moore_capital54

That is a superb stat.. very good stuff... How about this table of S&P PE Ratio.. June. 25, 2012 13.26 Dec. 31, 2011 14.46 Sept. 30, 2011 13.01 June 30, 2011 15.75 March 31, 2011 16.31 Dec. 31, 2010 16.26 Sept. 30, 2010 15.88 June 30, 2010 15.36 March 31, 2010 19.19 Dec. 31, 2009 21.88 Sept. 30, 2009 84.30 June 30, 2009 122.41 March 31, 2009 116.31 Dec. 31, 2008 60.70 Sept. 30, 2008 25.38 June 30, 2008 24.92 March 31, 2008 21.90 Dec. 31, 2007 22.19 Sept. 30, 2007 19.42 June 30, 2007 17.70 March 31, 2007 17.09 Dec. 31, 2006 17.40 Sept. 30, 2006 17.00 June 30, 2006 17.05 March 31, 2006 17.82 Dec. 31, 2005 17.85 Sept. 30, 2005 18.46 June 30, 2005 18.80 March 31, 2005 19.57 Dec. 31, 2004 20.70 Sept. 30, 2004 19.29 June 30, 2004 20.32 March 31, 2004 21.66 Dec. 31, 2003 22.81 Sept. 30, 2003 25.82 June 30, 2003 28.21 March 31, 2003 27.97 Dec. 31, 2002 31.89 Sept. 30, 2002 27.14 June 30, 2002 37.02

Both April and May US Car Sales are tangibly higher than last year: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/usa-autosales-idUSL4E8H16YI20120601 AUTOMAKER YTD YTD 2011 PCT CHNG 1 General Motors 1,066,963 1,046,275 2.0 2 Ford Motor 935,864 878,600 6.5 3 Toyota Motor 868,301 701,851 23.7 4 Chrysler 689,257 519,538 32.7 5 Honda Motor Co 576,174 523,550 10.1 6 Nissan 485,484 433,032 12.1 7 Hyundai 292,856 263,588 11.1 8 Kia 237,381 200,060 18.7 9 Volkswagen 170,555 125,681 35.7 11 Subaru 136,602 112,255 21.7 12 BMW 130,843 116,656 12.2 10 Mazda Motor Co 123,886 103,072 20.2 13 Mercedes/Smart 117,231 95,458 22.8 14 Audi 52,494 45,858 14.5 15 Mitsubishi 27,462 35,816 -23.3 16 Land Rover 17,389 13,254 31.2 17 Porsche 13,448 12,996 3.5 18 Suzuki 10,695 11,124 -3.9 19 Jaguar 5,476 5,021 9.1 TOTAL 5,958,361 5,243,685 13.6 SOURCE: Autodata Corp and Reuters calculations

Jim the problem with your analysis, and the reason why I wanted to see data points, is that your analysis is backward looking. You have no tools that will allow you to project what earnings growth will be or how an increase in housing value may stimulate above average growth in GDP. Looking backwards will not work right now.. imho. We need to try and objectively look for data points (like the one provided by onyx) that demonstrate things are improving even though we don't feel it just yet.

BAC to repurchase another $3.9B Trust Securities... good work Moynihan!

Lets stick to actual data points ala Bmichaud's post, otherwise this will turn into a discussion... Good post Bmichaud.. keep them coming. Randian Hero had some good data points that were mixed with some projections, lets not have any projections only clear and concise data that provides demonstrable improvement. My partner and I went through this same exercise in 2001-2003, only in 2003 did things appear to have bottomed.. while the best buys occurred in 2001.

Let us pretend for a moment that we are only interested in positive macro and micro economic data. We all know about all the negative data points being constantly pounded into our brains. I follow no less than ten different writers, all of whom have turned bearish. Let's try and use this thread to post the data points which tangibly demonstrate an improvement over the last 12-24 months. You can use company specific data and/or macro data. I understand the flaws in this exercise, but believe the results will help us seek market truth especially over a period of time. Moreover there is nothing of this sort (an aggregation of only positive data) anywhere on the internet (while there are plenty of negative-only aggregators), and so the contrarian in me feels COBF is the right place for it. Be objective and use only those data points that will stand scrutinization.

Not only do I agree with every single thing Mr. Kovacevich said, I truly thank you for posting this interview as I can now direct my friends/colleagues/investors to it instead of trying to deliver the same message each time I am asked for my opinion!

