As we approach the Fiscal Cliff, or more properly Slope, I thought the Republican negotiating strategy was very revealing. Gerrymandering, the process by which Congressional districts are tortured into shapes that resemble something drawn by a drunk with a permanent marker, are certainly part of the issue. Although the original intention was to allow for districts that reliably […]
2013 will be the year when bond investors begin to acknowledge the inevitably low future returns caused by the Fed’s multiple rounds of Quantitative Easing and debt monetization. Negative after tax real returns will reach high grade bond investors as they already have for holders of government debt. The relentless Math, whereby the return on […]
I had inexplicably missed this on Dec 14th, but The Hedge Fund Mirage made it on to this list. Click Here for the article.
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 […]
I gave an interview yesterday to Stansberry Radio discussing hedge funds and our investment strategies. If you’re interested you can find it here.
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 […]
Well, of course they are! From my Bloomberg interview yesterday.
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 […]
While various ideas are floated and journalists report on the state of negotiations, the market consensus seems to be settling on the idea that Congress and the White House will do enough to avoid the automatic tax hikes and sequestration that will follow if they fail to agree. The bounce in the S&P500 (SPY) over […]
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; […]
