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…
Apple is No Polarioid, But…
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…
Why I Left Apple (Apple is a Speculation)
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…
Markel – Alterra Merger
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…
Fiscal Cliff Doesn’t Matter
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…
Leucadia-Jeffries Merger Loose Ends
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…
Leucadia-Jefferies Merger
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…
Buffett on CNBC
Buffett was on CNBC this morning. Who has time to sit in front of the TV from 7:00 – 9:00 am? And only the hardcore Buffett-heads would click through and watch all the videos or read the full transcript. (Also, I tell people to listen to Buffett but I know most don’t have the time to…
Crash!!?
This is not a market-timing blog or anything like that, but every now and then I get the itch to make a post about it even when I have no real information or analysis to offer. So most can skip reading this post. Anyway, last October and November, I made a bunch of bullish posts…
Recapitalizing Berkshire Hathaway
So I had a conversation recently and I mentioned LEAPS and leveraged recapitalizations (or synthetic recapitalizations) as one idea mentioned in Greenblatt’s You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (see the book here). Actually, Greenblatt calls this “creating your own stub stock”. A stub stock is the post recapitalized shares of a company that borrowed a…