A combination of missteps and bad timing brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy, driving its once promising stock from a peak of more than $28 to less than $1. The price fell further to about 25 cents after the shares were delisted from the NASDAQ exchange.  Since early March Jones Soda has been moving steadily higher and recently had a higher volume spike that propelled the stock price above both the 6 month price range and the 50 and 200 day moving average.

courtesy: yahoo finance

Courtesy: yahoo finance

Things may finally be looking brighter for Jones Soda with new CEO Jennifer Cue at the helm. Since her appointment on June 30, 2012, she has implemented a back to basics turnaround strategy which has allowed the company to stabilize before pursuing a path of responsible and hopefully profitable growth.

The strategy involved rapidly trimming expenses and slightly retrenching to the company’s core markets and independent distributors. In the latest quarter, operating expenses were cut to $1.1 million compared to $2.7 million last year. Some of the cuts did have an impact on revenue which fell to $3.1 million from $3.4 million in the prior year. Despite the drop in revenue, gross profit was up slightly, showing the positive impact of the realignment of costs.

The loss from operations for the most recent quarter was $448,000, a vast improvement from the loss of $2.0 million last year. Most significantly, the company was cash flow positive for the quarter with $247,000 generated from operations. In the previous three quarters, Jones Soda had negative cash flow from operations of $6.5 million, and they were at risk of running out of capital. Now the company believes they have sufficient working capital to carry out their operating plan for 2013.  In addition to $4.1 million of working capital, Jones Soda has a $2 million credit facility.

Corporate insiders have confirmed their conviction of a brighter future for Jones Soda through a series of stock purchases.  CEO Jennifer Cue bought 50,000 shares at $0.30 from December 7 to 10, 2012.  Carrie Traner, VP of Finance bought 10,000 shares at $0.29 to $0.34 on March 14 – 15, 2013 and Director Mills A Brown bought (indirectly) 81,350 shares at $0.2975 to $.033 on March 15, 2013.

Now that the company has brought expenses under control, they are investing in distribution and product lines that will drive long term profitable growth. After laying off nearly half of their staff in the second half of 2012, they recently hired four new employees for their sales staff. The sales staff is now paid on a variable compensation structure, which should help to keep costs aligned with revenue.

The company has just introduced Jones Natural, which will soon launch in California. The new beverage has 30 calories and will come in four different flavors. It will be offered in 50 Albertson’s grocery stores in the natural foods section. The new beverage will also be offered in 25 Whole Foods Market (WFM) stores in Northern California. Significantly, this is the first time that a Jones Soda product has been carried by Whole Foods.

The groundwork has now been laid for a possible return to growth and profitability for a company once left for dead. The current market cap of merely $13 million hardly reflects the progress that has been made in the last two quarters.  While the stock remains extremely speculative, it is certainly one worth watching in the coming months.

Disclosure: Long JSDA

Nonetheless, innumerable articles predicting financial Armageddon have appeared in the mainstream financial press following the market’s minor correction.  Has the world really changed all that much after a 200 point Dow loss or is there something fundamentally flawed with the manner in which the financial press presents information to its readers?

News organizations have the right to publish whatever they chose to.  The question that needs to be asked by the investing public is whose interests are best being served.  Do sensationalistic headlines really translate into useful information for readers or is the mainstream press primarily serving its own financial interests by publishing hyped up “news” to boost advertising revenue?  Caveat emptor – financial readers need to identify and ignore trash journalism.

Here’s the example of the week on the type of “trash reporting” that investors need to ignore.  So called “market guru” Dennis Gartman tells his subscribers that he is selling and “rushing to the sidelines.”  CNBC regularly interviews Gartman who always comes up with wonderful soundbites that help CNBC (whose ratings have plunged).  Gartman also benefits by plugging his market newsletter.  No problem so far, but does the declining audience of CNBC benefit, most of whom presumably tune in for intelligent investment advice?

In Gartman’s case, it’s easy to determine the value of his investment prowess since Mr. Gartman runs his own little alternative investment fund known as Horizons Gartman ETF Comm (HAG.TO).  According to Yahoo, “The fund’s objective is to provide investors with the opportunity for capital appreciation through exposure to the investment strategies of The Gartman Letter, L.C., founded by Dennis Gartman.”  So how has that worked out?

