The Insider Report

Macro Funds Show Micro ReturnsArticleComments 1MORE IN MARKETS »smallerLargerBy TOM LAURICELLA and JULIET CHUNGGlobal financial markets continue to be whipsawed by policy makers and economic news, leaving even fund managers who focus on profiting from sweeping macroeconomic trends in a difficult spot.The bad news for investors of all stripes: Few in the markets expect the cloudy outlook to become clearer anytime soon.Fridays better-than-expected July employment report shelved worries about a near-term slide into recession and sparked a relief rally in U.S. stocks. But the report was nowhere near strong enough to change the picture of a stuck-in-the-mud job market. via … Read more

I saw Bob Pisani on CNBC today and he said something very cogent and I thought relevant.  I have outperformed the S&P 500 every year since 2001.  Our Fund is having a decent year but it’s been really difficult keeping up much less beating the benchmark.    It’s no small wonder, most managers are struggling.  Professional managers are in denial.  We’re in a bull market.  Why?  Because interest rates have dropped to levels that make many,many stocks undervalued with the most pessimistic of growth forecasts.   Market Is Having a Very Good Year…Really! Friday, 27 Jul 2012 | 9:40 AM … Read more

The Best Advice From The Most Brilliant Investors In History Max Nisen | Jul. 26, 2012, 12:17 PM | 57,747 | Theres a bewildering amount of advice on how to invest. People divide into camps, schools and strategies, then proselytize on the internet, in books, and on televisions. via The Best Advice From The Worlds Greatest Investors – Business Insider.

“The ongoing European crisis presents the biggest risk to our economy,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in congressional testimony Wednesday. “The economic recession in Europe is hurting economic growth around the world, and the ongoing financial stress is causing a general tightening of financial conditions, exacerbating the global slowdown.” This all seems so unnecessary to me. Yes the cradle to grave security blanket of the EU needs some tweaking.  No argument there but the whole euro currency thing is a false construct created without a political or financial union.  The only way out is unconditional guarantee of sovereign debt, one … Read more

Muni Blues Worry InvestorsGrowing Fear That Cities Will Default—Not Out of Necessity but as a StrategyArticleComments 56MORE IN BUSINESS »smallerLargerBy MICHAEL CORKERYSome cash-strapped U.S. cities are walking away from their financial obligations, exposing potential risks in the municipal-bond market.The moves are reminiscent of the strategic defaults seen during the financial crisis when many homeowners, overwhelmed by spiraling debts, mailed house keys to lenders and stopped paying their mortgages—a trend known as “jingle mail.” Now some cities are confronting similar dilemmas, and their choices could have repercussions on workers, taxpayers and bondholders. via For Cities, Default Becomes More Attractive – WSJ.com.

We’ve been saying for some time now how undervalued some NOT all big blue chip stocks are based on ultra-low interest rate assumptions. Investors head for ‘big cap’ America By Michael Mackenzie and Arash Massoudi in New York Euro crisis, Spanish bailout, America’s sputtering recovery and the threat of a hard landing in China. You name it, Wall Street has weathered it. The unexpected twist of the summer is the resilience of the US stock market. After big losses in May and early June, New York’s benchmark S&P 500 index appeared primed for a repeat of last summer’s tumble. A … Read more

This is currently one of the strategies our Fund is deploying.  We actually have a very small position like this in BlackRock so we thought this article might be usefull for our readers.   Striking Price | THURSDAY, JULY 19, 2012 Buy a Dividend Machine at a Discount By STEVEN M. SEARS   Use options to pick up shares of fund-giant BlackRock for less than the market rate. Stop trying to catch the next new thing on Wall Street or searching for mythical 10-bagger stocks popularized by fund legend Peter Lynch almost 25 years ago. These aspirations are unrealistic for … Read more

It’s hard to argue that major banks charged more interests to the consumers by under LIBOR reporting rates. JPM not knowing what their risk was and losing $5 Billion or more was egregious.  I doubt if they colluded to under report rates for the benefit of Barclays.  I doubt that you can prove much damages.  After all who wants higher rates?

These are two questions I hear a lot and I hear myself asking these two questions.  Conventional wisdom is that if we are heading into a recession, you don’t want to own stocks.  I’ve never found that statement to be true though as I’ve made a lot of money for myself and clients in recessionary environments.  This time though could be different.  Normally a recession triggers Fed rate cuts.  As interest rates are one of the biggest determinants of relative value, lower rates makes for higher stock valuations. With rates near zero, though, this thesis might not hold.  After all … Read more

Short Sales on NYSE Top 2011 Peak as September Bets Lost 21%By Whitney Kisling | Bloomberg – 2 hours 8 minutes sales on the New York Stock Exchange have climbed above last Septembers peak, a level that preceded a five-month rally and heralded losses for bears. Shares borrowed and sold reached 5.35 percent of stock available for trading last month, according to data compiled by NYSE Euronext. NYX That eclipses 5.28 percent on Sept. 15, when bearish bets peaked last year and the 25 most-shorted companies in the Standard & Poors 500 Index SPX began a 21 percent advance, data … Read more

