pelcmarek's picture
    pelcmarek

If you really know something....


People playing in casinos, betting on sports and astrologers - they all believe they know ,,something''. It will take them years and it will cost them lot of money to find out if they really knew something.

If you compare a healer and a doctor you will see who knows something and who doesn't.

Imagine japanese value investors buying after market crash in 80's, they still didn't make a penny after 20 years.If the same thing happens in US all long only investors will be dead.

It's very simple if you really know ,,something'' you will start getting richer .

If there is a bull market and you are short only fund and you are beating the market heavily then you know something.
If there is a bear market and you are long only fund and you are beating the market heavily then you know something.

If you are small investor and you know something, you should have enourmous profits in comparison with big funds, that don't have so many opportunities.

It is the same with investing/trading strategies. 

The ability to beat the market is condition necessary, but NOT sufficient ! You have to beat the market by large margin to be able to make a living from it.

Check your bank account and you will see: if you really know ,,something'' and you are losing money then it is not worth much.

PS:I lose money on my account !

Surprised

And the winner is .....


Dow Jones index made from 1929-1954 0 points   (0%)!
Dow Jones index made from 1960-1982 only 130 points (19%) !
Dow Jones index made from 1929-1982 479 points.(130%)!

Strategy where you can get 80% drawdown is not a good strategy for asset management. David Einhorn and Eric Sprott understood it. At least they set up long/short strategy.

After reading value books I got a feeling only micro matters. From Eric Sprott I learned macro matters. From Manuel Asensio and Steve Cohen I understood everything matters.

Jim Simmons would say:you think you can beat the market- let me check.

After what I saw there is not much alpha out there...... 

Jim Cramer- and you thought this guy is a loser . This guy is smartest from all.You make money faster when you talk about them than when you trade them.Hillarious!

Bill Miller -made billions on fees from other players (LMVTX).If you gave him money 15 years ago you still didn't make a penny.(I love the yacht he bought last year)Cool

Mohnish Pabrai - his philosophy: low risk, high uncertainity is simply wonderful. Even better is investing like Buffett in early years. What went wrong? He was buying dips when average PE of S&P was around 25. It can go to 9!!!
Laughing He lost 80% this year. Don't worry it will come up.

Ken Heebner- this guy is up to something I can assure you. If you invested in his fund 7 years ago you still didn't make a penny. (CGMFX) He lost 50% this year. PS:I always knew the best thing to do is to flip stocks around. The more you flip the bigger is the fun. Laughing

Eric Sprott - first took away his performance from front page,now he is showing performance only as at Oct 31,2008. I wonder why Laughing


I'd compare stock pickers to astrologers . . . But I don't want to bad-mouth the astrologers.
Eugene Fama in How the Really Smart Money Invests from Fortune (7/6/98)
 
Cry

To cheer you up here is video with Michael Moore on car makers. 5:05 - 6:50 Incredible !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0bbOZ-nkJs 

Porsche made $8.7b from VW option trades


Porsche has fuelled the controversy over its stake building at rival Volkswagen by revealing it had earned eight times as much from its VW option trades than from actually selling cars.

The company said it made 6.83 billion euros ($8.7 billion) from trading in VW options, plus another 1 billion euros from the rising value of its Volkswagen stake, in the fiscal year that ended in July.

This helped Porsche to increase its pre-tax profit by 46 per cent to 8.57 billion euros, even exceeding the company's revenues.

Analysts dubbed Porsche a "hedge fund", and even one of the most successful ones in the world, at a time when other carmakers are struggling with a sharp downturn.

"If they now increase their stake [in VW] to more than 50 per cent and cash in the remaining 25 per cent of the options, they would make hedge funds and banks pay for the whole takeover," said Arndt Ellinghorst, analyst at Credit Suisse.

Klaus Kaldemorgen, head of DWS, one of Germany's largest institutional investors, alleged that Porsche had used massive information asymmetries at the expense of other investors.

"We vehemently reject the accusation of share price manipulation," Porsche said in a statement last week.

Laughing

David Einhorn



We appreciate everyone taking the time to join us for the call this morning. As you know, Greenlight Re’s investment portfolio is managed by DME Advisors LP, an affiliate of Greenlight Capital. Greenlight Re’s third quarter investment portfolio results of -15.9% was the worst quarterly performance result in Greenlight Re’s history. We are extremely disappointed with this result.

We have been cautious about the environment since last July. A more conservative net long portfolio exposure compared to our historical positioning helped us weather the financial crisis in the last half of 2007 and the first half of 2008. By adding additional short exposure, particularly in the financial sector, which was most directly responsible for the credit crisis, we believed that we positioned the portfolio to preserve capital, should the financial markets deteriorate further. We were wrong.

