Muzie

Opportunities Buried Beneath the Headlines

Ah, almost the optimist.

Yet, look at that period from 65 to 85. Nothing happened. During those years, an investor could have spent, drunk or otherwise enjoyed the use of his money but instead watched his investments go nowhere for 20 years, hoping for a return that never came. All along living with visceral swings.

What B of A Gets by Passing on Lehman & Gobbling Up Merrill

The value of the deal appears to have dropped by 4B$ today...

Pension Benefit Corporation Rolls the Dice at Exactly the Wrong Time

Augustus: Imagine you have a portfolio, have no other source of income, and owe more money than the value the income from your portfolio.

So you decide to change your tactical allocation to more stocks, hoping that'll pay the bills for you.

That sound like a good idea to you?

It seems odd that they are saying this is "less risky", when it's obvious the main trigger for their strategy is they need more income than they have now.

Banks Scramble to Refinance Their Long-Term Debt

RonB:

I'm quite amused by your implication that all the bears have a conflict of interest because they might be short the stocks while, on the other hand, you point us to Well's Fargo's transcript's as a reliable, totally objective source of information.

WFC's transcripts is very opaque about where the revenues came from, and WFC has refused to give out information about such basic things as delinquency rate on loans. If WFC was so confident, it would boast loud and clear all the details of its books instead of keeping them opaque still.

Bears such as Michael here don't have to be bears - Michael can perfectly well change his mind and decide to buy bank stocks tomorrow if he feels like it.

Wells Fargo CANNOT become a Wells Fargo bear, obviously. It is Wells Fargo's job to paint the facts in the best light possible, as it is the essence of their livelihood.

Reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Why Merrill's CDO Sale Doesn't Mean Big Writeoffs Elsewhere

To the OP: This is the first actual transaction of this stuff in a long time at an actual price. It would be unreasonable to dismiss the event as unimportant as it does have serious implications.

Why Merrill's CDO Sale Doesn't Mean Big Writeoffs Elsewhere

tlc: Price is whatever a seller will pay and MER needed the cash bad. In this case it would appear 22 cents on the dollar is the best deal they could find.

Black Swans, Real Estate and Financial Stocks

vamc: Frankly I'd take Considine's flawed models over your vague wand waving any day of the week.

I don't think Considine ever implied he tried to "predict all the things". Black swans will make any investment method fail whether they are based on fundamentals, technicals, psychology or whatnot.

Yes, to one with a hammer everything looks like a nail, aka. the data fit problem.

The flipside is to one with no (or inadequate) knowledge everything looks like randomness....

Black Swans, Real Estate and Financial Stocks

dmnieren: I think Mr. Considine 1:40 odds are for any single one-year period... so of course over multiple years you will eventually hit a significant percentage. Besides you can't just compare a predicted one-year return with the cherry-picked arbitrary timeframes you've chosen, you're comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Considine: I'm sorry if my knowledge of statistics is relatively shallow - I'm assuming some kind of Monte Carlo simulation is at the heart of these predictions. Wouldn't it be possible to give a probability curve on the accuracy of the predictor itself, thus at least giving an estimate of how wide the black swan event window is?