For your reading pleasure–the third quarter letter from David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital. David is an excellent value-focused, long-short hedge fund manager and his assets have grown quickly due to his stock selection success. That growth has also led David to focus more on macro events as opposed to bottom-up stock picking. A large asset base shrinks the number of opportunities that good, bottom-up stock pickers can exploit.
The third quarter… Continue reading
Jeremy Grantham of GMO is an exceptional big thinker on markets. I think bottom-up investing makes the most sense, but Grantham always makes us think when he speaks about macro events. I had the good fortune of sitting in the audience for his speech at the CFA Institute Annual Conference in Boston this year. He was filling in for a speaker who cancelled late; it was an upgrade.… Continue reading
Without getting too political, I suspect that too few understand that free markets cure more ills than even the best progressive policies initiated or funded by government. For your reading pleasure:
In the last half of the 19th
MAKO Surgical Corporation (NASD: MAKO) is a maker of robotic surgical equipment and minimally invasive orthopedic implants for knee procedures. It was incorporated in 2004, had its initial public offering in 2008, and currently has a $369 million market capitalization.
MAKO’s robotic equipment is in competition with Intuitive Surgical’s (NASD: ISRG) da Vinci system. ISRG has a $10.8 billion market capitalization and a large head start… Continue reading
I do not always agree with Jason Zweig’s recommendations, but we definitely share a similar investing philosophy, and I do agree with him often. The usual reason that I disagree with Jason is that he is more resigned than I am to the idea that individual investors have no chance to earn outstanding risk-adjusted investment returns. He is in the Bogle camp and he most often recommends that… Continue reading
Please do not fall for the kind of manipulation examined in the attached Wall Street Journal article. There are only a handful of investment credentials that add value and even fewer that relate directly to the knowledge and experience required in portfolio management.
The CFA designation is one of the most difficult designations to earn and relates directly to portfolio management. And, there is a culture of… Continue reading
The September/October 2010 edition of the Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ) includes a transcript of an interview with Seth Klarman, President and Portfolio Manager of The Baupost Group. The moderator was the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig and the title of the presentation is “Opportunities for Patient Investors.” Klarman is a leading figure in investing, not just value investing.
The interview took place on the main stage… Continue reading
Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, an outstanding long-short value investor, presented at the Value Investing Congress today and detailed why St. Joe may be going to zero.
Greenlight is one of a handful of successful investment management firms that have the following business-model characteristics in common:
Sterne Agee initiated coverage of Rubicon Technology (NASD: RBCN) with a Sell rating today and agreed with my thesis. If you recall, I inverted in my analysis to arrive at the growth rate necessary to bring RBCN’s price-to-fundamentals in line with larger, more-established chip makers. I wrote that because of competition, RBCN could not maintain the growth rate and margins that justified its then-current stock price.
Sterne Agee… Continue reading
Mars Hill Partners (MHP) is an investment adviser specializing in long-short portfolio construction. MHP recently launched an ETF based on its global relative value strategies, which are top-down, macro strategies and much different from the bottom-up, value strategies used the Portfolio Manager.
In this Morningstar video interview, Jason Huntley, Portfolio Manager at MHP, tells us how long-short portfolio construction, in his experience, delivers superior returns and lower risk.… Continue reading