The Striking Price | SATURDAY, JULY 14, 2012How to Win in Earnings SeasonBy STEVEN M. SEARS   Goldman Sachs study shows that the weeks before quarterly results are unusually important to a stocks annual returns.ArticleCommentsEmailPrintReprints smallerLargerIt is now much in vogue to observe that stock-market correlation is high.With all stocks seemingly rising and falling as one, with little regard for their individual merits, the fashionable trade is to ignore stocks.The better approach, says the new conventional wisdom, is using exchange-traded funds and associated call options to profit from the rapid risk-on, risk-off trading patterns that now define the stock market. To take … Read more

Beware investors in high flying VC social media deals. You can lose your shirt. At least with public companies you can get out! Betaworks Is Buying Digg For $500,000 Jay Yarow | Jul. 12, 2012, 4:28 PM | 12,982 | 10   Betaworks is buying social news site Digg for $500,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Betaworks is acquiring the Digg brand, website, and technology, but not its employees. Digg will be folded into News.me, Betaworks’ social news aggregator. This is not the outcome people expected for Digg. In 2008, Google was reportedly set to buy it for $200 million. … Read more

Housing Passes a Milestone By DAVID WESSEL The housing market has turned—at last. The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing “experts” that housing is bottoming. The numbers are now convincing. Nearly seven years after the housing bubble burst, most indexes of house prices are bending up. “We finally saw some rising home prices,” S&P’s David Blitzer said a few weeks ago as he reported the first monthly increase in the slow-moving S&P/Case-Shiller house-price data after seven months of declines. The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing “experts” that housing is bottoming. The numbers are … Read more

Be sure to tune into Warren Buffett tomorrow on CNBC at 7:30AM.  With his stock doing so well this year, he’s sure to be ebullient. Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hits 16-Month HighPublished: Wednesday, 11 Jul 2012 | 7:44 PM ET Text Size By: Alex CrippenExecutive   They are up 10.2 percent year-to-date, outperforming the benchmark S&Ps 6.7 percent gain.Since closing at $66 on September 22, Berkshire Class B shares are up 27.4 percent. via Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hits 16-Month High – CNBC.

PMorgan, Goldman Shut Europe Money Funds After ECB Cut By Dawn Kopecki and Charles Stein – Jul 6, 2012 11:38 AM MT   Draghi Own Words on ECB Rates, Inflation, Economy JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. (BLK) closed European money market funds to new investments after the European Central Bank lowered deposit rates to zero. via JPMorgan, Goldman Shut Europe Money Funds After ECB Cut – Bloomberg.

Regardless of the investment merits of Facebook ( I personally think there were none), I find it stunningly contradictory that our culture teaches fair play yet rewards just the opposite. For example, the institutional investors that got the early call that Facebook’s revenue growth had shortcomings were big customers that showered Morgan Stanley with fees. Since the deal was way oversubscribed, it didn’t hurt Morgan Stanley to deflate a little air out of the deal by alerting the good customers, that maybe the oh so hot deal wouldn’t pop just the way they thought.  But Facebook is just a sideshow … Read more

Manufacturing Slowdown Reaches U.S   By NEIL SHAH And BEN CASSELMANThe global economic slowdown has finally caught up with American manufacturers.The U.S. factory sector shrank in June for the first time since July 2009, the first month of the recovery, the Institute for Supply Management said Monday. Exports fell sharply, and new orders—an indication of future activity—dropped at their fastest pace since the post-9/11 plunge in October 2001. via Manufacturing Slowdown Reaches U.S. – WSJ.com.

Just A Very Visible Fat Finger? Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/28/2012 16:15 -0400 Equities did it again – and no matter what narrative a mainstream media channel needs to comprehend the monkey-hammering that occurs every second in our ‘market’, it seems a fat-finger 50k block of S&P 500 e-mini futures (or around $3.3bn notional equivalent) was enough drive the nominal price index up 1% to close the day-session almost green (and rather notably right at yesterday’s closing VWAP). All the highly correlated sectors of the equity market surged with them (led by Energy and leaving financials just in the … Read more

Ray Dalio: Don’t Assume That Germany Will Bail Europe Out; Consider The “Fat Tail” A Significant Possibility Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/26/2012 19:54 -0400 European Central Bank Germany Lehman Lehman Brothers Ray Dalio Snakeoil Salesmen Lately, more and more professional investment “advisors” and newsletter recommendations boil down to just one catalyst: wait for either Germany, the ECB or the Fed to step in, as usual, and bail the world out, because, well, they have to, and any additional thought is rendered moot as fundamental analysis is meaningless under central planning (plus it is actually more work than just repeating … Read more