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Category Archives: stocks
Short Sellers Don’t Burst Bubbles
Bill Ackman appeared at the WSJ’s Deals and Dealmakers conference today. And Megan Barnett is quite right, he really did say this: You couldn’t short single-family home prices rising. That’s why there was a bubble in single-family home prices. And … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds, stocks
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A Reader-Owned NYT
Alfonso Serrano might think that he’s joking: The Times itself could give out shares of its stock with long-term subscriptions. It may not increase reader loyalty (the stock price is down 37 percent from a year ago), but it may … Continue reading
Where are the Chinese Stock-Market Riots?
Back in January, in the opening session at Davos, Yu Yongding sounded a warning. Yu also noted political risks in China: there are 150 million small Chinese stock-market investors who are going to be very angry if and when the … Continue reading
Chart of the Day: US Capitalization
From Bespoke Investment Group: That’s quite an astonishing decline: As recently as 2004, the USA had 45% of the world’s market capitalization. Today, it’s less than 30%. Remember that, the next time someone tells you that the S&P 500 "is" … Continue reading
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Lehman Stock: The Silver Lining
When Lehman Brothers stock closed Friday at $32.29 a share, that put the bank on a price-to-book ratio of 0.82, based on Lehman’s Q1 announcement that it had a book value of $39.45 per share. When Lehman Brothers stock opened … Continue reading
Lehman’s Slow-Motion Trainwreck Continues
Banks, by their nature, are opaque creatures, and investment banks even more so. Even when they have a public listing and aren’t owned by a much larger financial-services entity, it’s almost impossible to tell from outside what’s going on inside … Continue reading
Europe: Watching Soccer, not the Markets
Late on Friday night, German time, I got an email from Portfolio headquarters in New York. "Not that I need to tell you this," it said, "but give us a little taste of how Europe is shaping up Monday morning." … Continue reading
The Second Wave of Bank Troubles
Floyd Norris notes that the S&P financials have sunk back to their mid-March lows. But although the index as a whole is back at its mid-March level, its components generally aren’t. What we’re seeing is pretty much what Mohamed El-Erian … Continue reading
The Monoline Downgrade Nonevent
How we’ve moved on from the Days of Panic: S&P today downgraded both Ambac and MBIA, and as of now (a couple of hours later) the news still hasn’t made it to the NYT’s business front page; on the wsj.com … Continue reading
Exxon’s Hoard
I missed this, last week: Exxon Mobil has amassed a large pile of common stock held in treasury. At the end of 2007, the company had 2.367 billion shares held in treasury, for which it paid $113 billion over the … Continue reading
Posted in climate change, commodities, stocks
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Yet Another Reason Not to Sell Your Berkshire Hathaway Shares
This is almost certainly the wost investment in Berkshire Hathaway of all time – or, on the flipside, "a pretty unethical way to make a buck". Either unethical or extraordinarily lucky, anyway. Someone, somewhere, for some reason, had a bid … Continue reading
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Just How Big Was Lehman’s Buyback?
Was I too hasty in being nice about the WSJ reporting on Lehman’s stock buyback? I said that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, one should probably take the WSJ’s assertion that the buyback was "large" at … Continue reading
Kinko’s, RIP
I guess they’re really serious about this integration thing. When high-end, business-friendly FedEx bought low-end, consumer-unfriendly Kinko’s, it paid $891 million for that hugely valuable (ahem) Kinko’s brand. Which it’s now jettisoning, writing off that $891 million in the process. … Continue reading
Seared
Evan Newmark has a good analysis of Sears Holdings today. I really can’t see any reason to hold this stock: all the old reasons don’t seem to pertain any more. Eddie Lampert has given up on the idea of running … Continue reading
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Should Citi Cut its Dividend?
Holman Jenkins has a most peculiar column today which seemingly tries to defend Citigroup’s decision to continue paying dividends, even as it’s raising billions of dollars of capital elsewhere. Except he never quite comes out and says that Citi is … Continue reading
Annals of Hypocrisy, John Mackey Edition
Thanks to Jeff Cane for alerting me that John Mackey is back, and defending his sockpuppet antics: I strongly believe in the First Amendment of our Constitution and our right as citizens to express our opinions to each other. I … Continue reading
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When Hedges Fail
Here’s a gentle reminder for CFOs and risk officers at major international banks: if you hedge your position but you don’t hedge it 100%, then you haven’t fully hedged your position. Last month, it was UBS, which made a decision … Continue reading
Carl Icahn’s Communication Problems
Remember last year, when Rupert Murdoch and Harvey Golub played phone tag? Rupert left a message for Harvey on March 29, but Harvey was out of the country. When Harvey returned Rupert’s call on April 4, Rupert was out of … Continue reading
Why Cap-Weighted Funds Aren’t for Everyone
Joe Nocera finds himself enmeshed this week in a rather arcane fight within the world of index funds: the one between cap-weighted funds, on the one hand, and fundamentally-weighted funds, on the other. Nocera ultimately dodges the question – "they’ve … Continue reading
Posted in personal finance, stocks
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Pandit Skewered
Remember the stupid email with which Vikram Pandit spammed all his customers? Antony Currie has now published a pitch-perfect parody over at BreakingViews, while even getting some serious analysis in at the same time: I have also created some new … Continue reading
Why GE’s Selling its Appliances Division
GE looks as though it’ll sell off its appliances business, and John Gapper wonders why GE is not prepared to invest enough in the business to turn it into a global powerhouse when it clearly expects someone else to buy … Continue reading
Berkshire Hathaway Should Buy CBS
Evan Newmark has a very smart take on CBS’s acquisition of CNet. The main problem with CBS, he says, is that it’s a profitable but slow-growth company saddled with a public listing. Since no public company CEO is happy mapping … Continue reading
Disclosures: The Long/Short Dual Standard
In Jesse Eisinger’s column this month, he makes an interesting observation about David Einhorn in particular, and short-sellers in general: Whenever a short-seller criticizes a company, the firm and the media go out of their way to disclose that the … Continue reading
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ExpressJet’s Cashflows, Part 2
I spoke to ExpressJet’s investor-relations chief Kristy Nicholas today, in the wake of my blog entry last week about the company. She helped clarify a couple of issues: Firstly, the 100% holdback on credit-card income isn’t nearly as damaging to … Continue reading
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