J.C. Penney (JCP) confirms Ron Johnson is "stepping down and leaving the company." Mike Ullman, who was J.C. Penney's CEO until Nov. 2011, is replacing Johnson as CEO, and has also been elected to the company's board. Investors don't seem crazy about the choice, JCP now just +0.5% AH. (previous) Update (5:33): Shares are now down 4.4% AH. [View news story]
42k an hour is way too high. That's not even a sensible estimate.
Making Sense Of Amazon's Market Value [View article]
It doesn't matter how the investment is financed.
The biggest issue by far with Amazon is determining how profitable the investments of the last 3 or so years will be over the coming few years in terms of boosting gross cash flow. You can look at how I defined gross cash flow and add it up based on TTM. Chart that across a few years and it will give you a good idea.
By the way, there was recently an article in WSJ showing the results of a study that showed focusing on gross income predicted stock prices better than net income.
I am not long Amazon because I think they are overinvesting. I don't think they will make good returns on capital on AWS (I don't even think it's a good business to be in). If they were just the best online retailer in the world, and that was all they aspired to be, I might be able to get comfortable with the valuation.
The Fed Is Not Pushing Stock Prices Higher [View article]
The interest rate markets are so heavily controlled by the authorities it is really hard to say what the price of credit would be without them. If indeed the private markets would set the rate at 2% on the 10yr without the Fed, then why do they feel compelled to purchase $1 trillion of securities per year?
"The market appears too sanguine in its view that a solution will inevitably be found," writes Morgan Stanley of Cyprus. Even if the government, Troika, and Kremlin (Kremlin?) somehow reach agreement, the faith between bank depositors and policymakers will have been breached. "There are significant problems behind the curtain." [View news story]
Cyprus is a banking hub for Russian corporates and super high net worth's.
Some money managers are getting excited by the latest holy grail for investors - using gross profitability as a basis for picking stocks. Research from University of Rochester's Robert Novy-Marx shows that cheap "quality" plays outperformed the overall market by over four percentage points a year from 1963-2011. "You get much more informative signals about the health of firms" this way, says Novy-Marx. [View news story]
GAAP net earnings are a poor metric of future cash generation. There are lots of improvements you can make to it to add value. Four percent over 10 years is 50% more return -- would fix the pension problems plus some for any large American industrial company and is very significant.
I wrote a very long section on the balance of payments, but it made the article unwieldy. I may publish it separately. The trade deficit is mostly caused by the shock of the nuclear industry shutdown. Even assuming it stays shut forever, Japan can rebalance if it chooses but it will take some time. Meanwhile, the Japanese have one of the biggest stocks of foreign capital assets in the world, so they are not compelled to fix their deficit overnight. The nuclear industry will however restart and it will more or less fix the issue.
Footwear Stocks Are Appealing, Crocs Is A Definite Buy With Strong Potential In 2013 [View article]
Arguing this isn't a cheap stock is a bit silly. 10x earnings in today's market, in fact most day's markets is cheap. I don't see major problems with the company's earnings either, they seem pretty clean. Something else has investor's worried about this.
1) 2008-09 performance, both profit and stock price (this stock was $1.25 in 2009 and company lost money 08-09). How will Crocs do during the next downturn? My guess is much better because of lower reliance on clogs, but not everyone will jump in with two feet. There probably needs to be a "normalized" earnings concept applied to this company.
2) Tax reform. This company has a very low tax rate due to the quirky international tax laws of the U.S. If there is any tax reform in the U.S., their effective rate will probably increase to ~25%. Also, nearly all the cash on the balance sheet right now is legally off shore.
Japan is pretty filled up in terms of people, I think they will hover around their current population indefinitely. If the population declines much then you assume their are vacant houses, etc. Seems like a new families would take advantage of this. Humans have shown a pretty good ability to populate over time, I am not concerned about this changing on the island of Japan or anywhere else.
If real yields increase in Japan the debt will become more attractive. Japan has not demonstrated any difficulty funding its government. It took visible signs of distress in government funding for Greece, Italy and Spain before their bonds moved. And they didn't have a national central bank to backstop the market.
Japan has a lot of debt because they have a lot of assets. Foreign reserves are only one part of that. Also, its not really possible to sell foreign exchange to fund the government -- the government needs yen, not dollars and the dollars are owned by an exchange fund that has issued debt against them, but that is beyond the scope of this article.
J.C. Penney (JCP) confirms Ron Johnson is "stepping down and leaving the company." Mike Ullman, who was J.C. Penney's CEO until Nov. 2011, is replacing Johnson as CEO, and has also been elected to the company's board. Investors don't seem crazy about the choice, JCP now just +0.5% AH. (previous) Update (5:33): Shares are now down 4.4% AH. [View news story]
3 Issues With Senior Housing Properties Trust Worth Considering [View article]
Making Sense Of Amazon's Market Value [View article]
The biggest issue by far with Amazon is determining how profitable the investments of the last 3 or so years will be over the coming few years in terms of boosting gross cash flow. You can look at how I defined gross cash flow and add it up based on TTM. Chart that across a few years and it will give you a good idea.
By the way, there was recently an article in WSJ showing the results of a study that showed focusing on gross income predicted stock prices better than net income.
I am not long Amazon because I think they are overinvesting. I don't think they will make good returns on capital on AWS (I don't even think it's a good business to be in). If they were just the best online retailer in the world, and that was all they aspired to be, I might be able to get comfortable with the valuation.
The Fed Is Not Pushing Stock Prices Higher [View article]
"The market appears too sanguine in its view that a solution will inevitably be found," writes Morgan Stanley of Cyprus. Even if the government, Troika, and Kremlin (Kremlin?) somehow reach agreement, the faith between bank depositors and policymakers will have been breached. "There are significant problems behind the curtain." [View news story]
Crocs: Growing Brand At A Fair Price [View article]
Bakken: The Downspacing Bounty And Birth Of 'Array Fracking' [View article]
Micron Seems Likely To Beat Estimates [View article]
Some money managers are getting excited by the latest holy grail for investors - using gross profitability as a basis for picking stocks. Research from University of Rochester's Robert Novy-Marx shows that cheap "quality" plays outperformed the overall market by over four percentage points a year from 1963-2011. "You get much more informative signals about the health of firms" this way, says Novy-Marx. [View news story]
Valuing The Yen [View article]
Footwear Stocks Are Appealing, Crocs Is A Definite Buy With Strong Potential In 2013 [View article]
1) 2008-09 performance, both profit and stock price (this stock was $1.25 in 2009 and company lost money 08-09). How will Crocs do during the next downturn? My guess is much better because of lower reliance on clogs, but not everyone will jump in with two feet. There probably needs to be a "normalized" earnings concept applied to this company.
2) Tax reform. This company has a very low tax rate due to the quirky international tax laws of the U.S. If there is any tax reform in the U.S., their effective rate will probably increase to ~25%. Also, nearly all the cash on the balance sheet right now is legally off shore.
Valuing The Yen [View article]
Valuing The Yen [View article]
Valuing The Yen [View article]
Valuing The Yen [View article]
Japan has a lot of debt because they have a lot of assets. Foreign reserves are only one part of that. Also, its not really possible to sell foreign exchange to fund the government -- the government needs yen, not dollars and the dollars are owned by an exchange fund that has issued debt against them, but that is beyond the scope of this article.