moore_capital54

Twacow the full returns are on bloomberg, the fund was formerly known Toronto Trust as well. He hasnt had one down year since 2000. Also hes been doing this for 30 years so hardly a noob or "getting better with age" , the guy is a legend and a lot of the more well known Macro investors like Caxton and Tudor call him up for advice. Misterstockwell, you have to put things in perspective from where Albert is looking at things with a Macro hat on, he is positioning himself for the worst, but I can tell you that he is extremely nimble as well, and when push comes to shove will reverse course, but he is not a value investor and is not interested in the fundamentals of companies which is what I focus on. His job is to bet on price discrepancies in bond markets and futures markets, and in this environment he is simply riding the wave and if and when he chooses to change course he can do so pretty quickly. For all we know he has already laid off some of those catastrophic bets as I am sure they hurt him these past few weeks. A lot of you keep mentioning the great depression or a prolongued bear market, but you have to understand that from a value investors perspective even such periods present incredible opportunities for profit. People still consume goods and services and every year even in the worst of years new billionaires are formed and there are at least 100-200 stocks that double in price or better. The markets represent every segment of the economy, as investors we just need to find the best segment. This year take a look at these companies: Ubiquity Networks, Teavana, SkullCandy, Vera Bradley Those are four companies that just went public and have created billionaires centamillionaires and multi millionaires, which you will see show up on the next list of Forbes but you won't hear about on CNBC or Bloomberg. That is why I focus on being optimistic when it comes to business and markets, no matter how grim things look I never let myself get excited by negative environments. A lot of times investors will trick their minds into being happy when things go down because they are in cash or even short, thinking they are just so smart for making money or preserving their capital while the rest of the world goes to shit. In reality those guys are just a different form of sheep. The lion retains his optimism and gets even more excited as his positions drop in value so long as he believes he is right on the fundamentals. So in summary, Friedberg is a friend and I am an LP, he has made my family tubs of dough, and his insight into Macro is phenomenal but yes I do disagree with him that we are entering the next great depression, and even if I am wrong it won't change one aspect of how I invest. Where Friedberg and I share the same views is with regards to gold and hard money. Keep in mind Friedberg has made over $500 million dollars personally investing in junior gold companies, including Arizona Star and Seabridge. He is surely a billionaire after this monster year. His Buckingham Foundation is the 3rd largest in Canada at $350 million.

Hope everyone is enjoying the recent activity in the markets. Hopefully some of the younger investors have realized how foolish it is to focus on the macro and make doomsday predictions. I don't need to tell you how well were doing, all you have to do is read my post history, but yeah were doing pretty damn well! :) Equities were extremely cheap for the past 60 days, today's move on the S&P was almost shocking but is merely indicative of the fact that most investors were not positioned for this. Quite the contrary word on the street is short interests were near historic highs going into this week which would explain the strength in today's move. Bottom line, the old adage of price is what you pay value is what you get only works if you can actually recognize the divergence of price from value. And thats pretty hard to do when you become obsessed with macro predictions and end of the world scenarios. Cheers!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-25/coins-to-credit-cards-a-short-history-of-money-neil-macgregor.html Fantastic Read! Who will be the first nation to re-implement hard-money?

http://friedberg.ca/webpieces/reports/quarterly/Third%20Quarter%202011-%20Quarterly%20Report.PDF Quarterly letter attached, I don't agree with his prediction but in full disclosure am an LP in his funds. His CAGR is now almost 26% since 1995.

Were short NFLX and I am not even going to mention at what price as most will not believe it. As I mentioned in the weekend thread these are our shorts: And btw of course we always have a short book, we are short LULU, NFLX, BIDU, LNKD and we even jumped on the GMCR trade after Einhorn. We always manage some short exposure. A value investor shorting is selling .50 cents for a dollar, it is no different than buying long, except that you can lose more than you put out. Our short book is maybe 5-10% of AUM and the net contribution is generally negligible.

Current MKT Cap is still almost 30x last year net income.

NFLX 87$ wow did Whitney mess up!

