THofler

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    • Sat Nov 1st 23:40 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Democrats or Republicans: Who's Better for Wall Street?
      Two corrections are necessary for any meaningful analysis.
      1) Apply an 18 month delay time to the White House transition dates. While the market psychology may change overnight, real economic factors do not.
      2) Don't compare Dems. & Rep. presidents; instead compare fiscal conservatives vs. fiscal liberals. This would move Kennedy into the conservative column and Nixon (& Ford?) into the liberal column.
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    • Thu Oct 30th 23:40 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Discerning the Value of Market Dividend Yields
      Chris B: GM hasn't paid a dividend in many months (they've been zeroed out for some time) and do you consider what GS pays a dividend? The payout ratio for GS is now 8% & I think it was more like 5% back when they had good earnings.
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    • Fri Sep 5th 22:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Energy Independence: It's About Demand, Not Supply
      The paragraph on the global fungible oil market is exactly wrong. As T. Boone says, we currently send $700B to foreign markets every year, and killing our balance of trade as a result.

      Even if every drop of domestic oil produced were immediately sold on a "global oil market" those dollars of revenue are generated domestically. Those dollars do not end up in some mid-east sovereign wealth fund.
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    • Fri Sep 5th 00:23 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Guru Picks: Five Blue Chips
      Dr. Fallon - - Please re-read the Ken Fisher pick #3 chart. You've got the wrong stock! His pick is the Italian integrated oil firm "Eni" with ticker "E". The correct ticker is E, not ENI.

      Eni or "Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi" is a stock I already own. It has a great dividend with a high dividend growth rate.
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    • Wed Aug 27th 23:42 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Grid-based Energy Storage: Birth of a Giant
      I'm sure there are lots of cool things that can be done to smooth power on the seconds or minutes time frame, but the important issue is the multi-hour storage possibilities.

      I think pumped hydro-power is really the only realistic one & that is very limited by geography & environmentalists & other fish freaks.

      Solar power is only strong for a few mid-day hours. Wind power can be strong at any time of day with the exception of sun-rise or thereabouts.

      While the dependability of wind is poor in small geographic areas, this problem can be largely mitigated re-destributing power over a large geographic region. T.B. Pickens' "wind corridor" is a huge region. The wind is likely blowing somewhere. This requires a high capacity grid that covers the whole corridor & beyond. (We need better grid infrastructure anyway.)

      The remaining wind dependability issues can be bridged with nat. gas turbine peakers (& hydro/geo-therm/nuke power). I think this is appropriate use of nat. gas, unlike our main power plant here in central coast CA, that burns nat. gas 24/7.
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    • Wed Aug 27th 22:13 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      What Business Can Expect from Obama
      Yes, Obama's campaign tax promises will be meaningless, just as Bill Clinton's were. The simple reason is that most of the Democrat voter base expects & condones campaign duplicity as a means to an end.
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    • Tue Jul 15th 00:26 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Can the SEC Really 'Quell Rumors'?
      "Pimco is pulling assets from LEH" was broadcast by CNBC as a "rumor." Within 10 min. Bill Gross had left skid marks getting on the air to catagorically assert that no assets had been pulled.

      IF the SEC can find the source of that rumor, I could care less what he/she believed. All I care about is the size of his/her short position. A significant short position should result in a perp walk & hard time. I have never owned shares of LEH.
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    • Tue Jul 8th 01:35 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Dividend Growth Investing Can Payoff in the Long Run
      Hey, thanks for the tip User! I've been focused on div. growth & reinvestment, but am looking at a portfolio with a lot of divs. reinvested at overvalued 2007 prices. Will give your method some thought.
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    • Tue Jul 8th 01:19 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      How Models Caused the Credit Crisis
      A several years ago a famous Berkeley physics prof complained to me that few of the PhD students he encountered were interested in slaving in his lab for a few years because most of them were not interested in a career in physics. They were in a hurry to get to Wall St.

      And before that crew hit the street, there was the crew of physics wash-outs (& wised-ups) that went there.

      Having built a few computer models & seen a great many presentations of others, I'd cynically suggest that the modeler's confidence of the model's applicability to the problem at hand is proportional to the the number of man months or years invested in the model. Even in the area of physical science these models frequently miss major portions of the realities at hand.

      I'd suggest to Max that the assumption of a "normal" market when applying a financial model is invariably a mistake. Maybe someday we will have models that include factors to compensate for a variety of possible market & economic shocks, but so far collapses of the LTCM type seem to be the norm.

