May 5, 2015 | Corporate Management, Executive Compensation, Regulation
On April 29, 2015 the SEC released a Fact Sheet regarding “rules that would provide greater transparency and better inform shareholders.” http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-78.html. The proposed rules would require companies to disclose executive pay and stock...
May 1, 2015 | Corporate Management, Economics, Investment Idea, Investment Process, Portfolio Management
Tomorrow, Saturday May 2nd, 2015, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger will hold court over a crowd of 40k+. As they do every year, they will spend several hours answering questions about the current and future workings of Berkshire Hathaway. Three journalists and three...
Aug 14, 2014 | Investment Idea
While the overall economy’s slow growth presents an investment headwind, there are still opportunities. Of course, sales growth is not a prerequisite for investment success. Plenty of people have gotten rich buying depleting assets like oil wells. Price paid is...
Feb 3, 2014 | Behavioral Finance, Economics, Efficent-Market Hypothesis, Macro Investing, Portfolio Management
(This article first appeared on Seeking Alpha on Jan 31, 2014.) For the past few months, cautious investors, perma-bears, or reasonable skeptics (depending on your point of view) have emphasized the rise of margin debt balances to historic highs as one more sign that...
Jan 17, 2014 | Investment Idea
(This was originally published on Seeking Alpha on Jan 13, 2014.) At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced the launch of WWE Network. Covering the event, The Wall Street Journal wrote, “World Wrestling...
May 11, 2012 | Corporate Management, Valuation
1. Black box finance. In our latest letter, we described how financials led the market for the first quarter and yet, we reminded clients that we don’t own any depository financials. We wrote: “As we hinted in our first page introduction, we are not particularly...
Mar 27, 2012 | Portfolio Management, Valuation
At a current price in the mid $38s, we think Excelon Corporation (EXC) provides investors a steadily growing 5.4% dividend yield with a “free call option” on rising power prices. With the just completed acquisition of Constellation Energy, EXC became the largest power...
Nov 23, 2011 | Portfolio Management
November 23, 2011 Dear Client, We recently changed your account’s core money market (i.e. “cash”) fund to a US Treasury money market (symbol FDUXX).[1] Our reason for doing so is rooted in safety and prudence but also in the belief that when we do take risk, we must...
Aug 8, 2011 | Inflation/Deflation, Investment Process, Portfolio Management, Valuation
The S&P 500 peaked this year on May 2nd at 1371 (intraday). The current selloff began on July 7th just slightly lower at 1356 (again, intraday). From the close on July 7th through today’s close (August 8th), the S&P 500 (as measured by the SPDR S&P...
