. Here's why... Assembly Lines to AI Clusters Ford's River Rouge complex was the largest industrial facility on earth in the 1920s — raw iron in one end, a Model T out the other. Steel, rubber, and oil became the picks-and-shovels of the age. GE and Westinghouse were electrifying factories and homes. The infrastructure buildout  was ...
Post a Comment
Read more