Eddie bought a huge mansion down there it was reported in the WSJ Wealth report I think he made $30 million or so.

You see maybe my weekend rant achieved something :P

Very powerful move to the upside...

Oh man this guy is a total fool, he is missing the key element in why Iron Ore EBIT margins are so damn high!!! hahaha, it's not like LVMH you have to own an ore body and the cost of that ore body is not reflected in the cash costs of extraction, either you delineate an ore body (like Alderon did) or you acquire an ore body at a discount to NAV (which is what BHP does) in which case the value of the ore body is accounted for under mineral properties with depreciation/amortisation marks being taken based on the mine life. Moreover, most of BHP's iron ore deposits are the high grading taconites in the Pilbara region, deposits that are far superior to Alderons (again I am just using alderon as an example we own the name). Anybody in the business knows that Direct Shipping Ore Taconites (50%+ Fe) are extremely rare China is now mining on average 19% Fe and mostly magnetite, which is an inferior ore body. Anyhow the reason why iron ore EBIT Margins are so high is because the world's central banks have flooded us with funny money and iron ore is the second most important industrial commodity after oil. Some think the iron ore story is only relevant to China and BRIC's but they are terribly wrong, it is only a matter of time before NON-BRIC iron ore and steel demand rebounds in which case this is an industry that is very inelastic. I am very bullish on iron ore and steel producers such as Nucor/Mittal and Ferrexpo.

Richard you are incorrect, I have and will continue to learn a lot from Sanjeev's writings as I have from other contributors on this board. I have not like you followed his writings for a decade but stick to me belief that he was timing his portfolio as he himself alluded to based on his redemption policy... (or so I understood) The biggest issue with your post is this: Furthermore, saying, "nothing's really changed since January" makes no sense. I'd say more has changed in the last 5 months than most other 5 month periods I can think of over the last couple of decades. In fact, if this 5 month period doesn't meet your criteria for a change in investment thinking, then I think there's probably only a few that do. In that case, you should basically never have a change in your investment thinking. Which I guess is fine, but it's probably pretty non-optimal if you assume the economy will not affect any businesses you own. My understanding of graham & dodd is that the only thing I need to worry about with regard to change, are the tangibles and intangibles that are reported to me 4 times a year in the quarterlies and annual report of the companies I am invested in. Intangibles such as market position, and industry trends can be adjusted in between based on scuttlebutt and what not, but the only thing that would get me to exit an investment would be a sequence of quarterly figures which under-performed my projections or internal assessment of intrinsic value. You say a lot has changed over the last 5 months? What has changed with BAC? or BRK ? That would make me want to own less of those names, whilst I would prefer to take the exogenous events of these last months to purchase shares in those enterprises from people like you who think so much has changed... Will you stop banking tomorrow? or refueling your vehicle? or planning for that vacation? will you stop consuming or producing? How does a debt to gdp ratio affect that when you are analyzing the balance sheet of an enterprise? I won't disagree that with some companies such analysis is warranted but I do not believe I own any companies where, over a 5-10 year period any macro shock would result in that company earning less nominally over time.

Parsad I did not mean to give you a backhanded comment, I truly believe what you did was very responsible. I am just pointing out that you are not market timing, you are timing your portfolio returns. Just make sure you are fully aware of that (which it appears you are) because over time if you truly subscribe to graham & dodd especially in bull markets, you will want to develop the stomach to withstand 2-3 month downturns. In terms of an investment manager what you are doing is exactly what you got paid to do, you are not losing sight of rule #1, as your LP's make more money and more of your capital is profits from year's past you will develop more of a willingness to be long into downturns, because over a 5-10 year period the best thing you can do with good securities is sit on your ass. I will show you another interesting example of this with gold. Recently the Gold Council came out with a very interesting study. Simply, if you had bought gold at the open in the US COMEX market and sold it at close from 2001 to 2011 you would have by 2011 lost 60% of your capital. Had you held gold overnight from 2001 and sold it in 2011 you would have made 600-700%, essentially gold was making most of its gain overnight in europe and asia where the true demand came from. Its not exactly similar to the point I was trying to deliver with equities but is something that the greatest investors know how to do which is sit on the ass, and let the fundamentals unfold. It can take many years sometimes 3-5 years..

PlanMaestro, I watched all 4 episodes with my daughter on our Google TV system in the theatre room and just wanted to thank you it was a phenomenal piece, and really feeds into how we view the world, a great learning tool for young ones. On another note I also want to say that I have been enjoying your posts more and more. You are a very intelligent poster.

