Entries by Simon Lack

Hedge Funds Limp To The Close of a Lousy Decade

The Economist, without doubt my favorite weekly magazine (or newspaper as they refer to themselves) has brought its clear thinking and analytical skills to hedge fund returns. As usual they’ve provided a balanced perspective that includes important points. They note the poor decade hedge funds have had relative to a simple 60/40 stocks/bonds portfolio. They […]

Holding Stocks Without Screaming

One opinion shared by many investors nowadays is that stocks are risky, and the near term outlook is especially unclear. Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles a financial adviser in Chicago, Jeffrey Smith, who spends much of his time persuading clients that they should remain in equities in order to achieve their long term investment goals. One […]

Freeport McMoran Returns to the Oil Business

This morning’s news that Freeport McMoran is acquiring two E&P businesses (Plains Exploration and McMoran Exploration) is the first real M&A activity since BHP’s acquisition of Petrohawk in the middle of last year. Subsequently BHP had to take significant write downs on their newly acquired assets and the fervor for buying E&P names steadily cooled. Some names in the sector are relatively […]

Hewlett Packard Shoots Their Other Foot

Hewlett Packard (HPQ), a company that is earning records for large and expensive strategic errors, plummeted to new depths of incompetence today with their $8.8 BN write down of Autonomy, a software company they acquired in 2011. The list of enormous acquisitions about which nothing much positive subsequently emerged is shockingly long: Compaq in May 2002 for $25 BN; […]

How We'll Painlessly Avoid The Fiscal Cliff

The Fiscal Cliff is forecast to represent 2.9% of GDP drag in 2013 if nothing is done, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Although it was originally intended as a mechanism to force Congressional compromise around bringing the Federal budget under control, with less than seven weeks until the automatic tax hikes and  spending cuts […]

Tax Fears Hit MLPs

MLPs have been weak recently. On Monday the Alerian MLP Index (AMZX) sank almost 2%, on a day when equities were broadly unchanged. For the month, MLPs are down 4.7%, although still up almost 6% on the year. Much of the damage has taken place since the election. As the chart shows, MLPs have lost 3.6% since President Obama won […]

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