TA just has to be taken for what it is which is a mathematical interpretation over a certain period of time. I dont even think the metric I used is even TA per se (nice rhyme to it) It's just a really nice indicator when a stock that has been punished heavily for nearly 3 months trades near the high of day all day and then closes strong at or near the high of day. It means there will be more spillover and that it was a net buying day. When applying this small almost insignificant indicator to what has gone on with BAC since July, it merely confirms that for some reason today more buyers than sellers emerged, and it this has been a rare occurrence. As I am not finished buying BAC I like seeing such indicators as I continue to average down.

You guys are both right, TA does not necessarily mean anything and technically the close was 6.72 although the last print was in fact 6.74 @ 4:01:50 Anyhow its just an indicator I use when adding to a position and I thought I would share. I added BAC after the earnings as well, as it confirmed our thesis.

As far as technical indicators go a high of day close has been pretty reliable for me. I am not a technical analyst but when buying my third of fourth tranches in a stock, I like to see some reversal in the technical indicators to go along with the fundamentals. In the case of BAC it closed @ 6.73 today which was the high of day, the last time this happened was September 26 and before that March 8, 2011. A high of day close indicates that there was a lot of net buying intraday which culminated with asks being taken out. A very good sign.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-23/i-liked-to-sell-the-world-a-coke-part-1-neville-isdell.html Great Read!

I know a guy on this board who's a retail investor with >30% compounded returns from 2001 to present. Would you discount his posts? Ericopoly has even better returns as discussed many times on the board. Would you dismiss his posts because he keeps chickens? Twacow, I think you misunderstood my statement. I have said several times that Ericopoly is one of my favourite posters on this board he is clear, logical, and has a unique way of simplifying things by applying mathematics. Quite simply, when he posts I will spend extra time reading what he has to say and rarely rush along as I find myself doing with others. With regards to the personal spending and cultivation habits of the members, I think here too you misunderstand as I went on a little rant on that thread commending these individuals and supported the younger generation members for employing such strategies. I even threw out a favourite Confucious quote of mine, which I use a lot with my family members and occasionally my wife :) Now to the second part of your post I have to draw a line in the sand. There is no doubt that you know a lot of retail investors that have compounded at 30% or better in their PA's, but that still doesnt make them a professional investor. I have compounded at better than 40% in the PA I pasted here, but I have achieved nowhere near those results in my fund. I could afford to be more concentrated, and was 100% equities mostly with a little cash as you could all see. If any of the users you mentioned could continually compound at 30% or better, they would be starting their own partnerships by now and attracting AUM. Its very easy to start a hedge fund, I started mine with just $1.3 million dollars in 1994. So if the users you mentioned could so easily compound at those rates they would have done it by now, because running a fund hands you a call option on other peoples money. The pressures of managing money for others, having potential redemptions, audits, fair value accounting, marketing etc. These are all elements the help build an investor over time. It is like the famous line of what going to college tells me? Well going to college tells me you can stick to something and you end what you start. I feel the same way about professional/non professional investors. If you are really so good, stop playing triple A ball, and join the big leagues. Especially in the US where setting up a partnership is peanuts. In Canada the process is a lot more cumbersome. So let me organize where I stand on this, as it perfectly fits in with my previous position. I would gladly listen to the posters on this board with 30% CAGR in their PA's, and frankly I will listen to what they say more often than others. But where I truly value their opinions is in disecting a specific investment idea, because when it comes to Macro we are in a completely different frame of mind. They may have a job to supplement their investment income, they may have such a small PA that it doesnt even matter if the world goes to hell (Generally this is the case I find most often, less skin in the game tends to equal more sensational claims, as the investor dreams of a situation where his little capital can be turned into significant capital with no risk), or they may just get a kick from posting long winded bullshit filled posts which mean nothing to them but everything to the person reading. So your post was inaccurate, but I think you can agree that when you have a mixture of people from all walks of life with different expectations, and incentives from an investment program it is not the end of the world if we know their personal interests when making bold statements. Charlie Munger has spent a lot of time discussing personal incentives and the importance of knowing what the other side's ultimate goal is. I think we can agree on that. My goal when saying that I am bullish while everyone is bearish is not to get the small members on this board with their personal PA's to buy the market as I don't think that will have any effect on me personally. My goal is to provide balance or expand on my personal position and share my views. The guy with nothing to lose who is crying wolf can cause a lot more damage to members who have no idea what his personal situation is.

