DonFurio

A Look at George Soros's Recent Trades

He's one of my least favorite people and he was dead wrong earlier this year calling it a sucker's rally. The pics in his funds are decent pics though.

Whitney Gets Bearish: Will She Be Right Again?

No she was not bullish on the banks at the bottom, I remember.

Watch the CNBC interview, while bearish, she clearly says that if there is another recession it will be small. She seems to be focusing more on the fact that spending will have to be more from wages/investments not debt and that credit card lines have been reduced a lot. She has been wrong for most of the year. She was never really bullish until late this summer and missed most of the gains. She correctly predicted C problems, but if you go back to analyst's track records, she was always near the bottom when you look at stock performance to buy/sell recommendations.

Anyone that has followed the markets closely the last few years will know that she was never really bullish until very late into the rally. She only said "cover your shorts until the stress tests are over and then put your shorts back on". I remember watching that interview and she wasn't bullish. She was never bullish on BofA, she only said that it will probably not need to be nationalized, and Maria made it look on that interview that she was super bullish when BAC hit 3.50, she was not. She waited until well into the summer to upgrade some of the financials.


On Nov 18 03:17 PM Graham and Dodd Investor wrote:

> Whitney is a good analyst BECAUSE most of her calls are "mean reverting"
> ones. She "dissed" banks when they were high in most other people's
> favor, she recommending buying banks earlier this year near the point
> of maximum pessimism, and she is now panning banks as people are
> putting their gains "in the bank." (bad pun).

In Defense of Meredith Whitney

You are 100% correct. I think my credit limit is probably 50X or more what I actually spend in a month (FYI, I have $0 in credit card debt). I could care less if that decreased, although it hasn't happened for me. Also, the fact there will be less % homeowners doesn't really mean as much as she makes it out to be. Someone still has to buy that home and rent it out, so really there is just a higher concentration among homeowners. In reality, the renters will pay the owner who will pay the mortgage. Yes, the renter will not be able to tap the home equity line, but that's not sustainable long term anyway. When she's talking about a double dip, she's talking about a few negative quarters of GDP, not a massive recession like we've had, so basically just a slow recovery.


On Nov 18 08:01 AM GregT wrote:

> Just to address one of Whitney's points that Shulman tout's without
> clarity. He said "Consumer credit continues to contract - credit
> lines are down $1.5 trillion."
>
> We need to remember that these are credit "card" lines. Most credit
> card users come nowhere near their credit limits. The card companies
> have reduced credit limits as the economy has gone into recession.
> This is normal. Shulman tries to make it seem like 1.5 trillion has
> actually been removed from the economy.
>
> Most of the time, analysts like Whitney who make one correct call
> like to parlay their fame into bigger and better things. She is now
> predicting the whole economy rather than just analyzing banks. We'll
> have to see if she continue to get things right or turns into a perma
> bear. Another person who predicted the downturn and made billions
> doing it (Paulson) is very bullish right now. We'll see who is right.

In Defense of Meredith Whitney

Oh I forgot the gov't and the banks should just give you everything. What kind of a loser are you anyway. Student loans through the feds are capped at 8.5% but many got loans in the 4-6% range. Besides, there is no prepayment penalty, so you can pay off your loans faster than the 10 years if you're smart. Of course no one is forcing you to borrow to go to school, but it usually makes sense, since people prefer to go when they are younger and they pay the money back. Same thing with a house, no one is forcing you to buy a house at all let alone with a mortgage, but often people prefer to buy a house with a mortgage rather than 100% cash. Again there usually isn't a prepayment penalty, so you can pay off your mortgage as you see fit. If you have a credit card balance and you are not between jobs, that's on you.


On Nov 18 01:14 PM ryanclarke wrote:

> The author's article wrote, " And it took me too long to realize
> the government and the Fed would do whatever it takes -- fake stress
> tests, eliminate mark to market accounting rules, change regulatory
> treatment of commercial real estate loans and so on - to keep the
> big banks from failing as there was no more money to be had from
> Congress."
>
> You're not the only one ... I thought Obama would defend the dollar
> ... and fight for the "little guy," by allowing home prices to readjust
> to a level that was indeed, "affordable." Instead, he got on TV and
> said exactly what the big banks wanted him to say, namely, "credit
> is the lifeblood of our economy ... without one cannot own a home
> or purchase a vehicle or afford and education."
>
> My translation was, "credit is how the rich stay in power and do
> nothing all day but collect interest from the poor people waste deep
> in debt ... without credit a home wouldn't be unaffordable ... and
> an education wouldn't take a lifetime to pay off. Forget about the
> car ... because sky high gas prices are going to make driving to
> work a waste of time."

