ubuy2wron

I am a huge fan of Ms Bair I think she has the biggest pre frontal lobes and set of cojones in Washington as opposed to the typical lobotomized castrated govt. appointees. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/magazine/sheila-bairs-exit-interview.html?_r=1

Sharper a train is hurtling down the track at 90 miles an hour and NO ONE is willing to get off the track the only thing I see is gold goes up a little in value a little every day. Is it at all possible that the only thing that will get us a resolution is a crash if the Dow drops 1000 points maybe even some tea partiers will get worried about the debt ceiling.

Just saw your post was about to provide a link. Interesting thought provoking but prolly not money making commentary. Mr G spends time talking about the inadequacy of the capitalist system in finding mkt based solutions for problems that may take 200 years plus to evolve. It is interesting if one reads the Dhando investor the best moats do not often last much more than a generation. I suspect that investing in the top 5 largest co,s and holding for a decade has resulted in less than mkt beating returns.

I simply have inverse etfs to hedge the equities I refuse to sell plus I have an outsized position in ABX as an alternative to gold. I am not long FFH itself but it is trading more and more like a hedge itself these days.

Could someone please explain to me why establishmnet Republicans are so darn afraid of tea-party extremists Ms. Bachman will never get elected to high office. The Republican party seems to be for ever held captive by its silly extremes does any one think that the Dems are controlled by the unions other than the most strident Fox commentators.If there ever was a justifiable deficit at the Federal level it has been the period of the last two years. Every THINKING person on this planet knows that the US govt must raise taxes and cut expenditures the squable is simply over how how much and how soon.

I think most money managers are handicapping the debt ceiling not being raised at 10% or less there fore I do not believe we get a monster rally if it is. We only get the monster rally if it is not raised and a crises occurs and a big sell off happens first. This is just a side show however because the real 800 lb gorilla is Europe. Greece is still not done and the rest of the PIIGS are even bigger problems and the solutions will take more money and time good will ,I hope you all have been paying attention to the fact that the only things that are working right now are momentum plays and gold, that is not what I would call the dynamics of a really healthy mkt. I agree that it is time for Obama to grow a pair, the only thing the tea party has going for it is their anger and self righteous indignation and

The story is better than that, West Coast producers now have another mkt to sell into... China. China built basically zero homes out of sticks now they are buying a good and rapidly growing portion of our out put. The US economy will start to create jobs when they build new houses and new cars there is no US economy without those two industries.

So who the heck is doing all the lending then where is the borrow if many institutional shareholders feel this way. I frankly have never understood why someone would want to lend out their positions unless they were willing to buy said shorted securities from the party doing the borrowing. Selling the rope to the guy wanting to hang himself so to speak.

So on the institutional side is it safe to say that you would only lend through a reputable party who either asborbs the counter party risk or alternatively to a counter party whose credit is not in anyway suspect?

Since we have some new members here that seem to be fairly well versed on the short side. I have a general question re reported short interest and the limits to shorting. I am trying to understand what physical limits exist to selling stock . My understanding is that shares that are held long in a clients account can be lent by a broker up to the value of any loan existing in a account and that shares held by institutional investors may be available for loan . When I see a reported short position of 20% of a companies shares which does not have a large institutional share base I wonder how can additional shares be borrowed and from what source?

Ya I read the same article I think being wildly successful as all of these individuals are makes for a pretty hightened sense of self esteem.

Parsad there is another reason other than fraud etc for the lack of records and secrecy in China. Often it is to hide the graft, my guess is to acquire these types of land holdings if they were acquired a lot of palms had to be crossed with a lot of silver ,this is unfortunately the way business is conducted in many parts of the world esp. in China. I agree with you that this is a silly exercise too hard to ponder pile for me it makes much more sense to me to figure out if I should short Netflicks or Lululemon than this thing

I think there is a snow balls chance in heck that Mr Einhorn will ever have the adjective humble attached to his name I find at least the public personna of Ackman and Paulson a little closer that description.

Bill Miller's downfall were his awful investments. When you're in the middle of a crash in a market (be it housing, tech, whatever), you don't try and catch a falling knife, especially when you're dealing with leveraged companies. I can't say I ever had time for Bill Miller. While he might talk the talk of being a value investor, he certainly didn't walk the walk. I completely agree. I have a very low opinion of Bill Miller as an investor. Even his 13 year consecutive streak of beating the market was kind of BS. If the performance had been measured starting in March, for example, instead of January, the streak wouldn't of existed. Many of his big time wins turned out to be lucky. AOL he won big on, but they turned out to be maybe the worst acquisition of all time. Miller, like Ken Fisher, is an asset gatherer/fee generator first, shareholder wealth creator second. I find it very interesting that you have "very low opinion of Bill Miller as an investor" first of all that is a pretty strong statement. I know little about Millers investment strategy but certainly I am aware of his reputation and his string of beating the S&P for a long period of time. I had a wholesaler in my office a few years back who pitched me on Miller and I was unable to determine after looking at his fund if Mr. Miller was lucky or smart so I passed. It turns out that with the number of funds out there it is likely that through chance at least one fund manager will be sporting a 10 year plus annual S&P beat record. I tried to explain this to the wholesaler pitching me but he would have none of it. One of the things that I have learned with the passage of time is how difficult being smart all the time is . The money management business attracts some of the best and brightest minds out there and I have a heck of a lot of respect for Mr Miller and anyone else who has posted decent long term numbers

I attended a dog and pony for Cineplex I seem to remember someone making the statement that their gross margin on a box of popcorn was 95%. I also remember that one company a private one provided a pretty decent share of the popcorn to the movie theatre industry and it was a VERY profitable business.

Same statement is true for every stock that trades someone always thinks its undervalued or they would not buy it the sellers motives are myriad but the buyer ALWAYS thinks it is undervalued.

I took off my hedges last week and I have started to buy some stuff that looks interesting. I took off my hedges because the sentiment had clearly shifted mild concern had shifted to grave concern with a whiff of panic. The failure of a plausible short term solution in Greece however will make me wish I had not been so brave.

There is never going to be a suit brought by any of these "wise guys" they much prefer their own style of justice.

Have any one other than myself noticed how the stocks that we are discussing here are showing up as the most shorted stocks in the US mkt. I saw a list of the stocks with the largest short positions near the top was MSFT CSCO NOK RIMM etc which are pretty much the stocks that have been receiving the most attention from board members.

Felix gazes into his crystal ball and says if Greece defaults the ECB is bancrupt and the worst of the PIIGS soon follow. This is a good thing for capital markets!!!!??? The only thing that leads me to think that perhaps this will be contained is that the CDS have not blown out on anything other than the soveign debt of the worst cases. Will QE3 be the US fed loaning 700 billion to Europe so the can can get kicked down the road yet again? I hate thinking about the macro picture as it makes my head hurt but you ignore these issues at your financial peril. I read an article on the weekend where the author had parsed the BIS settlement data and suggested that 50 percent of the CDS for European soveriegn debt was on the balance sheets of US financial institutions one would surmise that all of this has to be held at TBTF institutions.How are they hedging their exposure and who are their counterparties. The risks seem to be getting more not less concentrated and its going to be the future retired govt. employees who are going to pay the price.

Parsad why do I feel the forces of evil are alive and well and up to their old tricks.

Actually this stock has been under attack as well. There have been some hatchet jobs on Tanzanian on seeking alpha recently.

There has been some pretty glowing commentary here regarding Fortress Paper, has ayone any comments on the CEO's recent compensation?