Paulsons net worth wipes its a$$ with 6,999,999,980 of the other humans on this earth. I dont want to drive you crazy, there is no anger here, just some healthy frustration. There are three very good schools here in Toronto, UCC, Bishop Strachan and Branksome Hall. If I am not mistaken Prem's girls attend Branksome. Anyhow we don't have a son, but UCC is an all boys school, and they have a very very interesting way of educating boys. BSS is the sister school of UCC and they have a very interesting way of educating the girls as well. Basically, they have established that men or boys perform better when competing. Girls on the other hand perform better in a collaborative environment. For this reason, the education at UCC places these boys in highly competitive environments, and what it does is really pull up the mediocre kids. BSS where my daughters attend, the girls sit in picnic style tables and collaborate. What I am trying to say is this, frustration is healthy and competitiveness is good for us men, it makes us more passionate and helps us advance our skills and thoughts. I hope even with your anger you can see that point of view.

I appreciate the good words, and can tell you that I have spent many hours through PMS with younger investors here who mostly had an interest in the resource sector, and I enjoy assisting and helping anybody I can with whatever knowledge I have. That being said I would like to address this post to the younger guys on here, the guys just getting started, because I think I now have a good handle on the demographics of this board which is split into: 1) Professional Investors - Seeking Market Truth Love the Intellectual Exchanges and Occasionally even idea generation 2) High Net worth Private Investors - Same as above but enjoy the hobby aspect of posting as well. 3) RRSP/Retail Part Time Investors - Life wouldn't change if portfolio went to zero or generated no gains, mostly obsessed with the hobby aspect of posting and having a voice. 4) College or Young Adults that are just getting started and are enamoured by investing and Graham & Dodd. Well this post is addressed to the fourth group. Honestly, don't you guys just love reading about Buffett and some of the other superstar investors? Don't you live imagining that maybe one day you can obtain some of the success they have experienced. And don't you love the idea of making a lot of money as well? Is this not why you have decided to make this an important part of your life? For the financial independence as well? Now if you agree with what I asked, let me ask you this? Don't you think its fantastic that there are guys on here who have succeeded on a very very small level as compared to the great ones but nonetheless have succeeded and are willing to spend a lot of time engaging in debates and presenting their thoughts. I know that when I was your age there was absolutely nothing like this type of a medium. I know that when I was your age I would want to know who is part of the first or second group, and who is part of the third group. To say that percentages are enough is highly naive. My nephew has an account with a few thousand dollars I think he bought AAPL this year, is he a genius then? I write my posts especially these ones where I am applying a lot more passion than is needed, for the guys in group #4, and I know you guys appreciate this. My advice to you is ALWAYS focus on the dollars, not just percent. Follow the money because people who can make money can teach you a lot more about how markets work than people who enjoy hearing themselves and blog all day. My 2 cents, case closed for me here!

Misterstockwell,, I would like to extend a personal apology to you. I have taken the time to read your post history and the consistency, logic, and lack of emotion in your posts indicate to me that I was wrong and you are in fact not a retail investor. What more you clearly recognized the market was cheap in 2009 and most likely deployed significant sums. I disagree with your position of being more worried since 1995, but your posts are of high quality and I should not have grouped you together with the other two. The problem with this board is that there are a ton of members and its not always so easy to know who you can trust and who you cannot. I find going back and reading post history as the most effective method. I think that if I have to summarize my position after this long debate, it is this: Personally, I have no problem with debating and deconstructing specific investment ideas with anybody on this board. I believe that I can learn from anyone regardless of their size or age. But when it comes to Macro and doomsday please at least do me a favour and identify yourself as a retail investor, so I know to put things in perspective.

