This is a ChatGPT-free Zone
Not to beat a dead horse, but this Wells Fargo situation kept lingering in my mind so I thought I’d make this followup post. It is well understood by value investors but since I have a pretty wide readership in terms of stock market experience, I thought I’d post this because there is something to…
OK, so in my last post I commented that WFC is a great bank but is fully valued. This thought stuck to my mind over the weekend. Sometimes when I write something (whether blog or email), what I write bounces around in my head and I have second thoughts about it long after I hit…
Bank of America (BAC) BAC announced earnings too, and things there are looking interesting. Like other banks, there is a problem with NIM pressure. But the investment bank / brokerage business seems to have done really well. I won’t go into any details here, but I just want to jot down what I was looking…
JP Morgan Earnings So JPM announced earnings and things look pretty good to me. Sure, there is still steady NIM pressure and this will be an issue this year too. I think they said it will be a $400 million or so headwind in 2013. But otherwise, things look pretty good. I know people say…
I spent the last couple of weeks reading some books on Polaroid and took some notes that I thought were interesting and goes to the heart of my problem with Apple stock. Of course, Apple is not Polaroid. Polaroid was ‘just’ an instant camera, made irrelevant by digital technology. Apple has a deep eco-system and…
OK, this title is meant to mock the book about Goldman Sachs with a similar title. I have never worked for Apple, so this is misleading. Warning: This post has no data or any analysis. It’s just opinion, like a dinner table conversation with family on what worries me as an Apple shareholder (or…
So, Markel (MKL) is buying Alterra (ALTE). We know Markel is acquisitive and is looking for opportunities. So here it is. Of course Markel shareholders might have gotten sticker shock from the stock being down so much. If the deal is accretive to book value, then why the heck does the stock price have to…
So the markets now are driven by the fiscal cliff. What will happen? If they don’t do something, the markets will plunge. If they come to some sort of agreement, the Dow would be up 1,000 points. Nobody wants to be long on a failure to come up with a solution, and nobody wants to…
So after posting my initial look at the merger, a couple of points have been raised. Or I should say one was raised (in the comments section in the previous post) and that lead to another point. One is the issue of dilution. I said that this merger would have a 4.7% or so dilutive effect…
So this is what it comes down to. Leucadia (LUK) buys Jefferies (JEF) and solves some problems with one deal: Succession: since Handler will become CEO of the post-merger Leucadia, succession is no longer an issue. Handler is well regarded and is known to be a very solid, conservative manager. I have no problem with Handler at…