This is a ChatGPT-free Zone
I can’t believe how sloppy and bad some of these credit rating agencies are, and it’s really obvious how dangerous they are. We saw how sloppy and bad they were when things melted down in 2008/2009, but this came as a surprise because the perp is Egan-Jones, a small rating agency that wants to compete…
The market seems to go up and down these days depending on who said what, or what the latest development in Europe is. No confidence vote? Referendum? It is really silly. Someone said to me the other day that it must be hard to deal with markets like this. I said, “What are you talking…
The title is meant to be sung in the melody of the Sound of Music song, “Maria”. Nomura just announced a loss for the first half of fiscal 2012 and a major restructuring. I guess the Lehman purchase isn’t really working out. I have to say that this was actually not a bad idea, to buy a…
Having browsed some of the conference presentations from the Value Investor Congress, I noticed that Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors likes KKR at 5x p/e ratio. That’s interesting because I too happen to be looking at some of the private equity houses (I recently posted about Blackstone). I did spend some time with the financials…
The Value Investors Congress was held in Mid-October. This is a conference run by Whitney Tilson of Value Investor Insight and it features some of the best value investors as speakers. After the conference, notes and presentations float around the internet and they make very interesting reading. Anyway, I was browsing through some of these…
I just found this chart in a promotional video from Davis Funds and I thought it was interesting in that it illustrates what I tell people about dumping stocks because they say stocks are no good. The chart below shows every ten-year period since 1928 that the market rose less than 5%. The gold bars…
VIX Index, Last Five Years Wow, so that was quite a rally since my recent post(s). I am tempted to list up the things that I’ve mentioned in the past month and how well it’s done, but I won’t. I didn’t make those comments as a short term call on the market. But the fact…
I was going to pick this apart to see what it is worth and all that, but a few things about this is bugging me so I will hold off on looking at this in too much detail for now. Anyway, just some quick thoughts. I do like the idea of private equity. I am…
Listed Hedge Fund Company Here’s a listed hedge fund that looks interesting although I don’t own it at the moment. A few hedge funds and private equity houses went public in the past few years and it is pretty interesting because you get to invest with some pretty amazing people. Of course, the performance in…
OK, I keep saying I won’t do something and then go ahead and do it a post or two later. One thing interesting to notice about these bank earnings announcements is how solid they are despite the horrible environment (or so it seems when you read the newspaper). For example, the S&P 500 index has…