contrarian@coalmine
Loading...
Symbols:
Loading...
Symbols:
Hedge Fund Jobs
Job Seekers: Search jobs by category, get job alerts by email or live feed, apply online See full list of jobs »
Employers: See all recruitment options, get applications online or by email Post a job »
Trading Center
- Free E-Newsletters
- About Seeking Alpha
- About Us
- Contact Us
- What's New
- Readers Feedback
- Advertise With Us
- Contributors
- Contribute an Article
- Feature Your Book
- Our Contributors
- Anonymous Contributions
- Dispute an Article?
- Legal
- Terms of Use
- Privacy
- Copyright
Latest Comments14 Comments
WaMu Shows, Again, Smart Money Can Be Wrong
I'm always amused that investors place blind faith in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, with the assumption that there are no potential ticking financial bombs hidden somewhere in the vast insurance empire; nor do they question the high P/E ratios of some of the BRK.A core investments, especially consumer staple companies, that sell at premiums simply because Warren Buffet consumes them (i.e. invest in what you personally like).
Armchair quarterbacking is great sport--"don’t make a financial company your largest position"-- but, it's worthless as advice for future investment returns. I'll stick with "Buy low, Sell high".
Performance for Harvard, Yale Endowments in 2008
Market Student, says that "A 50% YTD return is very impressive. Could you please publish your portfolio for us to view?". I would if I could, but what I was actually trying do was make a point, utilizing the literary techniques of sarcasm and gross exaggeration, to emphasize that a fund manager should not provide total returns without calculating in mark to market or unrealized losses. Otherwise, we're talking fictional returns.
Performance for Harvard, Yale Endowments in 2008
This is the year of the mark to market confessional for all money managers...there's no escaping. I'm too lazy to ascertain what equity positions Yale and Harvard hold long term [don't tell me that they have 100% yearly turnover], but I would bet AIG,LEH,GE,WM,MS,PFE,C... etc. are among them...not to mention their diversification into brutalized emerging markets.
I still have no hesitation questioning the veracity of the above claim that Harvard is beating the market by almost 20% this year, and is actually showing a positive return...minus in flows of cash donations.
Boasting exceptional returns when your internal audits are not made public is disingenuous at best. It's like saying "we use the same measuring stick when evaluating legacies as we do when accepting other students". How else do you explain George Bush's Yale (BA) and Harvard degrees (MBA).
The Artificial Inflation of Stock Prices, Due to the Short Selling Ban
The 3Q earnings (losses) will most assuredly be a horror show; natural longs, true holders of financial cos. shares may say "I'm not willing to hold my shares at this time", and price/share will drop accordingly, more sellers than buyers.
What will not happen at this point in time is the gang rape of a company by naked short sellers; with complicitous assistance by the idiots at the credit ratings agency, one of which has a majority shareholder with the initials W.B., who just happens to be competing with the likes of AIG,MBIA,AMBAC,MTG,etc...
Performance for Harvard, Yale Endowments in 2008
I'm up 50% this year if I don't calculate unrealized losses into my performance...but no one would, or should, bother blogging about that achievement.
And, by the way, I'm not going to buy the non-mercenary philosophy of Ivy League endowment managers...afterall, who is the new CEO of Pimco...
Performance for Harvard, Yale Endowments in 2008
I hate calling someone a liar...but, there seems to be smell of mendacity emanating from the Ivy covered offices of those funds.
The Artificial Inflation of Stock Prices, Due to the Short Selling Ban
There is no U.S. constitutional, free market, global free trade,capitalistic RIGHT to "make a down side bet" that a company's stock is over valued through the mechanism of shorting shares, especially when those shares aren't actually borrowed from another party. In the old days one merely sold their shares of a high priced to earnings stock, or did not bother to invest in it. The market determined value purely by the willingness, or dearth, of individuals to buy and hold a publicly traded company's shares.
Something needs to be done to forcibly stifle the volatility in the equity and bond markets so current and future INVESTORS will feel confident in sticking with a company or a mutual fund for the LONG TERM. Otherwise, the hedge fund/trading community will actually end up destroying the capitalistic free market system that they are now whining about to the press.