The horrendous return on this fund becomes even more disconcerting when considering that the overall market is up around 100% since Mr. Gartman started the fund in late 2009, shortly after the bottom of the last bear market.  When CNBC features Mr. Gartman as an investment expert without noting his abysmal investment track record, they are engaging in the worst form of deception.  If CNBC ever wants to be taken seriously and increase its viewership level, they should start by removing idiots like Gartman from their interview list.

Perhaps the most famous example of the “magazine cover indicator” was Business Week’s “Death of Equities” cover story in 1979 just prior to the beginning of the biggest and longest bull market in history.  The theory is that by the time a trend makes it to the front pages, the smart money has already gotten in and there is little to be gained by following the herd at that point.  Life is not that simple, however, and the “magazine cover indicator” doesn’t always work.  After making a really bad call on stocks in 1979, Business Week warned investors in January 2008 that the worst was yet to come for housing with the cover story “Meltdown – For Housing the Worst Is Yet To Come.”

So what is an investor supposed to think of Barron’s super bullish cover story on stocks?

Josh Brown of the Reformed Broker notes that Barron’s has frequently been right with it’s cover stories and that knee jerk reactions by websites trying to hype the story to increase clicks wind up doing their readers more harm than good.  Hard to argue with Brown’s common sense and balanced advice:

Welcome to the stock market circa 2013, where everyone is a contrarian mastermind and every piece of optimism is an automatic sell signal.

Everyone’s soooo clever with their magazine cover indicators. They saw the Barron’s cover from this Saturday and couldn’t wait to mock it, it’s almost like a reflex at this point. Anyway, here’s the “Kiss of Death” everyone’s carrying on about this weekend:

So here’s the deal, maybe this is the market top. Maybe we don’t quite make that new high above 14,165 on the Dow or worse – maybe we hit it and then crater. Who knows?

But I do know this…if it falls apart, it will have nothing to do with a Barron’s cover. After all, how would you have liked being short any of the below?

How about fading that 9/3/2012 cover below with the Bull bouncing a cannonball off his chest, everyone thought that one was laughably bullish…what are we up, 20% plus from there? More?

Or what about the now-infamous “Bye Bye Bear” cover from November 2010, how’d the other side of that trade work out for you?

Or what about the Buy Goldman cover from last October? That was  hilarious too, hope you didn’t automatically bet against it!

Or how about the “Time To Buy” Banks cover from the end of 2011? Seemed ridiculous with BofA and Morgan Stanley moments from succumbing to mortgage litigation and Euro exposure. God help you if you shorted that cover, most of the large cap banks mentioned went on to double over the next year while the sector itself went on to beat every other in the S&P with a 27% gain. They’d be scraping your too-clever ass off the sidewalk right about now.

At the other extreme, we get the hysterical conclusion from Global Economic Analysis that Barron’s has managed to mark the exact top of the bull market.  After some snarky commentary on Barron’s “faulty” use of the term money flow in explaining how investors are moving from bonds to stocks, the conclusion is made that it’s time to ditch stocks.

Third let me ask “Does it get any more extreme than someone calling this the first inning after stocks have had more than a 100% rally in a few years?

Supposedly we are only in “the first inning” of a rally. Hmm. Are stocks supposed to rise 900% more? This may not be “the top” but it’s close enough for me. I’m calling it.

So there you have it – this is a market top or maybe it’s not a market top.  The only conclusion one should draw from this is that anyone making investment decisions based on magazine covers should not be investing and deserves to lose money.  Instead of worrying about magazine covers, a sophisticated long term investor would be much better off reading the annual letter to shareholders from Warren Buffett.

U.S. oil production grew more in 2012 than in any year in the history of the domestic industry, which began in 1859, and is set to surge even more in 2013.

Daily crude output averaged 6.4 million barrels a day last year, up a record 779,000 barrels a day from 2011 and hitting a 15-year high, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group.

It is the biggest annual jump in production since Edwin Drake drilled the first commercial oil well in Titusville, Pa., two years before the Civil War began.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts 2013 will be an even bigger year, with average daily production expected to jump by 900,000 barrels a day.