Through the third quarter, Greenlight Re’s portfolio was approximately 17% net long. This is the lowest net long quarterly waiting we’ve maintained. We made the mistake of thinking that our significant short portfolio would protect a fairly fully invested long portfolio, that we estimated to be attractive and cheap. In hindsight, we should have been more conservatively positioned from a gross invested standpoint and we took measures to bring down overall exposures in September, as global financial markets deteriorated further.

In September, the US Government took an unprecedented action by banning the short selling of approximately a thousand financial firms, in order to prevent the systemic collapse of the financial system. The stocks that Greenlight Re was short withstood the center of the problem from financial industry are the same stocks that investors believed to be direct beneficiaries of government actions.

While the short selling ban failed to prevent a decline in the overall market, it did support the short term share prices to certain companies. During the quarter, our long portfolio underperformed the S&P, which declined about 9%, while our short portfolio only made a minimal gain. Our long portfolio suffered from analytical errors and a couple of names, and from the wide spread deleveraging occurring across the globe. Greenlight Re generally does not employ leverage in its investment portfolio because we want to be able to withstand systemic shock and not be put into a position to be forced to sell longs or (inaudible 00:06:23) shorts that we believe to be long term attractive investments because of temporary dislocations.

We entered our October with a small positive net exposure. Despite this positioning, our investment portfolio sustained a further loss of 0.7% during the month. The biggest contributor to the loss was our long position in Helux Energy Solutions, an energy company that was hurt by both declining oil prices and the recent hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

The second biggest loss came from a relatively small position we held in the Porsche Stock, whereby we were long Porsche stock and short in Porsche’s ownership in Volkswagon stock. As has been widely reported, both Heiman shares appreciated over 350% in two days after Porsche announced that it cornered the market in Volkswagon shares and invited short sellers to “close their positions unhurriedly and without bigger risks.” Even though this was not a large position, a move of this magnitude did create an outside loss.

I’d like to talk a bit about how Greenlight Re’s portfolio is positioned today and where we stand going forward. Our portfolio is more net long than at the beginning of October. As Greenlight Re has been a net buyer in the global equity market’s collapse in the first half of October, while our short exposure decreased at the same time. We remain long cash-flow positive companies with generally unlevered balance sheets that we believe have already priced at a severe downturn.

We continue to be short companies that we believe will be challenged given the real and present headwinds our economy faces today. Mainly we continue to be short large financial institutions with levered balance sheets, thought to be the best of brief companies that are being severely impacted by the contraction of credit. We are also short companies with optimistic assumptions that are exposed to a weakened consumer. There are plenty of opportunities to evaluate and we think that there will be an expanded opportunity set in the future, although we currently remain in a conservative posture and plan to be patiently opportunistic.

The most important ongoing concern at Greenlight Re is preservation of capital in generating positive risk adjusted returns. Although our investment portfolio hasn’t accomplished this goal recently, we believe our investment approach and discipline will allow us to generate positive risk adjusted returns to our shareholders in the long term.

On the underwriting side, we are excited about the current changes in the market. We believe that the price of risk has increased everywhere, including in the reinsurance industry. Greenlight Re was built specifically to the opportunistically right business and markets where demand for reinsurance greatly exceeds supply. We believe that given our conservative underwriting approach to date, we have the capacity and the expertise to take advantage of any dislocations arising in the market.

Now, I’d like to turn the call over to Bart to discuss Greenlight Re’s underwriting portfolio, in particular, a look forward into 2009.


ABSOLUTE RETURN AWARDS 2008 - FINAL NOMINATIONS


U.S EQUITY
Pershing Square International
Sprott Hedge Fund
Zweig-DiMenna International


GLOBAL EQUITY
Glenrock Global Partners
Goshen Global Equity
Passport I
Viking Global Equities III


EQUITY SECTOR FUNDS
BlackRock Health Sciences
FrontPoint Financial Horizons
Passport Materials
Seligman Health Spectrum


SMALL CAP EQUITY
Harvest Small Cap Partners
Rivanna Partners
Whitebox Intermarket
YA Global Investments


EMERGING MARKET EQUITY
Claritas Hedge 30
HG Green
JGP Max FIM
Polo Fund


EQUITY MARKET NEUTRAL & QUANTITATIVE STRATEGIES
GMO Tactical Opportunities
Invesco Market Neutral Cash
New Castle Market Neutral


ARBITRAGE & CONVERTIBLES
Capstone Volatility
Paulson Enhanced
Titan Global Return
Waterstone Market Neutral


EVENT DRIVEN
Duma Global Opportunity
King Street Capital
Paulson Advantage Plus


GLOBAL MACRO
Balestra Capital Partners
Clarium
FX Concepts Global Currency
Galtere International
MLM Macro – Peak Partners
QFS Global Macro


