Brutto

4 Comments

    • Timber ETFs...Without the Timber? [view article]
      Good write-up, George. There is a more general lesson here also, which is to look carefully at the components that make up the more esoteric flavor-of-the-month ETF's: think solar, water, renewables, etc.

      More often than not the underlying stocks are only tangentially related to the actual asset you are looking for, or there are so few pure-play stocks that you can afford to research and cherry-pick among the top five names and get good sector exposure.       Jun 30 05:15 PM
    • NYT Smears David Einhorn, Again [view article]
      Well said, Whitney! If Einhorn is dead wrong, we should thank him for making LEH affordable and load up on the stock (or, better, on the convertible) for the long term. If he is right, we should feel sorry for LEH employees who have a much higher proportion of their assets tied up in the firm than your average fund manager.

      Either way, we know we are at an inflection point in the economy when press and governments have to go on a witchhunt for speculators and dark powers (those bad,bad hedge funds) as a scapegoat for market forces: not very rational, and more of a psycho/sociological phenomenon a this stage of the cycle.       Jun 12 06:38 AM
    • Penn West Energy Trust: My $50 Price Target [view article]
      With regard to hedging, PWE has hedged 42K barrels of its daily production of 109k barrels (excluding Natural Gas) with a cap of $81 until the end of 2008. Assuming they can sell the uncapped 67K BOE at an average of $120, they should achieve an average income of $107/barrel though to December. Jack, presumably your analysis already reflects this. May 22 01:18 PM
    • Hedging Your Bet With American Capital Strategies [view article]
      Instead of buying ACAS, have a look at their European subsidiary, a mini-me version, European Capital (ECAS.L) quoted on the London Stock Exchange. www.ecas.com/
      It was IPO'd by Citibank at EUR 10 last year and is currently priced at EUR 5.75. A price-to-book of less than 0.7 and a yield of 11 per cent leave plenty of safety margin for slip-ups in their portfolio, which in any event is not excessively exposed to the toxic covenant-lite LBOs which will hit a wall in the next few years. Plus, the very capable and driven ACAS COO, Ira Wagner, has nailed his colors to the mast of that particular ship, and ACAS is really motivated to support the ECAS share price for the reasons outlined above (SFAS 157) - they have even announced a share buy-back. (Disclosure: I am long ECAS with a base price of around EUR 5.45)       May 21 06:09 PM
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