Month: November 2013

All for One: China’s New Deal What appears to be the country’s generous new bargain is actually a move to strengthen the state By ANDREW BROWNE CONNECT Updated Nov. 22, 2013 7:53 p.m. ET China announced both economic and political reforms to pave the way for the country’s future. The WSJ’s Andrew Browne tells Deborah Kan what Xi Jinping’s China is shaping up to look like. If human figures were represented at all by the ancient masters of Chinese landscape painting, they appeared as black specks—mere spatters of ink on a silk scroll. This rendering of people with the flick of a brush was intended to demonstrate man’s insignificance before the power of nature, but it also mirrored a political reality that has endured to this day. In Chinese civilization, the … Read more

I am on a short 10 day trip through China’s major cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. I wanted my kids to get a sense of the Asian imperative, the thousands of bright ambitious young Chinese swelling the ranks of our universities. The Chinese are coming and what better way than to get a feel than to come to them.  First observations is that there is a very pervasive and scary form of Internet censorship.  I can’t get the New York Times but I can get the Wall Street Journal from the hotel wifi. I think if I had told … Read more

If insiders are the smart money, no one told that to the Chairman of the Board,  William Macaulay as he bought $3.1 million dollars worth of stock nearly 7% higher than where it closed on Tuesday only three days ago.   I quote from the 14k ” William E. Macaulay has been the Chairman of our Board of Directors since October 2004. Mr. Macaulay is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and a Managing Director of First Reserve Corporation (“FRC”), a private equity firm focusing on the energy industry, which he joined in 1983. FRC was an affiliate of our former indirect parent, … Read more

One of my favorite clients sent me this article.  This is something we have known to be true for a long time of course as we are the”insider’s fund”.  What is conspicuously absent from the reporters’s story is the revelation of the “short swing rule”.  This is the game changer and what makes insider buying such a timely indicator. Insiders Can Give an Edge By FRANCESCO GUERRERA CONNECT Nov. 18, 2013 3:04 p.m. ET Michael Babich seems like the right kind of insider trader—the legal kind. In mid-August, Mr. Babich, chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics Inc., INSY … Read more

Our outlook: The current political headlines about the budget impasse and Government shutdown we just maneuvered reminds us of 2011 and the famous line from The Great Gatsby when he was reminded that you can’t repeat the past, Gatsby replied incredulously, Can’t repeat the past?” “Why of course you can!” TO THINK THAT WE ARE GOING TO REPEAT THIS BUDGET FIGTH COME THE NEW YEAR DEFIES IMAGINATION. We can only wish for such chaos and nonsense, as this seems to keep the Fed out of the picture and interest rates low.  Obviously the market loves cheap money. And therein lies … Read more