MULTISTRATEGY
Atlas Global
Carlson Capital Double Black Diamond
D.E. Shaw Composite
Investcorp Interlachen Multi-Strategy
Millennium International
Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage


MANAGED FUTURES
Crabel Fund
Graham Global
Quantitative Global
Roy G. Niederhoffer Diversified
Roy G. Niederhoffer Negative Correlation
Tudor Tensor
Welton Directional


FIXED INCOME & MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITIES
Alphadyne International
MKP Opportunity
Moore Global Fixed Income
SPM Structured Servicing Holdings


HIGH YIELD & EMERGING MARKET DEBT
Brevet Capital Special Opportunities
Lazard Emerging Income
Quantek Opportunity
Whitebox Hedged High Yield


DISTRESSED SECURITIES
Harbinger Capital Partners Offshore
Paulson Credit Opportunities
Perella Weinberg Partners Xerion Fund


NEW FUND OF THE YEAR
Brevet Capital Special Opportunities
Capstone Volatility
Global Secured Capital
JGP Max FIM
Laurus Capital Valens
Tokum Offshore


LONG TERM PERFORMANCE
Carlson Capital Double Black Diamond
Caxton Global Investment
Cerberus International
Fairfield Sentry
Kingate Global
King Street Capital
Millennium International


MANAGEMENT FIRM OF THE YEAR
BlackRock
Moore Capital
Paulson & Co.
Sprott Asset Management, Whitebox Advisors



Stock Market Superstars: Secrets of Canada's Top Stock Pickers


book by Bob Thompson

The stars

Normand Lamarche (Front Street Capital), Tim McElvaine (McElvaine Investment Management), Randall Abramson (Trapeze Asset Management), Allan Jacobs (Sprott Asset Management), John Thiessen (Vertex One Asset Management), Wayne Deans (DeansKnight Capital Management), Irwin Michael (I.A. Michael Investment Council Ltd.), Peter Puccetti (Goodwood Asset Management), Rohit Sehgal (Dynamic Funds), Tom Stanley (Resolute Funds), Frank Mersch (Front Street Capital), Eric Sprott (Sprott Asset Management)


Tim McElvaine:         http://www.mcelvaine.com/
Randall Abramson:   www.trapezeasset.com
John Thiessen:         www.vertexone.com
Wayne Deans:         www.deansknight.com
Irwin Michael:          www.abcfunds.com
Peter Puccetti:         www.goodwoodfunds.com
Rohit Sehgal:          www.dynamic.ca
Tom Stanley:          www.resolutefunds.com 
Frank Mersch:         www.frontstreetcapital.com
Normand Lamarche
Eric Sprott:              www.sprott.com  
Allan Jacobs 


It's always nice to compare them to pure long/short index:
www.casamhedge.com


PS: I think these links are incredible source. You have there performance,reports,commentary etc.

Please, tell me what you think !


First here are ETF symbols that are valid on finance.yahoo.com:
 
XIC.TO – tracks the S&P/TSX Composite Total Return Index
XIU.TO – tracks the S&P/TSX 60 Total Return Index
XMD.TO – tracks the S&P/TSX MidCap Index
XCS.TO – tracks the S&P/TSX SmallCap Index


Now here are Year To Date results of Eric Sprott funds according to his website:


Sprott Canadian 
Equity
 Fund (1997) Series A                 -41.70%

Sprott Gold and
Precious Minerals
Fund (2001)
Series A                                              -57.35%

Sprott Energy
Fund (2004)
Series A                                              -50.30%

Sprott Growth
Fund (2006)
Series A                                              -61.88%

Sprott Small
Cap Equity Fund (2007)
Series A                                               -42.02%
...................................................................................
Sprott Opportunities
Hedge Fund LP* (2004)
Series A                                          +0.85%


I like Eric Sprott and his team. So, why I'm posting it?

This question came to my mind: What would be Warren Buffett's results if he was fully invested from 1969-1974 and couldn't add to his positions?

This will sound obvious,but is not.There are 2 weapons you can use: you can be long or you can be fully in cash. If you check long only brilliant value portfolio managers (FAIRX) you will see that during downturn their portfolio don't move down so much (people love great businesses) and during uptrend their portfolios move same as index,but less than growth high flyers,at the end their results are much better than that of index.

To show you how this advantage works imagine that one day Eric Sprott funds will come back to black (roughly 100% up) and then they will start moving again.The people that invested in hedge fund will be up 100% already !!! Recently Buffett announced he was fully in cash and now started moving to stocks.It means he is using his cash weapon quite effectively. Especially when indexes are coming to their historic low P/E=9 from their historic high P/E=30. 

I have last question: if indexes drop another 20% will investors in long only funds recover sooner than in 12 years (1.11^12=3.4)?  