Parsad I think I now fully understand your position, thank you very much for sharing your numbers and I would appreciate the May 31 number in due course (I predict you are now down for the year). Based on your performance figures what I believe you did is manage your portfolio based on your returns, mitigating your risk based on your returns and not based on the fundamentals of the underlying securities you own. I don't fault you for market timing because what you did was very prudent and responsible and is something I too would do if I was younger and just building my track record. Nobody wants a down year in their track record and I believe when you had the chance to essentially approach "flat" you began to reduce risk. What you did was simply decide to forego future profits for the sake of sleeping at night. To say you did anything else such as make a macro call or see that Spain is in a different situation is totally crazy imho and I urge you to not believe in such madness, it was purely a coincidence. Again what you did as a fiduciary and capital allocator is totally understandable and something I would expect as an LP after a down year. I think thats what Bmichaud and Albert need to understand, ultimately Parsad and all of us are managing our portfolios based on our historical returns, we add or reduce to our positions based on how well we are doing or how familiar we are with the investment environment. I feel very good with my allocation even though I did not choose to reduce long exposure as Parsad did, I gave up a huge paper gain for the year, but I don't believe I am a gambler that needs to quit while I am ahead, I believe that over time the securities I own will compound at rates that exceed my alternatives, cash included. On this note it is worth mentioning that one manager is impressing me with regards to his conviction and that is Mohnish. He appears to be stepping on the peddle and continues to gain long exposure, he has not reduces his exposure. I believe Mohnishs portfolio will compound at 20-30% per year from here over the next 3 years, I own many of the same securities that he does with similar allocations. Ultimately, one has to decide if they are comfortable withstanding paper losses, some people are not cut out for it, we live in truly volatile times. There will always be reasons for why stocks are down or up, and to think one fully comprehends the reasons is insane. The Zerohedges of the world are always bearish, always... I am not always bullish but I have historically made all my big gains on the longside and like to stay with securities for many years, I don't care if they move up and down in betwee and I don't care about my track record over 1 or 2 years when I have compounded very well for 20 years doing just this. I just think everyone needs to be honest and objective, there is nothing different about the European situation today than there was last year and Bmichaud correctly observed that we now actually know that push comes to shove Europeans will print as well. Everyone will print ad infinitum, and so our jobs are merely to weather the volatility and stay focused at buying securities below their intrinsic value.

With great respect, Calls are only as good as the returns they produce. We were down 9% last year net of fees, up nearly 40% as of March 2012 and now "only" up 5% as of Friday. Sanjeev would you care to share your returns for the same periods (Dec 31 2011, March 31 2012, and Friday May 31)

He was totally making fun of buffett! come on! We know for a fact he was as well... Its obvious he was because Buffett refuses even when put on the spot to attribute any historical value to gold. When he bashes gold it is with a clear american agenda as he knows very well any bullish attitude toward gold would cause a mass exodus out of US Currency... In the transcript posted above Buffett was asked in a very straight forward way if he preferred gold over cash and he couldn't even answer, he had to change the subject and talk about farms. This is a topic that Buffett continues to distort while the cold hard facts prove that both he and his father understand the flaws in fiat money and the benefits to a hard currency. I have yet to hear one person ask Buffett if he thought the gold standard was bettter for america than the current fiat money standard, I would love to see him change the subject on that one. We have had this debate on this board before I and I don't wish to participate in it again.. I am going to stop posting about this now.