The surge comes thanks to a relatively recent combination of technologies—horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressures to break apart underground rock formations.

Despite the huge increase in oil and gas production, the retail price of gasoline is near all time highs.

If demand for oil and gasoline was also rapidly increasing, current high prices would make sense from a demand and supply standpoint, yet this is not the case.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, the demand for oil fell to an astonishing 16 year low in the U.S. during 2012, yet gasoline prices are closing in on all time highs.  The drop off in demand for gasoline in the U.S. has been of historic proportions.  Gas consumption fell off a cliff when the economy crashed in 2008 and continued economic weakness has driven gas demand to all time lows.  Unemployed and underemployed people don’t drive much and the shock of a 100% increase in gas prices since 2009 has far outpaced the growth in paychecks, forced many consumers to take fewer trips by car.

Surging oil and gas production in the U.S. combined with much lower demand has resulted in energy companies exporting surplus oil and gas. Exxon Mobil (XOM), the second largest market cap stock in the world, predicts that the U.S. could actually become a net oil exporter by 2025.

The reason why increased oil and gas production has failed to bring down prices, despite an historic decline in demand, is twofold.

1. Oil prices are determined by the global market and world demand for oil continues to grow.
2. Virtually all of the increased oil production in the U.S. is based on horizontal drilling and fracking technology which significantly increases the cost of production to around $80 per barrel.

Although it is better to have oil and gas at a high price instead of no oil at any price, it is disconcerting to contemplate how much oil and gas prices could spike from higher demand if the world economy ever comes out of its long slump.

Disclosure: Long position in XOM

Exactly how much lower the Fed intends to repress mortgage rates is anyone’s guess but as interest continue to decline, the overall benefits diminish.  Here’s three reasons why the Fed may wind up discovering that the economic benefits of further rate cuts will be muted at best, self defeating at worst.

1.  Lower rates are becoming a zero sum game for the economy as lower rates for borrowers translates into lower income for savers.  Every loan is also an asset of someone else and lower interest rates have merely been a mechanism for transferring wealth from savers to debtors.  Every retiree who prudently saved with the expectation of receiving interest income on their savings have been brutalized by the Fed’s financial repression. Even more infuriating to some savers is the fact that many debtors who took on irresponsible amounts of debt are now actually profiting from various government programs (see Foreclosure Settlement Q&A – A Victory For The Irresponsible).

A significant number of retirees that I know have been forced to drastically curtail their spending in order to make ends meet while others have been forced to draw down their savings.  The increased spending power of borrowers has been negated by the reduced spending power of savers.  This fact seems to elude Professor Bernanke who hasn’t been able to figure out why lower rates have not ignited the economy.

2.  Many consumer who would like to incur more debt are often turned down by the banks since their debt levels are already too high.  Those who can borrow often times chose to deleverage instead, considering the fragile state of the economy.  Anyone saving for a future financial goal (college tuition, home down payment, retirement, etc) is forced to reduce consumption and increase savings due to  near zero interest rates.  The Federal Reserve has destroyed Americans most powerful wealth building technique – the power of compound interest.  A 5% yield on savings will double your money in about 14.4 years while a 1% yield will double your money in 72 years – and that’s before taxes and inflation.

3.  As mortgage rates decline into uncharted territory, the mathematical benefit of lower rates diminishes.  As can be seen in the chart below the absolute dollar amount of monthly savings as well as the percentage decrease in the monthly payment diminish as rates race to zero.

Benefits of a refinance on a $200,000 mortgage diminish as rates decline

Closing costs at lower rates also become problematic, making it impossible to recapture fees within a reasonable period of time.  With closing costs of $8,000 on a $200,000 mortgage refinance, it would take a decade to recoup closing costs.

Many astute analysts have made elaborate and compelling arguments that interest rates can only go lower.  From a contrary point of view, I believe that a future rise in interest rates is a high probability event.  This is the opposite of my prediction in March 2009 when I surmised that mortgage rates would decline to 3.5% – see 30 Year Fixed Rate of 3.5% Likely.

The Chart of the Day has a long term chart of the 10 year treasury and notes that the recent sharp decline in interest rates “has brought the 10-year Treasury bond yield right up against resistance of its 26-year downtrend channel.”