Phil Anthropy

Pershing Releases 13-F: Bulking Up on Sears, No Longer Short Ambac

Mad Money Cramer touted SHLD for years, saying he had confidence in Eddy Lampert and that the real value was in their real estate and other holdings, not the retail end. He likened SHLD to another Berkshire Hathaway model. It does not appear that he was correct. However, since retain will probably consolidate during an economic decline, perhaps SHLD will find some accretive acquisitions at bargain prices. I may go into SHLD as a speculative play if some of the economic numbers get better. They have good tools, appliances and Land's End clothes. But until there's a catalyst, it doesn't appear to me that the stock will do much besides tread water and wish it were Wal Mart. The problem with Cramer's advice is that for every GOOG on the upside, he has a BKHM, LVLT and RAD on the downside.

Pundit Failure: We Are in a Bear Market and This Is a Recession

It would be helpful to have the pundit tool saved in an Excel format that can be read by Excel 97. The current tool blows up Excel 97, and Microsoft's solution is to upgrade it (I don't think so). Those who are fervent about pointing out losers should be equally willing to post lists of winners, because there are many. Although in a classical economy we would be in a recession, we will not have one. This is because we are no longer operating in the usual model. For instance, our deficit spending should have weakened the dollar and raised interest rates years ago, taking us into a recession, and correcting our excesses. Instead, China, Arabia and possibly the Fed have bought our debt and kept interest rates low. When banks begin to fail, sovereign funds and the Fed step the rescue. We are no longer operating in a free market economy. Instead, we are operating in a financial oligopoly. The way to make money in this market is not to narrowly anticipate macroeconomic conditions, but rather to find bloggers or advisers who seem to be correctly predicting this chaotic market through whatever tea leaves they are reading, and follow their advice, both on the upside and the downside, because other than general sector momentum and market trends, individual stocks are fluctuating wildly in both directions in this circus we call the stock market.