Complete nonsense.. only people with no understanding of geology or mining would even consider asteroid mining anymore than a pipe dream... With regards to asteroids hitting the earth, the formation of gold in the earth's crust has been a process that has started nearly 1 billion years ago and primarily involves gold bearing fluids rising from the core into fractures in the rock as it cooled down depositing into various geologic formations. To think that gold is more abundant in space, on asteroids, or that one asteroid in 2021 will fall and deposit more gold in the world is just a complete joke, and proves how little most people know about the history of earth and crustal abundance of the elements. Asteroids have been falling onto the earth for billions of years, and not one was solid gold. But sure in 9 years on a timeline of billions there will be a solid gold asteroid conveniently falling upon us... lol Relating to valuation: The problem with valuing gold is it serves as a widget but also serves as a currency. If we look at it purely based on economic 101 dynamics, marginal cost for producers is currently 750-800 an ounce. That means gold should be worth around 1,000 if we include ROI otherwise mines will simply shut down. There are no two ways around this. It's not as though less demand for gold will cause mining costs to decline, that is not how it works. Mining costs are relatively fixed, with the exception of several higher grading mines like Red-Lake and/or Kinross's Kupol mine. Those two mines can produce gold at between 250-300 an ounce and are very high grade. The additional delta between the marginal cost + ROI and current price is difficult to value because one most incorporate the investment/currency demand for gold. What the last decade has proven is that gold belongs in everyone's portfolio, whether as insurance (0.5%-1.0% allocation) or as a currency hedge (5-10%) we suggest somehwere in between for our clients, and have been suggesting this since the early 1990's when we first opened our firm. On a 3,000 year timeline, gold has always functioned as money while many versions of fiat currencies as well as empires/nations have come and gone. To think that gold will all of a sudden stop serving as money is infantile and lacks historical perspective. Since around 1971 the world has moved on to a total fiat money system whereby each sovereign nation is allowed to bail itself out by printing more money. For the first 30 years we saw the impact as quite positive given that asset prices simply kept rising with each new round of prinitng and a sort of wealth effect took place. Since 2006 this has stopped working, Asset prices no longer react positively to increases in printing as there is too much debt in the system, causing capital to flow to unproductive areas of the economy (servicing compounding debt). The environment we are currently living through where real interest rates are probably a negative 1-2% is very advantageous for gold as it does not punish gold holders too badly for buying gold instead of holding fiat currency. For this reason and the reasons stated above, I believe it is extremely complex to Value gold beyond the marginal cost + ROI, but just like when developing an intrinsic value assessment for a stock an investor must simply build a range and then buy when they believe there is sufficient margin of safety. With our models, we view gold as a major buy as it gets closer to 1,000-1,200 and gold equities as the preferred route for exposure when gold is above 1,200. We don't see a plausible environment short of 6% federal funds rate where gold maintains no investment demand premium, and we follow the actual miners and supply of mines and know that its getting more and more difficult to mine the stuff. I highly recommend both Barrick and Goldcorp's conference call transcripts as well as their Q1 presentations for more colour on this. Note the average grades being mined and the capital costs, there is nothing that can change those inputs, not even $30 oil, its simply the dynamics of mining something which occurs at .0011 ppm in the earths crust. For those that thing gold is more abundant in space keep dreaming...

You appear to have misunderstood the point of Einhorn's parable which was to poke fun at Buffett's description of gold. Einhorn brilliantly demonstrates how gold is superior to cash as it cannot be printed by the central bankers and that any argument about gold not generating yield is stupid given that cash too generates no yield.

This is a very very important observation. I believe that the bank which embodies the principles of JPM or the image of Dimon that everyone subscribed to is actually BAC and Moynihan. What Moynihan is doing is going to be looked at every quarter with more and more appreciation. I dont believe JPM and WFC will retain their premium over BAC for more than 2 additional quarters.

Are you wanting confirmation of your bias toward BAC?! Not at all - I have been investing for over two decades as some of you know but these markets are not easy to navigate and we are truly in unprecedented times given the incredible amount of artificial support from the global central banks as well as historically low interest rates. Volatility, correlation and insane levels of debt make this not your grandfathers equity market. As such I find the real-time analysis and confirmation of the thesis on BAC quite refreshing, and really what the power of the internet is all about. Over the last few days I have noticed some posters making these type of comments and I think Parsad's response was perfect which was basically that very few times in your career will you be given super large-caps at below tangible book value. That is why I believe most of us are focusing there. Being in the small cap space today is like gambling, and the paper losses sustained while averaging down can exceed 50% very quickly. We specialize in those names and are having a hard time constructing a portfolio.

Instead of complaining why don't you contribute some of your own ideas? There is a button you can click called "Start new Thread" I would love to see the gusher of wisdom flow from your fingers! What we all see in BAC is an easy double or triple within 5 years or less, and the constant posting only helps verify and gauge the thesis in real-time. It in no way hinders your or others abilities to provide new ideas. I for one have never seen a more obvious gap between price and value than BAC and am very happy to see other members agree.

Wow this is a good one! Board would you care to opine?

Its entirely dependent on each respective company and their balance of payments IE: are they an exporter or a domestic business.. I can see a scenario where a company is worth more on a depreciated currency IE: A Lira or Drachma...

Remember, China can print too. They employ a fiat standard as well. People forget that.