The Insider Report

  Hedge Funds Lose Tons Of Money After Family Dollar Drops 7% By Bob Luochang Yu Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (FDO) drops about 7% today after the company reported its 10Q for fiscal first-quarter 2012. According to WSJ, Family Dollar’s earnings rose 8.1% as the discount retailer’s same-store sales improved due to higher traffic and customer transaction values. However, its revenue missed analyst expectations. FDO closed on Thursday at $57.96 and is trading at $53.87 at 11:44AM EST on Friday, losing 7.06% or $4.09. Several hedge funds may suffer big losses due this price decline: 1. Pershing Square – Bill … Read more

BlackRock And Pimco-Led Group Targets Wells Fargo Over Mortgage Securities While Bank of America saw a steady decline in share price leading up to their agreement to pay the $8.5 billion dollar settlement, share prices popped once the agreement was reached.  Could the same scenario be the case for Wells Fargo?   Houston lawyer Kathy Patrick has negotiated an $8.5 billion deal with Bank of America, the biggest legal settlement in Wall Street history, and publicly declared her intention of going after JPMorgan Chase & Co. Now, Patrick is targeting Wells Fargo & Co. Patrick’s law firm, Gibbs and Bruns, … Read more

Five Dumb Things Investors Do With Their Money Investors are human.  We all make mistakes with our money, yet for some reason it’s the losses we remember most rather than the successes; the instances where we step out of our zone of comfort testing the waters of a new idea or trade concept.  Above my desk at home sits a small wooden plack inscribed with the words ” Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement”.  It’s a subtle reminder that mistakes will be made in order to achieve success, but we need to learn from each … Read more

So the detailed Morningstar analysis is summarized below: What if the Obama Justice Department nixes this deal? If they didn’t like AT&T and an also ran T-Mobile combining for anti-competitive reasons, they’ve got to be pretty emboldened by the possibility of quashing a deal where there is very real potential for monopolistic behavior. I’m hearing they’re getting a mouthful from the other competing pipeline companies.  At any rate the Puts on EP are pretty cheap considering the downside potential.  It might be a good speculation to bet this deal down not up. Kinder Morgan Merger With El Paso Will Create Value … Read more

We were surprised like most market participants by the record volatility in the market and the insidious correlation.  The phrase “risk on” and “risk off” became the new descriptor for market behavior in 2011.  The last day of November the S&P 500 moved over 4.2% alone nearly erasing the entire month’s loss.  If you weren’t 100% invested you missed out on the whole month.  There’s an old saying that the market figures out how to screw the most people most of the time.  Whether you were long or short, Mr. Market had a trick up its sleeve for you. For … Read more

Here it is with baited breath, JP Morgan U.S. Equity Focus List Dec 30th 2010

First of all let me say, macro investing is not my style.  None the less like a chocaholic,  I can’t help myself.   So without further ado my 2012 predictions, they are: The trade down economy will continue to be resilient.  People will continue clipping coupons, searching for ways to make a dollar go further, and making less do more.  It’s bleak, depressing, and if you can find any untapped ideas, you’ll make a lot of money here.  As the lady said, let them eat cake.  I’m not talking about cheesecake either.  Long Mickey D. Short Cheesecake Factory. Dividends will … Read more

This is setting up to be one of the major buying opportunities in some time.  Mead Johnson (MJN) since it’s February 11 2009 spin-off inaugural debut close of $26.43 had risen to a recent high 0f $76.53 on December 21 when the death of a new born baby was  linked to Enfamil which accounts for  the majority of MJN revenue.  Although there has been nothing conclusively  linking this death to the Enfamil batch a  number of retailers including Walmart have removed it from their shelves.  It’s important to note that the Company states this batch was tested for Cronobacter (the … Read more

– 3 Kings – from Cole Sax on Vimeo.   If you encourage your son to follow his dreams, you might wind up with one  that has marketable talents without spending big bucks on college for four years while  they try to find themselves.  Check out my 19 yr. old son, Cole’s, latest rocking’ ski video featured on Oakley’s web site featuring local phenom Alex Schloppy, X Games Gold Big Air 2011.  Excuse the puffing from a proud father but this video rocks.

Most people look at investing in bubbles as a human weakness.  The investment lore is filled with tragic stories of people investing at the top of crowd mania.  You don’t have to look far on the investment horizon to see the carnage.  The fabulous run up in value of single family homes culminating in the giant collapse of value of house values we are into now, the dot.com bust and attendant tech crash in 2000- 2002 and to a lesser extent the fabulous appreciation of stock prices in the 80’s and 90’s that created a decade of sub par returns in the … Read more

The Mother Of All Chart Porn – Presenting Goldman’s Top 100 Favorite Charts Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/16/2011 08:51 -0500 Goldman Sachs goldman sachs Christmas comes early for chart porn addicts this year, courtesy of Goldman Sachs which has compiled its top 100 favorite charts together in one place. As Goldman’s Hugo Scott-Gall. says: This is a supplementary chart book to our final Fortnightly Thoughts of the year. In it, we take the best charts that we have published throughout the year and rearrange them to tell the story of the world. Our story is not just of 2011, … Read more

Hedge Fund Titan Michael Platt Reveals The Three Things He Won’t Touch U.K. hedge fund manager Michael Platt, the founder of $30 billion fund BlueCrest Capital, discussed the eurozone crisis, European banks and opportunities for investing on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track.” via Hedge Fund Titan Michael Platt Reveals The Three Things He Won’t Touch.

Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Index Performance Index / Sub Strategies Value** Nov 11 YTD 1 Year Annl* Std Dev* Sharpe* Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund Index 92.97 -0.95% -7.03% -4.16% 6.38% 6.78% 0.67 Convertible Arbitrage 91.16 -2.35% -8.84% -8.50% 2.86% 11.51% 0.09 Emerging Markets 97.44 -1.43% -2.56% -0.56% 9.48% 10.84% 0.71 Event Driven 88.32 -0.76% -11.68% -8.96% 4.64% 8.32% 0.34 Fixed Income Arbitrage 99.14 -0.87% -0.86% 0.78% 7.51% 8.74% 0.65 Global Macro 89.57 -1.43% -10.43% -6.41% 5.66% 7.58% 0.50 Long/Short Equity 94.73 -0.94% -5.27% -2.60% 6.55% 8.46% 0.56 Managed Futures 95.31 0.52% -4.69% -0.30% 8.42% 12.33% 0.53 … Read more

Turmoil sparks hunt for high-yield stocks By Michael Mackenzie and Dan McCrum in New York Fund managers have had to be nimble this year. A transformed trading environment has tested their investment strategies to breaking point. The S&P 500 index of US stocks may have fallen just 3.6 per cent in 2011, but this modest decline masks a year of sharp price swings against a backdrop of a worsening eurozone debt crisis and banking problems. A slowdown in emerging market economies and fears that the US economy could suffer prolonged stagnation have added to the volatility in equities. via Turmoil … Read more

The GLD ETF has now dropped below its 200 day moving average for the first time since the market debacle of 2008-2009.