In Defense of Meredith Whitney

"Bottom line: traders need quicker trigger fingers if they are long and cash needs to be ready to short the money center banks most exposed to the consumer - BAC, WFC, and C - and over time the market in general."/////////////... you're so confident why don't you buy leap puts now, or are you waiting for your magic charts to tell you when to short. Go ahead, go short the banks and let's see who right in 3 - 5 years. If WFC isn't at least 45, Bac isnt at least 30 and C isn't at least at 8, i'll admit you were right, but otherwise I'll be right and making big gains.

Roubini Says 'Don't Forget About Me'

One more thing, she downgraded it to neutral. I actually don't think it was a bad call, I sold my GS a few days before her report, but I am correct in saying that she missed most of the run in the financials, not just GS.


On Nov 18 12:09 AM TraderRob wrote:

> Just one second...
>
> Whitney put a buy on GS and it rallied something like 25%, then she
> put a sell on it.
>
> She wasn't wrong about that

Roubini Says 'Don't Forget About Me'

She was negative on GS until it hit around 140. She missed most of it's run. Yea she caught 25% but so did the SPY in that time frame.


On Nov 18 12:09 AM TraderRob wrote:

> Just one second...
>
> Whitney put a buy on GS and it rallied something like 25%, then she
> put a sell on it.
>
> She wasn't wrong about that

Cramer's Mad Money - You Can Buy Pretty Much Everything (11/16/09)

The SA losers don't want to hear that. They want to be able to blame Cramer when they blindly buy a stock he recommends and it doesn't work out as they had hoped.


On Nov 17 12:52 PM stink726 wrote:

> In fairness to Cramer, I don't think investors should follow blindly
> what any advisor says. Best is to listen and take the part of his
> advice which best suited to your individual situation. In other words,
> listen but make your own decisions. In Cramers defense, last Oct
> and Nov he was saying to buy "accidental high yielders". That advice
> fitted with my [mostly] long term holding strategy and I did well.
>
>
> I do not actively trade but I understand that there are those who
> have often been hurt by Cramers advice, while others have made profits
> from his advice.

Roubini Says 'Don't Forget About Me'

Watch the CNBC interview, while bearish, she clearly says that if there is another recession it will be small. She seems to be focusing more on the fact that spending will have to be more from wages/investments not debt and that credit card lines have been reduced a lot. She has been wrong for most of the year. She was never really bullish until late this summer and missed most of the gains. She correctly predicted C problems, but if you go back to analyst's track records, she was always near the bottom when you look at stock performance to buy/sell recommendations.

Nouriel Roubini, now don't get me started on this guy. He called for a recession every year since 2003. He said in the beg of 2009 that there was no way that the big banks were not going to have nationalized by the fall of 2009 and that we would be in a depression. He laughed off the earlier signs that the economy was stabilizing in the late spring, calling the green shoots, "tumbleweed". Supposedly though, he's living the life right now, he gets paid a lot to travel around and give speeches and hooks up with lots of girls sometimes 15 years younger than him.

Options Trader: 25% Off the Top Tuesday

". BAC got $45Bn in TARP funds and GE pulled in $48Bn of government debt guarantees. $93Bn is enough money to give all the remaining 600,000 GE and BAC employees $155,000 each, but that even distribution would prevent GE’s top 5 executives from drawing $34M in salaries off the top (on drastically lower earnings) - just something to think about…" //// also, if you had any friends, colleagues, or family members that worked at these two companies, you would know that they have been a tough place to work the last few years. It's obviously a doubled edged sword at this point, the banks are trying to raise their lending standards but they are being pressured to lower the standards and lend more.