Only 10 rounds remain !


I always knew it, Rex. 

Every year you buy 10% of all shares.

The lower is the price of shares, the better. ( for the same amount you buy more shares). So what you need,actually what you wish and pray for is market crash.If this happens you will start buying shares like crazy,spreading bad news and buying,buying and buying!

You pray for depression! Anything that would allow you to buy more. The lower it falls the faster you will buy it back !
Your biggest enemy is the price going up and stupid shareholders trying to push you into nonsense aquisitions.

Before they realise it's there last 10M shares.

After 10 years you and your management colleagues own 60%,Rockefeller family owns 10% of all shares and then you take it private! Your shares are deposit and the rest you can borrow.

You won! Checkmate!

I hope you will do it Rex. I will have a free ride on your tail,mate !  

PS: Rex Tillerson is CEO of Exxon Mobile, Rockefeller family owns 332 000 shares of XOM and XOM buys 500M of its shares every year.       
   

The 11% Solution


By ADAM BARTH, Barron's, JULY 11, 2005 

The Dow has averaged an 11% return on equity over nearly 75 years. Everything else – earnings included; is just noise.

Examine the Dow's annual return on equity for each 20-year period since 1920 (that is, 1920 through 1939, 1921 through 1940, and so on): Average earnings as a function of book value barely varies in the slightest, and has remained basically immune to inflation, wars, massive changes in the tax code or any other external factor.

For the 34 consecutive 20-year stretches between 1934-1953 and 1967-1986, the return fell in an incredibly narrow range of 10.5% to 11.6% -- or an average of around 11%. Furthermore, the Dow's book-value growth rate has remained near its 4.8% historical average from 1920 to 2003 for every 20-year period on record.

Finding the Dow's normalized earnings in any given year is as simple as multiplying 11% by the Dow's book value at the time. These earnings will grow at a little under 5% per year -- the Dow's steady and predictable 20-year book-value expansion rate.

While earnings gyrate from year to year, the Dow's earnings over the coming 20 years or any 20 years is virtually preordained.

The 11% solution demonstrates why this is so. Of the Dow's 11% ROE, 5% has consistently been retained -- thus allowing the Dow's 5% earnings-growth rate. The remaining 6% has been free cash flow available for distribution to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. As such, the Dow is a perpetuity that can be easily valued by dividing its current free cash flow (6% of current book value) by its expected rate of return minus its long-term growth rate (9% minus 5%).

With the Dow's current book value a little under 3000, its normalized free cash flow is roughly 180. Dividing 180 by an expected return of 9% minus free cash flow growth of 5% (.09 - .05) yields a valuation for the Dow of 4500, less than half of its current market valuation. To justify a Dow value of 10,500, one has to lower the future expected investment return for the Dow to 6.7%.

From 1920 to 2003, Moody's Aaa corporate-bond yield averaged 5.9%. Recently, Barron's Best Grade Index has shown a current yield of 5.24% for top-grade corporate bonds. Assuming a forward rate of return of 6.7% for the Dow would imply an equity-risk premium of just 0.8% to 1.5%.

A normalized 20 P/E ratio for the Dow would imply a normalized 18% return on equity (5% earnings yield x 3.6 book value multiple = 18%). While the Dow averaged an 18% return on equity over the prior decade, assuming a lasting return on equity anywhere near this figure is absurd, given the historical record.

Putting history aside, basic logic alone dictates that a sustained 18% ROE is impossible. A return of this magnitude would mean that American business as a whole is capable of lasting, monopoly-type profits. The truth is the exact opposite: Big Business' profit growth has consistently trailed broad economic expansion, with nominal GDP growth increasing at a 7% rate and Dow profit growth lagging behind, at near 5%, for nearly every 20-year period on record.



 

Another great short: Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK)


Company went almost bankrupt in 1999 and IMHO will go bankrupt again.

I have a great receipt how to make money: take loads of debt,leverage the company pump it went it goes up and dump it went things look bad.Who lose?

Shareholders and big time! Who earns management !

Last week Aubrey K. McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK), disclosed that he was forced to sell almost his entire holdings of company stock due to a margin call from lenders. The stock sale took three days to complete.  "These involuntary and unexpected sales were precipitated by the extraordinary circumstances of the worldwide financial crisis," McClendon said in a company press release. "In no way do these sales reflect my view of the company's financial position or my view of Chesapeake’s future performance potential
Laughing

So,so funny! I trust him completely CEO got margin call on shares of his own company and guess what sold it all !
Laughing

Now comes the best part: company has 14,000,000,000 debt and no cash ! Fixed cost stayed the same and price of natural gas went (UNG) went from 63 to 30 in 3 months.

If you want to know what happened to another natural gas star check CMZ they are down 90%!

Price is now 20.47!
XML feed