
Market Musings - November 18, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 10, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Tesla's Truck Unveiling and Two Short Possibilities. 1. Tesla's Truck Unveiling - The big news since our last edition of Market Musings was the unveiling by Tesla (ticker TSLA) of its electric truck, regarding which founder Elon Musk tweeted in advance: Well, that must be some truck then! We confess we didn't e

Market Musings - November 16, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 9, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Doubling Down on VIAB, An Arb Play and Travolta's Insanely Cool Airport House. 1. Doubling Down on Viacom - Viacom (ticker VIAB) announced Q4 (Sept) FY2017 earnings (see earnings release here) and the market had a minor hissy fit, sending the shares down as much as 9.4% in early trading: Yet, despite the negativ


Market Musings - November 13, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 8, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Earnings Odds and Ends. Thankfully, Q3 earnings season is winding down a bit. Almost all of our large holdings have reported, with the exception of Viacom (which reports on Thursday, the 16th). Below we present thoughts on recent earnings news we have been keeping an eye on: 1. Energizer (ticker ENR) - the batte


Market Musings - November 11, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 7, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Three Hard Lessons Learned. Reflecting on past mistakes and learning hard lessons therefrom is a key method by which an investor can improve his or her performance. Put another way, if one does NOT learn from one’s mistakes, then one is doomed to repeat them endlessly--which is really, really not good (or profit


Market Musings - November 9, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 6, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Clash of the Titans III: Allergan versus Valeant. As with our prior Clashes (TM), we stress that qualitative arguments only get one so far in investing. Valuation also needs to be taken into account, since a definably excellent company can be a sell if it is priced too high, while a clearly troubled company can


Market Musings - November 8, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 5, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present How Hard Is It (Really) To Raise $600,000,000 Or More? In the course of a conversation we had recently with a friend it was remarked on how difficult it must be for a startup hedge fund to raise the $25MM to $100MM required to really open doors as a professional investment management business (as opposed to doin


Market Musings - November 7, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 4, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Clash of the Titans II: General Motors at $42 versus Tesla at $306. As mentioned in MM.I.3 (yesterday's blog), often people try to justify a company's stock price by resorting to blanket qualitative arguments with no consideration of valuation. Qualitative arguments, however, fail to account for the fact that wh


Market Musings - November 6, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 3, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets. Today, we present Clash of the Titans: Viacom at $24 versus Netflix at $200. Often people try to justify a company's stock price by resorting to blanket qualitative arguments (e.g., "Netflix will 'own the future' in media distribution, thus current valuation is irrelevant" or "Viacom's business model is susceptible to cord-cuttin

Market Musings - November 4, 2017
We continue our blog series: Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 2, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets and to document our stock market views and long/short ideas for posterity (knock on wood, not in a way that looks foolish retrospectively). More Earnings News - Continuing yesterday's edition recapping certain recent earnings reports, the following of our holdings reported financial results: 1. Genworth Financial (ticker GNW) - Ge


Market Musings - November 3, 2017
We begin a new blog series today: Market Musings, giving our (hopefully not too random) thoughts on recent goings-on in the markets and to document our stock market views and long/short ideas for posterity (knock on wood, not in a way that looks foolish retrospectively). So without further ado, we present Market Musings, Volume 1, Edition 1... 1. Public Service Announcement - Just as a friendly reminder that stocks don't always go up, we offer up to readers the following as a