Saturday, October 4, 2008

Stock Chasing for double digit returns

Some hedge funds must be doing well, the higher risk player who havent been using more conservative assets like MBS must be doing well in the current market as must those hedge funds that properly hedged, I personally have been getting high double digit returns just chasing stocks of damaged goods banks and inurance companies that get bought out.

Following WB to their lows and buying in has proven to be a very interesting strategy as you watch the stock increase in value exponentially within a matter of days with take over rumors. Cents on the Dollar WB is now back at a healthy $6 plus so the question is who is next to fall and how well will they rebound.

Wels Fargo has to have a pretty shakey balance sheey if they cant sell the shares they are issuing to pay for a Wachovia takeover so look for them to take a tumble.

Goldmans looks a super safe bet as always their accounting department knows how to weather pretty much any storm and move underperforming assets off the balance sheet. Lloyd Blankfeld was declaring profits whilst everyone else wrote down in 2007, I stated it was suspicious and I dont think i was proven wrong. Plus Buffet is a great benefactor to have behind any company.

Oil is going to contnue to drop as the speculators who have been overinflating prices run out of balance sheet to back their speculation, $90 a barrel or less would seem reasonable.

General Motors and Ford should be softening up pretty fast as they have low and constantly falling sales in the current economy and how their finance divisions will hold up will be a wonder to behold.

Copyright Jonathan Rose 2008 - Creative Commons License


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The Problem With Modern Politics - "politicians the lowest and slowest form of whit"

The problem faced by joe public in the modern political arena, is knowing what candidates stand for, what they represent and what they really intend to do on coming to power. The absolute inability of political candidates to answer any simple question with any degree of honesty, accuracy or most importantly detail is unbelieveable. Contrite statement and sound bites fill speeches, retoric stands at the fore and promises of something different are all thrown with great gustow but no detail of how anything will actually change and if the president has an power to bring about those changes are few and far between.

I have yet to hear Obama Bin Laden give any concrete or firm details on how he will improve healthcare or taxation, how he will get us out of Iraq or how his open diplomacy policy with a country like Iran will happen and how he has any capability of understanding what is actually happening. He has been groomed for a role and his primary qualification is going to be his ability to say and do nothing that can be held against him, simply because he hasnt been doing it very long and has never really done anything about anything. Seeing the sucess of this plan, John McCain has decided emulation is the best for of flattery and has appointed a VP with the same credentials of having done little or nothing and knowing even less about the world and its current issues. His only advantage is she only gets to be president if he dies, giving the American people some hope where Obama leaves non.

The governmental interference in the bailout has been a clear example of how no one in the public wants an uneducated and unknowledgable group of politicians to interfere in the free market economy and now they further claim to have the desire to meddle further and ensure the current meltdown never happens again. The problem is they still have no idea what has happened and the plan they have proposed helps no tax payer only shareholders of banks who would have gone down in flames.

Where will the money come from for the bailout if not taxation, last time i checked that was the only way the government generates income to pay for its promises Had the government simply paid off part of the "current" the mortgages in the USA they would have spent less money and fueled the us taxpayer to avert a recession by providing free capital and freed up further consumer overspending. The non current defaulting mortgages would have been foreclosed upon and the banks would return the overheating and overpriced real estate market to parity due to oversupply. The banks would have generated liquidity and the problem ould have been better solved than its current guise where much of the money will end up overseas and helping the wealthy who carried stocks in the companies in question.

Free market economics would have eliminated banking inefficiency and helped us clean out the trash effectively. Part of the problem is banks are being bought and the banks buying them are issuing new shares to do so. they are also issuing enough shares to try and generate the capital to cover their own illiquidity and bail themselves out with their own write downs, should those shares not get bought and rescue deals will die a sudden and firey death. Furthermore the bad assets are still out there and while the new bigger banks write them down along with their own write downs we get a continuing cycle of bank insolvency. The only sensible part of the entire bail out bill is the increase in the FDIC insurance to $250,000 which has long needed to change to a real figure. So long as you can find anyone with cash assets anymore..........

The biggest question of the bail out is why the American government is so willing to throw its cash overseas and further derail its highly damaged and fragile economy. Let foreign countries fund their own portion of the debts incurred by their debt. The UK has made one of the worst gaffs when they nationalised "the Bradford and Bingley" keeping all the bad assets for themselves and allowing the Spanish bank "Santander" to asset strip all the best parts. It just goes to show that those with any competence are in business and those without are in politics, maybe they should modify the phrase too "politicians the lowest and slowest form of whit"

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