We love tracking David Einhorn because straight up, he's a smart guy. Besides dominating hedge fund land, Einhorn also dabbles in poker and the picture to the right is of him at the World Series of Poker, where he has in the past donated his winnings to charity. We love reading his investor letters at Greenlight Capital because they often give so much insight and transparency as to some of the movements they are making with their portfolios. And, in his second quarter investor letter, Einhorn reveals a few major new developments at his hedge fund.

While Einhorn is typically a value/event-driven investor, we instead want to turn the focus to his macro plays. First and foremost, the activity most people will talk about is the fact that Greenlight has shifted their gold position from the gold trust exchange traded fund GLD to physical gold, citing cheaper fees for storage than expense ratios for the fund they were previously invested in. This is an intriguing move and we'd imagine other funds will eventually follow suit. After all, literally a ton of hedge funds are invested in GLD. And, most notably, John Paulson's hedge fund Paulson & Co has billions of dollars tied up in a GLD position. It will be interesting to see if other funds shift toward storing physical gold ala Einhorn. And for those of you wondering where gold is headed, check out the video we posted up yesterday regarding gold's current trading range.

Before I attempt to answer these questions, let’s review what’s happened since TiVo won a major victory over Dish/Echostar on June 2nd, which included Hon. Judge Folsom finding Echostar guilty of contempt.

Many media brands will fade as liquidity and deals begin flowing in an economic recovery and companies strengthen their value proposition though consolidation or integration of strategic businesses.

That means some powerful stand-alone brands -- from CBS and AOL (TWX) to Twitter, Netflix (NFLX) and TiVo (TIVO) -- could become critical cogs in rebuilding larger media players for a digital future. And dozens of thriving media brands with declining profits are fodder for buyouts. At some point, such technology-driven brands will benefit from a broader corporate base of funding, support services and applications from bigger players seeking ways to adapt or die.

It's not difficult to imagine most of CBS Corp. (including the CBS broadcast network) being folded into the cable and online portfolio of Viacom (VIA), Yahoo (YHOO) integrating AOL, or either a Hollywood studio consortium or cable operator buying Netflix for a quick interactive fix. On the slowly reviving deal front, reports are swirling about Time Warner Cable's (TWC) interest in acquiring Joost, Google's (GOOG) interest in Twitter, and the ultimate collapse of Sirius Satellite Radio.

Among the more important facts skipped by the general public in its fascination with the equity bear market rally, is that the perspective for leveraged corporate issuers is getting worse and worse, never more so than just this March, when the monthly annualized default rate surged to a 20 year record high of 19.4%, on par with rating agency expectations for 2009 actual default rates. This has been coupled with unprecedented low unsecured recovery rates of 9%. Yet these two facts have not prevented the high yield cash market to post NASDAQ like YTD returns.

In this sense, the HY market is merely another example of an asset class becoming completely unhinged from its news flow and fundamentals: that in itself is not surprising - most assets lately are trading on deferred hope and good intentions than actual facts.

Cramer began his show enlightening viewers about common investment mistakes with a discussion of the difference between investments and trades. “A trade is when you buy a stock for some specific event, a catalyst,” he said, while an investment is a “stock that has the potential to work over a long-time horizon.” One mistake investors often make is to sell a stock that has gone up but is actually worth holding for the long-term. He warned against turning an investment into a trade until the thesis for buying has been given a chance.

CSGS recently announced it won the remaining portion of billing services from Charter Communications (CHTR).

Currently CHTR splits its billing services for its 5.5mm subscribers 60/40 between Convergys (CVG) ICOMS (Integrated Communications Operations Management System) solution and CSGS. CHTR is consolidating solely under CSGS for all billing services starting 2010. CHTR is listed as CSGS’s 4th largest customer representing around 10% of its revenue and signing the remaining half of CHTR billing needs is believed should generate as much as a 8-10% increase in CSGS revenue in the coming year.

There have been a number of articles lately about people cutting costs by cancelling /cutting cable TV service. That's certainly true, but it is more structural than that. Many people are coming to the correct conclusion that in the age of Hulu, Boxee, Bittorrent, etc., that cable TV is an over-priced relic of another entertainment age. While some broadband providers have stakes in such services, the transition is neither going to be costless nor smooth -- doubly so in the current economy.

Here is a quick graph of Google search trends for "cancel cable" over the last few years. It is, as we say in the business, up and to the right.

