In late July I had the opportunity to present the ideas in my book, The Hedge Fund Mirage, at the CFA Institute’s Financial Analysts Seminar in Chicago. Flying to Chicago for the day afforded me time to catch up on some reading, and some new ideas. From time to time we’ve written about the Equity […]
As we head towards another deadline for Greece, during which they must convince the troika that austerity is on track, there is growing speculation that Greece may be forced out of the Euro. A “Grexit” to use a popular term. Well, maybe, but here’s why it’s not inevitable. First, from Germany’s point of view, Greece’s […]
Modern financial theory holds that a diversified portfolio of securities is the most efficient way for an investor to access an asset class. Idiosyncratic risk, the risk associated with an individual stock say, can be diversified away and therefore theory holds that investors don’t achieve any additional return for holding concentrated portfolios of their favorite […]
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) is a rich source of data on everything related to energy production, consumption and storage in the U.S. This chart caught my attention, showing that coal use for electricity generation continues to fall sharply, with the result that in April for the first time natural gas was used to produce […]
I am once again indebted to The Economist for writing about my book and noting some of the points I made about hedge funds’ poor performance. On January 7 they covered it in the Buttonwood column, and this weekend they once again discussed the issues I raised. They are performing a public service by highlighting […]
Last week Coeur d’Alene (CDE) announced plans to issue debt, even though they have no obvious need of any extra cash. It looked very much as if the company was planning to make an acquisition rather than focus on returning value to shareholders, and we commented as such on this blog. It seems the bond […]
Yesterday we aligned our interests with the management of Coeur d’Alene. This gold and silver mining company, like much of the mining sector, trades at a steep discount to our estimated NAV of $31 (based on Proved and Probable Reserves). In addition they’re generating $300-400MM of cash annually and the business looks to be going well. […]
Gold and silver miners have been underperforming precious metals for some time. As a result, many names in the sector are priced at substantial discounts to the net asset value (NAV) of their holdings. We have been invested in Coeur d’Alene (CDE) on and off for the past couple of years. The company has historically been a […]
On Wednesday the Federal Reserve released their third set of detailed interest rate forecasts this year. Following Ben Bernanke’s philosophy of open communication, the FOMC publishes forecasts for short term rates from each voting member. While they don’t link a name with each number, you can see what members expect short term rates will be at the […]
Last week I gave the second in a series of presentations I’ve been invited to make to the Tiger 21 group. Tiger 21 is an association of wealthy entrepreneurs that engage in “peer-to-peer” learning on issues that they have in common. Criteria for membership include a minimum investable assets of $30 million and payment of […]
