User 165905

13 Comments

    • ON: Thu Jun 12th 20:02 PM
      Commented on:
      MBIA and Ambac: Edge of the Cliff, Ratings-Wise
      P14911; You are missing the point; Who are you referring to when using the name "Wall Street". Certainly you can't be excluding the ratring agencies and the monolines themselves, or the banks that refuse to put up more capital. Why should JPM bail out the losers for making bad bets. Who is deceiving who. They are all getting shown the door Wall Street (LEH, BSC, MER) the banks, C, WB, WM, the monlines ABK, MBI, and anybody else that played the dangerous game. Is Vitello and oldlures innocent, well they are big boys if they are speculating on the junk, and should take their loses like men. Bt saying these dogs will return to their glory days and giving bad advice just has to be refuted. He gives no real argument; the days are numbered, and new names are being sent to the firing squad as we speak.
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    • ON: Wed Jun 11th 06:13 AM
      Commented on:
      The Case for Berkshire, c/o GEICO
      Perhaps you need to do more research for your PHD dissertation' GEICO is probably about 1/3 of insurance operating earnings (can only estimate bad on variance by quarter) and 10% to 15% of BRKA net profits 9also estimate). WEB would be disappointed in you.]
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    • ON: Wed Jun 11th 05:39 AM
      Commented on:
      MBIA and Ambac: Edge of the Cliff, Ratings-Wise
      Vittello; Perhaps you should let us know whether you have any skin in the game, and what price you paid. That would say a lot about your money management skills and risk tolerance. Since you seem to know the story going back years, I assume you paid well above $2 a share (someplace between 2 and $30, or was it $50). And in either case, why don;t you refinance your mortgage (say 400 grand could give yu another 200K in ABK shares), put some additional funds as of today, to show your conviction. People want to know.
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    • ON: Mon Jun 9th 15:21 PM
      Commented on:
      MBIA and Ambac: Edge of the Cliff, Ratings-Wise
      You should all double down right here again, which I am sure you have all the way down. MBI and ABK are below IPO prices of 20 years ago, and have lost everything for investors, even those who bought in 1998. You have to try real hard to lose everything, and cumulatively show less than 2% annual total return since inception (dividend mostly). Any body that bought after 1990 got skadooch!!!!
      There is a better chance of seeing zero than seeing 4 or 5
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    • ON: Fri May 16th 10:13 AM
      Commented on:
      A Simpler Explanation For Bill Miller's Losing Streak
      One can measure how much "deep thinking" is appreciated by the esteemed author, by the "deep thinking" put into his analysis. You out do yourself with every new post
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    • ON: Mon May 12th 08:34 AM
      Commented on:
      Stop Listening to Bankers' Talking Heads
      Sir, you talk as if somehow the owners of capital and bankers were of animals of different stripes, and the "people" will someday recognize this. Somehow you equate the "people" with "owners of capital". Give me a freaking break. Ownership of non-real estate assets is so concentrated that if you take away the banking system (i.e. and the real estate its primary asset), you will wipe out the "people", whose primary asset is their home. You think it is a coincidence that the greatest (at least most prominent) defender of Ayn Rand made it to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. All you phony libertarian free-marketers know that it is the concentration of power and wealth that is the problem, and capitalism won't eliminate that;only anarchism will. Once wealth an power is accumulated, you use the state to protect it. History has proven so, and your silly theories are meaningless
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    • ON: Wed May 7th 07:41 AM
      Commented on:
      Buffett's Soggy Logic on Guarantors' Ratings
      Nice try, but your selective quotes are telling and your comments a bit dis-ingenuous
      Poin1) The rating should be based on the guarantor's ability to pay claims, not necessarily the rating agencies "judgment"; the judgment has been wrong, and the ratings trends provide some reason to believe that is definitively the case here. His comments recently have focused on the rate of interest an guarantor has to pay to raise money, suggesting that 14% may hint at substantially reduced "intrinsic" value. By definition, the substantially higher cost of debt and equity capital reduces future ROE materially, especially with so little new business being written. The margin of safety, which many believed existed (i.e underwriting to zero loss ratios) proved fallacious, hence the need to revisit initial assumptions even in the event he believed they were AAA's before (which he didn't)
      2) Valuations can get out of whack. But its not just that. Confidence in a company's solvency (margin of safety) are integral to its buinsse model, and its claims paying ability is certainly now hampered by the substantial reserve additions, increased cost of capital, and reduced profitability.