Lets get back to this post for a second and see how my template of what causes these frictions is proven correct. Bmichaud made a sensational post: Just to stir the pot a bit, here's why I believe it is a wonderful day to be reducing risk.... 1. http://www.businesscycle.com/# (see video on front page) 2. http://www.hussman.net/wmc/wmc111017.htm (see paragraph 3 in its entirety as well as list of Euro banks' leverage ratios) 3. http://pragcap.com/the-two-biggest-risks-in-europe 4. http://pragcap.com/those-darn-italian-bond-yields My guess is that a downgrade of France's RIDICULOUS AAA rating is only a matter of weeks away if not days, which could be the trigger to a nasty domino effect. Not at all saying to go to 100% cash as Hussman currently is - just trying to reiterate the dangers out there very much still lurking that are currently being hidden in plain site by the rallying stock market. There are plenty of individual opportunities out there, which I believe should be taken advantage of...but as Buffett demonstrated back in his BPL days, there is nothing wrong with pairing 50-cent dollar bills with cash and/or market-neutral special situations! So lets break this post up. Bmichaud is knowingly stirring the pot, and then making some major claims such as the AAA rating of France will be downgraded within weeks, and contrary to his disclaimer of not giving investment advice he is in fact doing just that and saying that you should not necessarily be 100% cash but start thinking about being market neutral. Quite a bold claim. Now anybody on this board who does manage money professionally knows that the statements made by Bmichaud are impossible to effectuate, hence to engage in a quality conversation I need to understand who this person is and what is his perspective. That is when I replied very respectively that I thought he was wasting his time, and that I felt that kind of speak only makes sense to retail investors, and after getting hit in the face with a baseball bat from Santyana who said: "And people talking like Moore is why I'm convinced we haven't seen capitulation yet." I took a few minutes to read his post history which again confirmed my original thesis, that not only was he a retail investor but he actually felt the same way about the markets in march of 2009. I take my time very seriously it is not some late night hobby for me, so why am I not allowed to call someone out after making such a statement? So I thought it would be refreshing to remind Mr. Santyana and some of my other intellectual opponents that I am not a neophyte in this business and have a completely different perspective, which has actually worked. Also I think the guys who have a big problem with me or anyone else stating we manage money professionally or have significant capital at stake are being major hypocrites. Unfortunately capitalism is measured based on financial success and so when an investor is backing up his statements with financial success they should carry at least some weight. Is it that that you feel that under an alias nothing is verified? Hence I may be full of shit? Some message board hack? I can't tell you guys who I am nor the funds I manage but I feel comfortable posting a screenshot of one of my PA's. Just to validate that I am not some kid in his mothers basement. Enjoy!

This is a wonderful message board, I just think I am doing some justice here and am on a sort of crusade because I think there are a lot of guys like me that love this board and enjoy engaging in intellectual discussions, but sometimes just need to know if the guy we are spending hours with has the same perspective or not or has the same stakes. When you find that we are basically playing a different game, it allows everyone to understand the others position. A retail investor with an RRSP trading on the side to supplement business income, carries the same exact weight on this board as the Fund Manager who is actively trying to seek market truth. And this is a wonderful thing, but it should at least be identified and called out. And that is what has gone on in this thread. Are any of you members of ValueInvestorsClub or SumZero? The strictly investment idea conversations are ones that I think end in higher quality debates and ones where market truth can be ultimately discovered a lot more efficiently.