To hear the prognosticators and media tell it, cable subscriptions are being supplanted for video services like Hulu. A recession, free Web video and cable costs add up big problems for cable providers. The reality may be very different, says Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

The press release passed with hardly a notice by me about halfway through 2008. Apple (AAPL) had surpassed Wal-Mart (WMT) as the world's leading retailer of music. Sure, it was interesting to hear such a success story, but the sheer magnitude of the news didn't really hit me until companies like Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) announced their amazing Christmas seasons in 2008. It suddenly hit me. The internet is taking over the retail world.

It crept up on me. The internet has been around a long time. I didn't even really notice that compact disks had become obsolete. Sure, I have my mp3 player just like everyone else, but who bought their shares of AAPL five years ago because of AAPL's expected impact in the music industry?

Cramer began his show enlightening viewers about common investment mistakes with a discussion of the difference between investments and trades. “A trade is when you buy a stock for some specific event, a catalyst,” he said, while an investment is a “stock that has the potential to work over a long-time horizon.” One mistake investors often make is to sell a stock that has gone up but is actually worth holding for the long-term. He warned against turning an investment into a trade until the thesis for buying has been given a chance.

• Q4 earnings reports are going to be miserable. Savitz counts 65 times over the past two weeks in which his blog has covered an earnings warning, layoffs, bankruptcy threat, or otherwise grim tidings.
• If you think Q4 was unthinkably bad, wait until Q1. "End-market demand is so bad that workers are being sent off on unpaid vacations of two to four weeks."
• If you are thinking the first quarter looks bad, wait until you see the rest of the year - particularly for chip stocks. Analyst Mark Lipacis sees earnings for the semiconductor firms in his universe down a startling 78% vs. the Street's -27%.
• PC and mobile phone sales may be a lot worse than the -5% to -6% and -4% to -6% analysts expect -- like -10% to -15% and -20% respectively. At fault: the retrenching consumer.
• Some familiar names may not make it through the year: Qimonda (QI) needs a cash infusion (note: it got it - today!). Charter Communications (CHTR) may salvage the company, but its $21B in debt means shareholders are likely to be wiped out. Nortel (NT) has hired bankruptcy lawyers. Other companies in peril: Palm (PALM), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Motorola (MOT), Sirius XM Radio (SIRI).

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Only 11% of companies garnered a rating of “excellent” in this year’s Customer Experience Index of large US firms, released by Forrester Research, Inc., and 38% of firms were rated as “poor” or “very poor,” writes Retailer Daily.

Douglas A. McIntyre at 24/7 Wall Street rounds up a sobering list of big-name stocks that have fallen below $1 a share, plus a few that could be headed that way. His list, their recent prices, and their 52-week highs below.

• Thornburg Mortgage. (TMA) Current price: 26 cents. 52-week high: $140.50.
• Fannie Mae. (FNM) 83 cents. $40.45.
• Freddie Mac (FRE) 82 cents. $37.18.
• Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) 18 cents. $3.94.
• Level 3 (LVLT) 82 cents. $4.48.
• Charter Communications (CHTR) 17 cents. $1.67.

Names that could still meet their break-the-buck fate? Ford (F), Citigroup (C), Sprint (S), The New York Times (NYT), and ETrade (EFTC) -- a list that would've looked like the top holdings of a pretty conservative mutual fund 18 months ago.

This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the preface to the series we're doing on Hedge Fund 13F's here.

Next up, we have Bret Barakett's Tremblant Capital. If his last name sounds familiar, its because his brother, Timothy Barakett, manages fellow hedge fund Atticus Capital, whom we also track. Taken from its site, Tremblant Capital Group's objective is "to achieve superior risk adjust returns for our investors through our focused and disciplined investment process." Tremblant is a $4.1 billion hedge fund based in New York and is run by Bret Barakett, who is a former portfolio manager at Moore Capital Management (the hedge fund run by the great Louis Bacon, whom we also track).

Q3 2008 Earnings Call

November 6, 2008 9:00 am ET

The volatility on Wall Street last week sent cable and satellite TV stocks down through the week, recovering a bit in Friday trading.

What's the connection? When consumer spending pulls back and when the housing market slows, the cable and satellite businesses usually suffer as fewer people sign up for high-end new cable TV services.

Never turn an investment into a trade