Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy

CHART OF THE DAY: Earnings Season Is Off To An Ugly Start Through Friday, 104 companies (33% of the market cap) of the S&P 500 have announced there Q1 2013 financial results. While it’s still very early into the earnings announcement season, the early tally is not very encouraging. The analysts at Goldman Sachs have compared the earnings announcement surprises to the surprises seen in the last 40 quarters (10 years). via Earnings Season Beat Rate Is Low – Business Insider.

The Park Record ran an article 4-20-2013 titled “Local hedge fund offers investment workshops”.  Here is a pdf version of this article.  Please note that the next dates for our workshops in Park City and Salt Lake are now posted at workshops.saxangle.com.  There was one glaring inaccuracy in the otherwise well searched article.  We were not registered as a Fund in 2008.  If we had been a fund, we would have lost money in line with the market.  To set the record straight I made over 70% on my investments in 2009 not 2008.  I was scared shitless like everyone … Read more

Oil Could Face “Peak” DemandBy DAN STRUMPF The theory, popularized in the past decade, said global crude-oil production would eventually reach its zenith and oil prices would have only one way to go: up.So much for that idea. Oil production continues to climb, and the latest theory is that oil demand could peak first. The idea is prompting some analysts to rethink assumptions about the market and to call for a period of long-term stability or decline in crude prices.Last month, the commodities team at Citigroup, headed by veteran oil analyst Ed Morse, issued a report saying “the end is … Read more

Real-estate stocks have skyrocketed in the last year. Here are other ways to participate in the new property boom.   The housing crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars of personal wealth and shook investor confidence is finally over. Home prices jumped 10.2% in February compared with a year earlier, the biggest rise in nearly seven years, according to real-estate analytics firm CoreLogic. It was also the 12th straight month of increasing home prices, prompting many analysts to begin lifting their forecasts for 2013 to the high single digits. That has got the attention of investors who want in on … Read more

This recent story from Wired is all about a company based in Salt Lake, City called Fusion IO (FIO).  I won’t pretend to understand the technology but I know it was one of the hottest tech stocks around until it lost nearly 50% of its market cap since  last October.  Even now it trades at a stratospheric PE multiple . I drive by their headquarters on the freeway here all the time, and this Wired article  piqued my interest and did a great job of explaining the company and the race for massive database solutions.  Wired does a great job … Read more

You might ask yourself why bother to post this but it’s my observation that unless you pay money (subscribe) to S&P, this is the only time you can actually retrieve this information in such a convenient format.

I thought these facts and charts were interesting. Although the market is at an all time high, the S&P 500 is still far below it’s high in real terms.       If gold is an indicator of real purchasing power, what’s the S&P like in terms of gold? More telling though is the misery index. This could explain why there isn’t much celebration of the market making new highs. The average person is far worse off than they were in 2000 based on the misery index.

Is this a good investment?  If you rent out a home for $2600 per month, how much should you pay for it?  Well that depends on what kind of return you want on your money.  As a rule of thumb you can only net 10 months out of 12, the remaining two easily gobbled up by taxes, insurance,and maintenance.  $26,000 per year at a 7% return rate would value the property at 26,000/.07 or $371,429.  And that’s with the headache of managing it yourself.  Say you have to pay someone a modest amount of 15% of the rentals, then your … Read more

Often short term market tops are coincident with big weeks in the issuance of IPOs.  This week marks the biggest week of the year.  Caution ahead.  

MEREDITH WHITNEY: I Have Not Been This Bullish On The US And Equities In My Career   Meredith Whitney was just on CNBC’s Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo and the normally skeptical bank analyst came out as a super-bull for the U.S. economy and equities. “Would you put new money to work in this market right here?” Bartiromo asked her. “Yes, absolutely,” said Whitney. “I have not been this constructive and bullish on US equities in my career.” via Meredith Whitney Bullish On US, Equities – Business Insider.

This quote from Bloomberg, “In particular, Russian deposits in Cypriot banks have been criticized across the political spectrum in Germany. “Money from German taxpayers won’t be used to secure Russian deposits of illegal money,” the SPD’s Schneider was quoted by Bild newspaper as saying on Dec. 21. The CDU deputy leader Fuchs told BBC Radio 4 that “one has to ask a question: why there is so much Greek and Russian money in Cyprus?”” There is only one logical explanation why the Cyprus government decided to haircut their banking depositors who thought they had insurance for deposits under 100,000 euros.  They didn’t … Read more

In the Alice in Wonderland world of the stock market, this will  help U.S. stocks extend their rally over the next few weeks once equity markets settle in.  The elixir for the markets is the Fed’s printing press and this is sure to keep interest rates held in check for a while longer.    Europe is risking a bank runBy Wolfgang MünchauCreditor nations will now insist bank rescues must be co-funded by depositorsSir Mervyn King once said it was not rational to start a bank run but rational to participate in one once it has started. The governor of the … Read more

This Crazy Cyprus Deal Could Screw Up A Lot More Than Cyprus…Henry Blodget | Mar. 16, 2013, 9:09 PM | You can be forgiven for thinking that you don’t need to give a hoot about whats going on in Cyprus this weekend.After all, its just a little island somewhere in the Mediterranean.But whats going on in Cyprus could actually matter — not just to the rest of Europe, but to the rest of the world.Heres the short version of whats happening:Cypruss banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt.Cyprus went to the Eurozone to get a bailout, the same way … Read more

When corporate insiders buy and sell shares of the company they work for, some people feel compelled to follow. The rationale is simple: no one knows a company better than an insider.  Therefore, they’re more likely to buy if things are getting better and they’re more likely to sell if they think things will get worse. Unfortunately, the data doesn’t seem to support this. Jim Stack of Investech (via Barry Ritholtz) has created this annotated chart of the DowJones Industrial Index. It includes some headlines of insider trading activities. The chart speaks for itself. Well, that may be true.  Insider … Read more

  A woman fills her car with CNG at a Blu LNG filling station in Salt Lake City, Utah. ENN Group Co Ltd, one of China’s largest private companies, is rolling out plans to establish a network of natural gas fueling stations for trucks along US highways. [Photo / Agencies] ENN Group Co Ltd, one of China’s largest private companies, is rolling out plans to establish a network of natural gas fueling stations for trucks along US highways. With plans to build 50 stations this year alone, ENN joins a small but formidable group of players – including Clean Energy … Read more

There is something of significance to the fact that U.S market made a new high for the year while the Chinese market marked a new low.  I’m not sure what to make of it.  Is the Chinese market, or better yet the FXI a buy?  Or is there some economic forecast to be gathered from this? China IPO withdrawals signify loss of confidence in Asian Markets Seven companies terminated their IPO applications last week, according to data from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). A total of 30 companies had quit their IPO applications by the end of last week, … Read more