And btw of course we always have a short book, we are short LULU, NFLX, BIDU, LNKD and we even jumped on the GMCR trade after Einhorn. We always manage some short exposure. A value investor shorting is selling .50 cents for a dollar, it is no different than buying long, except that you can lose more than you put out. Our short book is maybe 5-10% of AUM and the net contribution is generally negligible. On the other hand, what you are doing is in my opinion highly unrewarding. Its almost masochistic. You claim to be a net long value investor with 70-80% long concentration, but then spend all this time exploring overly bearish and pessimistic scenarios that at their core go against the fundamental tenets of being a value investor. I have seen this argument here a few times, whether the Macro matters or not. It does matter of course it does, but not the extent that is being discussed here. Hell no professional investor could spend as much time discussing the Macro as some of you do and construct a long portfolio that is unique and contrarian. Misterstockwell, I am not going to let this thing devolve any further, and I will admit that it was probably a mistake to say what I said about the 1-2%. That being said your rebuttal appears to portray you as a type of Private Wealth Manager with Managed Accounts and not a fully discretionary AUM to deploy, with the fees to boot, so I dont think I was that off relating to you as well. The only guy here that I tend to worry about in terms of logic, brains, and aum to back it up is Munger. But from my discussions with him, he appears to be sufficiently long and unlike Santyana who at the lowest print of 2009 was still waiting for KO to drop so much it would have to be halted, Munger apparently was sufficiently long in 2009 recognizing the value and making some good change. (I am talking about the board member with the moniker Munger not Charlie Munger) So the post that really set me off was Santyana, who said something along the lines of: "It's posts like Moore that just make me know that we have not bottomed yet"

Funny how you are associated the size of your wealth cock with your superior abilities....look what happened to John Paulson over this last year, look at Berkowitz. They made a huge call on the US economy and they are down big - they have huge net worths. Get the f$ck over yourself. How about instead of your net worth you put up some performance numbers over the last 1, 3, 5, and 10 years, as well as performance from peak to trough October 2007 thru March 2009, then subsequent trough to peak March 2009 thru April 2011. Then we'll see what type of markets your strategy lends itself too. I just saw Alexander Roepers' performance the other day and he was down 64% in 2008 - that is something I am interested in being down in a bear market. IMO, that type of decline is avoidable when the general securities market drops from being overvalued to fair/slightly undervalued. However, if we were to get down to a point where the market is fairly valued, THEN it drops 50% from there, I will be down even more than 50% b/c I will be 100% long if not 125% long in a fairly valued to slightly undervalued environment. I NEVER SAID there are not bargains to be found in this market. I just am arguing that Buffett provided a good model back in his BPL days for buying stocks selling below liquidation while at the same time worrying about the overall level of the market, hence he put a portion of his portfolio in workouts - go read his BPL letters for the love of God. What I am advocating is no different. Also - this is no different than any other hedge fund manager managing the net long exposure of his portfolio. You are a 2/20 manager, correct? You would know that HF managers manage the net exposure of their portfolio, I'm guessing..... Call me provocative, but I just felt like I had to use a real world example to demonstrate to some of the other value investors that are finding value and don't hang on everything Tyler Durden says, that you can actually make a lot of real money. How is that any different than hearing about some of the members on the board killing their own food, or living on $6,000 a year. I genuinely believe that a lot of the head butting that goes on here is between professional capital allocations and retail/hobby investors, and that is evidenced by some of the PM I get as well. You making fun of Paulson only reinforces my point, Paulson is still one of the top 20 wealthiest human beings on planet earth, and has compounded, even after 2011, at over 20% per annum since inception. What more, he has built a business from scratch and built up significant AUM (not an easy task at all) while waiting patiently for opportune moment to deploy it. So I think its intellectually dishonest to attack someone like John Paulson. Santyana, you will be sad to know that I do not live in a 5x5 basement of my late Mothers house, actually an 8,000 square foot hoggs hollow mansion. Oh shit there is my wealth cock again!