      3) Guarantors are a small fraction of the rating agencies revenues. The intrinsic value of MCO has probably diminished, but perhaps not sufficient to merit his disinvestment.
      4) Its not really trash talking, its taking advantage of a market opportunity.
      For the record, many insurance companies (including AIG under Greenberg) refused to write the insurance business for securitized products, precisely because of the lack of relevant historical loss data, inaction that now seems quite prescient.
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    • ON: Fri May 2nd 07:54 AM
      Commented on:
      Still Too Early For Banks
      By the time this guy and Cramer decide to get bullish, the news will be good and smart money will be selling. Dumb money is last to find out. He went bearish on brokers in mid march near the lows. Some people never learn the lessons. The market is way ahead of the news, these guys follow the news. The worst part about this is that this guy is trying to feed off Cramers success. Don;t worry, he will self implode, the first televised version of a hari-kari
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    • ON: Wed Apr 30th 20:33 PM
      Commented on:
      12 Observations on Residential Housing
      H20-Dude that kind of mortgage in NY $67 K gets a house, without any windows or doors in the south bronx if you are lucky. Where can we find these gems of properties???
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    • ON: Wed Apr 30th 20:01 PM
      Commented on:
      Thornburg's a Huge Bargain After Monday's Crash
      anybody still left here. Just bought 10000 shares; any thoughts on potential upside. Looks good based on your commentaries
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    • ON: Wed Apr 30th 07:46 AM
      Commented on:
      The Bloody Knife Used to Gut Bear Stearns?
      Reggie, Since you start your article (the one linked to your blog where you quote options expert) on the options issue. Lets start there. You use dates March 11th to 14th. 1) you say no calls were purchased. Its unlikely with the stock, falling from prices $70 to $50 to $30 (13th of March) in two days that anybody would be entering orders to buy or sell calls with $20 strike. As far as puts, you use the unusual total volume for 4 days (11th, 12th, 13th, 14th). If all that volume was n the 11th or 12th, maybe there would be a kernel of truth. But at 30 (on the 13th) that would not be so unusual to see heavy trading volume on options after a 55% collapse in underlying stock
      To suggest that this scenario was orchestrated by a few to make money on shorts/puts on a few million shares is ludicrous, you can do better than that when evaluating conspiracy theories. Most of your "theory" focuses on this purported "options play" answer the issue about volume (on the 11th and 12th and). There are much better rumors surrounding why institutions wanted them to go down. You have done better work before
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    • ON: Thu Mar 20th 11:35 AM
      Commented on:
      Thornburg's a Huge Bargain After Monday's Crash
      I am just trying to be helpful; It appears that you think reviewing the financial documents from last year are somehow going to give you an edge. There were bankers lining up outside some of my colleague's boss's office working on deals (like that; maybe even that one). You are deluding yourself in thinking that you are "figuring it out" when you are looking at stale information. Information, credit lines, change by the hour, and what is valid 12/31 (or 3/19) is no longer necessarily useful today (in this market).
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    • ON: Thu Mar 20th 06:07 AM
      Commented on:
      Thornburg's a Huge Bargain After Monday's Crash
      Hi, I'm a junior associate in a distressed hedge fund and just stumbled across this thread, because I was doing some research on another mortgage backed securities fixed income fund. I noticed that you all are scrambling for Understanding". I've been doing securities research for two years, and I am dismayed that you are trying to figure out how to value a company under financial stress without any basic security analysis experience or real investment experience for a major (or even minor firm). This type of investing is for professionals. If you don't have 'access", you are not likely to "get it". There are too many variables that you are not aware of. Many of your assumptions and much of the dialogue between the somewhat intelligent posters is way off the mark. Distressed investing is very complicated, and I've been involved for two years at a boutique firm. JMHO
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