      Over reliance on models badly applied, is not the whole problem, but a big contributor. My guess is that the substantial contributors are: a very preferential tax structure for real estate; Greenspan easy money; Greenspan lax regulation of mortgage brokering; bad models applied badly by lenders; grotesquely irresponsible and ignorant ratings agencies; and financial illiteracy about debt in the general population.
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    • Tue Jun 3rd 16:24 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Dividend Analysis: Bank of America Corp.
      Interesting, but suspect. Clearly BAC's last 2 or 3 qtrs of earnings have been terrible, so I wasn't surprised to see those valuation metrics that include P/E or EPS to be very poor.

      But then I remembered that Graham doesn't use trailing 12 month earnings numbers, but a much longer time period. So then I was suspicious of the author's accuracy. I pulled out my copy of "The Intelligent Investor" & sure enough, a Graham number calculation must use trailing 36 month earnings numbers. This is crucial because Graham's intent is to minimize the effect of a couple of great quarters as well as a couple of rotten quarters.

      If I use a BAC price of $34, a 12 qtr av. EPS of $3.74, a P/B of 1.1, I get a (P/E)*(P/B) Graham value of 10.0. This is far below Graham's limit of 22.5.

      On the other hand, it is also true that Ken Lewis has recently suggested that BAC will likely have another 2 lousy quarters going forward. So the trailing 36 month average EPS should continue its decline until 2009.
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    • Mon May 12th 23:39 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      New BlackBerry, New Fund: Is RIM's Moat Wide Enough?
      As we rush towards ubiquitous full featured smart hand-held devices, one contender has a rapid and efficient keyboard & the other doesn't. One wins the best entertainment toy contest, & the other wins the really big contest which is productivity.
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    • Fri May 9th 01:04 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Why You Should Short Companies Doing Share Buybacks
      I loved the article, especially the "dilutive" buyback part.

      Excuse my possible ignorance, but perhaps in your next post you could address the issue of whether a share bought-back is a "retired" share or merely a "warehoused" share? How easy or common of a practice is it to sell such a share? Does it always require a formal secondary offering?
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    • Fri May 9th 00:13 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Penn West Energy Trust: An Underappreciated Gem
      Good info here by all. I made a lot of money on Canetic Resources in the first 10 months of 2007 before selling. It was fascinating to see the hugely beneficial effect of the falling US dollar vs. the Canadian dollar. I don't think I'd want to own one of these during a US dollar appreciation.
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    • Thu May 8th 21:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Focus Funds: Does Concentration of Risk Improve Returns?
      Thank God someone has had the courage to puncture that underperforming blowhard Warren Buffett!

      Oh, wait a minute; his performance has been pretty spectacular. I guess he's just been very lucky for the last 50 years.

      Here is some ABC-type news: Most active mutual fund managers are not very good investors. Hence ALL inclusive statistical analyses of mutual funds are worthless. There are lots & lots of bozos out there & once you fold them into the data it becomes a case of garbage-in/garbage-out...

      Fortunately the mutual fund investor does not have to throw darts at a fund list. Sure, smart fund picking is not easy, but it's easier than buying individual stocks.

      2nd point: While high volatility adds greatly to short term risk, volatility does not equal risk over the long term (unless you define them to equal). Which is riskier? A low volatility fund that consistently loses money, or a high volatility fund that grows rapidly?

      I don't know that a great fund must be focused in order to be great, but I do know that some of the best are focused. My favorite fund has averaged 23.9% annualized return since it's inception 10.5 years ago & it has a 40.5% annualized return since I started investing in it 2.4 years ago. I'm talking about the CGM Focus fund (CGMFX) run by the almost legendary Ken Heebner. IMHO Ken is worth every penny of his 1.27% expense ratio.
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    • Thu May 8th 17:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Global Dividend Yield Trends
      I agree with the jist of DGI's comments, except I think it is a little ironic that he singled out XOM which has a payout ratio of only 18%. I believe that XOM has been increasing the div. at about 8%/yr while earnings growth has been much greater. Nearly all of the oil majors have better or much better yield: BP, E, TOT, COP, CVX.

      I think that XOM has prefered to increase its share buybacks instead of substantial div. increases. Why? Maybe they believe (correctly?) that the current 15% div. tax rate is a flash in the pan & that in the long run investors will thank them for sparing them from a crushingly high div. tax.
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