Here is what Santyana posted on March 2, 2009: General Discussion / Re: Panic « on: March 02, 2009, 01:49:34 PM » I'm amazed how many people on this board have so quickly given up on the notion that we're entering a 1 in 100 year storm as Prem said a while back. From a time point of view I think we're still closer to the beginning than the end. We are witnessing a global deleveraging, and many parties are just now beginning to realize the situation. Panic? This isn't panic, this is an orderly decline. October 1987, now that was panic. I think we need to have panic before we can start to consider recovery. A day with a big enough drop to cause trading to be halted would be a clue that we're getting there. The guy totally missed the best opportunity to make money in maybe a decade. I personally made over $10 million dollars in incentive fees from 2009 to 2010, while Santyana was waiting for his bottom. Does that make me a better investor than him, OF COURSE! I worked hard to be in a position to have this AUM and to benefit from it, to deploy it how I see fit when the markets provided me with a once in a decade buying opportunity. I would seriously love to know what Santyana's net worth did between then and now. Some of you will take this as though I am just an arrogant a hole but man we need to call a spade a spade, we got people here spending a lot of time sharing their thoughts, and after reading about how they live their personal lives I would at least appreciate knowing whether they even swing a significant line in the markets or are just hobby investors. And guys including Parsad, please tell me if I am out of line here.

Even the most bearish people I know are finding value in this market, you guys are absolutely nuts, waiting for some pie in the sky capitulation that will never come, and even if it does, itll be a temporary phenomenon. Grow up, find value, I thought we were all value investors not doomsdayers. If value investors can't find anything to buy they shut up they don't complain about macro fears and market timing. First time I have ever seen value investors apply so much time and effort to convince themselves the market is dangerous after declining by 30% peak to trough.

Santyana Misterstockwell and Bmichaud, this is not necessarily a fair argument, but I am willing to bet that the combined line you swing in the market in terms of assets is equal to maybe 1-2% of my personal net worth. I am sorry I had to resort to this but you have to put things into perspective. I am a professional investor, a fiduciary and a capital allocator that serves clients who demand I allocate their capital and provide exposure to equities. You guys are waiting to time the market with your small lines, but there is no doubt that even if you buy at the bottom of bottoms on the perfect low of the day of the lowest low the markets print, my nominal performance will be substantially better. Now we can debate about this all we want, but I have absolutely never met a professional investor with your frame of mind, only small time RRSP style investors with $50-500k to invest, who go to sleep at night thinking they're the next buffets. I get paid 2 and 20 to deploy capital on a daily and monthly basis. Take this however you feel, but time will prove I was right. We can check back in a year or two. You guys waste so much time thinking about capitulation wet dreams because you can afford to, your swinging a small line in the markets and your insignificant, you are retail investors, that most probably clip coupons as well. Good Night.

Bmichaud you waste so much time coming up with rationalizations for why the market is going to get worst, which is in my experience truly a fools errand. The only reason you are even able to garner a response is because we are truly in a a shitty market with unusual uncertainties, abnormally high volatility, and several black swan events that have occurred almost in sequence. My advice to you is that instead of wasting all this precious time trying to pin point exactly when we are fully pricing in a recession, or what the ultimate fair value of the S&P is, to spend an equivalent amount of time seeking value. Small Cap stocks are basically at their March 2009 levels. To think this market isn't cheap, and is not pricing a recession is madness. Also, Some of you act as though the projections for 1-2% growth are set in stone. Let me remind you, that in the year 2000 economists and the treasury projected that by 2012, the US would have paid off all its debt... Even crazier they then discussed the ramifications of not having a treasury market. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/20/141510617/what-if-we-paid-off-the-debt-the-secret-government-report What this tells me is that when it comes to the fiat money economies coupled with fractional reserve banking, growth can come back quickly, and rapidly. Now what happens if we start growing say 2.7% in 2012? or 3.8% in 2013, well in that case the market goes back to discounting a growing pie, in which case stocks are insanely cheap. I think that all your wildest dreams about what could go wrong have come to fruition, and the market is still here, we still need to buy toothpaste and drive our cars to work, what more everytime we get a few days of silence from the European Circus US equities seem to go in one direction... up. Predicting the things you are predicting is a total waste of time in my humble opinion.

More People like on this board: http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-113691-11403-3-true-story-living-well-on-11000-a-year I couldn't find the right thread...

Neither has the VIX, I need to see the VIX under 30 for a few days in a row to be sure. But most of the equities Im watching appear to be forming a bottom.