Steve Jobs' Health: A Red Herring
Having watched family and friends succumb to recurrences of a variety of cancers, none as lethal as pancreatic cancer, it's very naive to write off Job's health as old news. My father, a physician with access to the best oncological care in the United States, started out with renal cell cancer which was "isolated" in his kidney...and the kidney was removed. Over time, renal cell cancer has showed up in his lungs (inoperatable), his brain (operatable), and esophagus (inoperatable). At this point my father's cancer is "old news", but my family knows that his death, when it finally comes, will be related to the original diagnosis of kidney cancer.
The Street has the right to question Apple,and receive answers,about Steve Jobs health without vilification...especia... when no succession plan appears to be in place.
Barron's Goes Bullish on Banks, Again
Remember, stock bottoms are always reached, and they're rarely reached, even at the worst of times, at zero. It's the counterpoint of stock valuations never quite moving beyond the finite ceiling of the "greatest fool", who knows he's always the last to the party, and has no willingness to place the bet that he isn't.
contrarian@coalmine
Selling American Airlines in Light of Oil's Continuous Climb
Executive Compensation: Common Sense, Not Politics
What's really wrong with the government mandating salary caps or proposing formula's which limit the amount of money that top management can siphon from publicly traded companies? Can't we just agree that man, left on his own like a boy in an unattended candy shop, is greedy; and that that the "public" owners of these publicly traded companies, as opposed to their private enterprise counterparts, must be protected from unchecked greed? Why is this thought process always tossed away as be un-American, anti-Free Market, or worst. Why do intelligent people always hide behind the phrase "If investors don’t like the compensation structure of a company...they don’t have to buy the stock. It’s really that simple."
I've watched back-to-back CEO's abruptly removed from office (via death, illness, or misconduct) at McDonald's and Boeing without a pause in productivity, while their stocks performed extraordinarily afterwards. How important is a CEO at an established utility company, a cyclical industrial, or a huge service company? If all the electric utility company CEO's disappeared into a void tomorrow would the lights still come on in our homes? If salaries and bonuses at Wall Street's publicly traded companies were slashed across the board, would brokers,traders, and deal makers continue to get out of bed and go to work? I think so.
Friday's Turnaround: Raid on the Shorts
That being said, Charlie Gasparino, a muscle-bound, macho man of a financial journalist, who claims access to the inner sanctums of Wall Street (ie The Boardroom), has been allowed for weeks to scream "Fire in the theatre!, the monolines are heading to a quick and painful bankruptcy; my 'sources' tell me so". He reiterated one of these rants of imminent demise on CNBC as late as Friday morning! Then, with a 1/2 hour left in a short trading week, he broadcasts that a "bail out" for Ambac is a certainty, and banks X,Y& Z are lined up to help.
Action/Reaction....sho... squeeze into the close.
On Monday some Power Pundit will reiterate the Financial Meltdown argument, the markets will plunge, and Bill Cara will say "you see, I told so...".
Yawn!
A Common Sense Look at MBIA
Will current MBIA common stock holders be rewarded after a few years of waiting, with their eyes focused toward the dim light at the end of the credit crisis. Time will tell. One thing is certain, the traditional monoline business is not dead...Buffet has confirmed this with his own entrance into the marketplace.
The smart money was obviously early (ie. Warburg Pincus,Marty Whitman, Davis Select Funds, etc.) on this bet that MBIA will first survive, and then eventually thrive again. Early doesn't make these folk ultimately wrong. As for Ackman, one can stay too late at the party...but greed is a bitch to leave unattended on the dance floor when you've been having so much fun with her.
A Common Sense Look at MBIA
"Why did Warburg Pincus double-down on their original investment in MBIA if they thought that they would be throwing good money after a bad investment?" or/
"Why was Marty Whitman's Third Avenue Value fund averaging down on their investment in MBIA through the end 2007?" Whitman's number crunching abililty is legend, and he has a 1/2 century more experience than Ackman. or/
"Why would Chris Davis of the Davis Select, with an bonafide expertise in investing in financial companies, make a big purchase of MBIA common stock at the end of 2007?"