Options Trader: 25% Off the Top Tuesday

". BAC got $45Bn in TARP funds and GE pulled in $48Bn of government debt guarantees. $93Bn is enough money to give all the remaining 600,000 GE and BAC employees $155,000 each, but that even distribution would prevent GE’s top 5 executives from drawing $34M in salaries off the top (on drastically lower earnings) - just something to think about…" ////////give me a break. The BAC is pref stock that will get paid back, and the gov't has paid out $0 in the FDIC debt GE issued. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but it's almost like a credit line. Just because Amex gives you a 20,000 credit line doesn't mean anything if you have $0 outstanding. I know it's not a great analogy, because Amex could always cut your credit while the FDIC would prob have issues the company defaulted. The bigger problem I have is that they are not going to take the leftover or repaid TARP money and pay down the debt since they borrowed to get the original TARP funds.

Meredith Whitney Hasn't Been This Bearish in a Year

I didn't see that he sold GS, but he also bought C, but I'm guessing he sold GS since it has run up so much.


On Nov 17 10:36 AM robert.b.ferguson wrote:

> Paulson just unloaded all of his GS perhaps that is a clue. I don't
> know what earnings bbro is looking at, all I see is a lot of "Beat
> expectations." on negative numbers. Very few real substantial gains
> to be seen on the domestic front. While I'm no market expert I think
> I would rather ere on the side of caution than make an all in bet
> like Buffet. After all his pockets are a lot deeper than mine. So
> keep your traveling stops tight and your stash of cash in gold. Keep
> your remaining powder dry and wait for the next 200 point dip.

Why Warren Buffett Loves Wells Fargo

It's a global economy and some things are easier to outsource. Is it a problem, yes, but the biggest solution no one wants to hear. You have to dramatically cut govt spending and gov't employees and then cut the corp tax and put in an reasonable rate for companies to repatriate their overseas earnings. You can't have the manufacturing like in the autos where the UAW gets everything, you have to be able to hire non-union workers otherwise who would want to risk starting a business.


On Nov 16 01:55 PM Mark Anthony wrote:

> What evidence do you have that Warren Buffett loves banks? If he
> does, then he is completely wrong. Warren Buffett does not understand
> gold, so he does not understand that all fiat currency would fail
> at the end, either. He doesn't have that concept.
>
> I believe, without a sound monetary system, it is impossible to have
> a sound banking industry. This is where we are right now. The US
> dollar is going to collapse to ZERO, all banks will be destroyed
> in the process. No one is going to leave money in a bank when hyper-inflation
> hits. Without depositor customers, all banks are out of business.
>
>
> From the philosophical point of view, America's problem today is
> we have too little of the productive sectors left (our manufacturing
> jobs are outsource to foreign countries), but too much of the non-productive
> and DESTRUCTIVE sector, the banking, finance, and wall street manufactured
> derivatives bubble. No material fortune is created when money is
> exchanged from one hand to another.
>
> To fix that imbalance, the banking industry of America must experience
> some destruction, and the productive industries of America must thrive.
> The world does not need America's Goldman Saches or the FED, but
> the world definitely needs our Microsoft, Intel and Boeing airplanes.
>
>
> Get out of banks and get into the real productive sectors of America.
>
> seekingalpha.com/autho...

Why Warren Buffett Loves Wells Fargo

"Maybe I disagree with Dick Bove and Meredith Whitney because the timing of their calls are so short-term. Bove says to sell Wells Fargo, but then says that bank earnings will double over the next couple of years. Why would I sell a company trading at half its intrinsic value when it continues to earn money"////////////////... Nice article, and I completely agree with this passage

Meredith Whitney Hasn't Been This Bearish in a Year

Anyone that has followed the markets closely the last few years will know that she was never really bullish until very late into the rally. She only said "cover your shorts until the stress tests are over and then put your shorts back on". I remember watching that interview and she wasn't bullish. She was never bullish on BofA, she only said that it will probably not need to be nationalized, and Maria made it look on that interview that she was super bullish when BAC hit 3.50, she was not. She waited until well into the summer to upgrade some of the financials.

Will everything go straight up from here, probably not. I like to invest a minimum amount each month and add more if I see fit. I won't be adding as heavily as I did from Jan-Aug this year, but so what, still some opportunities out there.