(
IHMJ2004): I haven't been following what appears to be your multi-year spat with others over AAPL et al, but it seems to me that you might be trying to pidgeon hole
every company / stock as
good / bad fundamentally right / wrong through the
very narrow prism of only Warren Buffet's wide economic moat style of investing (projecting / educated guess-timating a company's ability to compound earnings at high rate over very extended periods of time into future). You refer to
Prem Watscha as the Canadian Warren Buffett and how he is investing in RIMM, but didn't Warren Buffet (even during those lofty pre- dot-com bubble bursting times) say that he doesn't invest in technology companies because he doesn't understand them (I would assume it is not that he can't digest their financial statements or fundamentals, but more that
truly unforeseeable seismic shifts and bouts of creative destruction are inherent to the technology sector, much more so than those wide moat type of boring staid industries where he built his tremendous long-term compound interest rates of returns? I haven't read a book about Warren Buffet's investing style in 10 years and probably forget everything I read in that book anyways (The Warren Buffet Way, I think), but if Warren Buffet had to chose between
Coca-Cola stock at the depths of the 1973 bear market (this is unresearched analogy off top of my head and may be totally factually incorrect), and
Apple at the absolute nadir of the stock market post Lehman crash in 2008, WITH the stipulation that you can't sell for at least 20 or 30 years into future, which do you think he might choose? He presumably doesn't have a Delorean where he can jump to the future, get WSJ from 20 or 30 years into the future, come back, and bet the ranch on that info, so he ultimately has to make an educated guess, and pay heed to unknown unknowns with appropriate overall portfolio diversification. Also, I offer this fig leaf of a Wall Street analyst who is also bearish on AAPL / bullish on RIMM (
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000070235) that this is not meant to be a personal attack, but observation from someone who doesn't trade or invest in individual stocks (diversified portfolio of mutual funds with a time horizon measured in decades, not years). Is Apple's
wide economic moat (the Apple ecosystem) ultimately dependent upon Tim Cook's ability to glean or create what the masses (will think) they want or must have in future and maintain the Steve Jobs
Reality Distortion Field, so to speak. You could ultimately end up being right, but investors with a different investing strategy than your multi-decade Buffet type time horizon could possibly get awfully rich while you wait to get to be proven right (e. g. post-Jobs Apple ends up ultimately being another obsolete company that wasn't able to recognize and adapt to slow but seismic changes in their respective industries (e. g. Kodak or Xerox?)
Some other random video clips I have stumbled across for others to develop their own global macro view to help drive their own trading and investing strategies:
Portugal: no specific video clips, but two talking head comments 1) Amelia Bordreau on Fast Money tonight said that Portugal has bailout funds through end of year, so though there may be angst, risk of immediate hard default may not be there as there is in Greece in March. CNBC commentator Sri out of Singapore said there is additional $9 billion of Portugal debt that comes due in September. BBC News article graph I saw long ago said that Spain lent a lot to Portugal, so in some essence their fates are tied to some extent, but probably not to the extent of Italy and France (John Mauldin's recent article over at Seeking Alpha said that French banks hold 45% of Italian debt. Perhaps sheds some light on CNBC's David Faber and Cramer's comments last year, pre- coordinated global central bank 1% dollar swap lifelines, that perhap the likes of BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, or Societe Generale might have been feared to be on the ropes back then?
Greece: impression I get from talking heads on tv that default / no default credit event / no credit event perhaps even Greece leaving / someone leaving Euro currency but not common market (there is apparently no mechanism in Maastricht Treaty to leave EU Project voluntarily or be forced out) is already priced in, but ramifications for general bond market of forcing bond holders of a given class to take losses while not imposing similar losses to other bond holders in similar position on risk pyramid of debt structure (coarse layman's take based upon scanning through Zerohedge article on bond subordination 101 article
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/subor...vereign-bond-markets-post-greek-default-world and really not understanding what I am reading). And also comments I think from Michelle Cabrusso-Cabrerra on CNBC last week about possibility of partial CDS payout (she was making point about bondholders saying that ECB getting Greek bonds at a discount, and if they don't default and hold to maturity, they will actually make a profit, while imposing arguably heavy-handed losses on PSI. But ECB closing gap in bailout funds might not optically go over too well with voting masses (another bailout), and I guess depending upon who wrote CDS and who currently holds those CDS which actually pay out, would it be a way for ECB to take some losses (lost profits in future) so optics are not of another bailout?
China and the taming of cyclical vs. secular inflation: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000069706
Where is the Rocket Fuel for a new cyclical bull going to come from?:
- Karen Finerman comment on CNBC Fast Money a week or two ago about looking at cash levels of value funds or something like that
- Bob Doll of Blackrock and The Complacent Pause (
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000068952) comparing these comments to those previous appearances I have stumbled across since last fall, he sounds short-term tactical less bullish (decreased beta, slightly more defensive by adding more health care), but slightly more bullish long-term (2.5% real gdp growth vs. previous 2% gdp growth projections, new mention on CNBC of commodities / energy (does this mean he thinks Bernanke is going to destroy dollar and that there might possibly be some global growth going forward?)
- perhaps we are now in a temporary zero sum game where broad averages can not advance significantly because those willing to play in equities have to sell something to buy something else. We need that money that should naturally be in equities, but is so scarred post-Lehman that it is still hiding out in bonds or cash to be forced into stocks (Ben Bernanke and financial repression) or for some as of yet unforseen catalyst to push up broad indices sufficiently that greed overcomes fear and the hot dumb money naturally in equities returns there
- technicals:
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000070255 and previous resistance now becoming support? (
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/stocks/commentary/1250-1280-s-p-may-be-a-wall-1578825.html) guess implied is that definitive break below 1250 might not be good (are we back in 1100 - 1250 trading range of end of last year, and is there increasing tail risk of financial accident or real Eurozone breakup putting those downside technical targets of say 950 - 1000 coarsely speaking back into play, if we were to convincing break back down through 1100?)
- Cramer's pretty good take on where we may stand in markets right now:
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000070152
European Key-Stone Cops?
- Simon Hobbs made this quick observation late in day on CNBC that a
fiscal compact had been agreed to by 25 of 27 EU members (
edit:
Britain and
Czech Republic objected -
http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2011/10/anomie-watch-efsf-and-bailout.html ) and that
permanent ESM mechanism had also been formally agreed to. Devil is obviously in details, but last year wasn't best case scenario hope for stop-gap bilateral fiscal compact type agreements between individual countries. Did LTRO buy them enough time to actually put real treaty changes on table, and who are holdouts (is it Britain because of financial transaction tax on London financial district and some other country, or is it Greece and Portgual because they are going to be slowly booted out of Euro?). London Banker blog had previous comment about how much of an afterthought temporary EFSF (mighty firewall?
) was at conception (apparently it is just an office in Brussels, Belgium with about 20 office staff), vs. permanent ESM mechanism where I read somewhere there is capacity in future to raise it's ultimate bailout capabilities in future if political will (Germany?) is ultimately there.
- seems like markets last year were just hoping Merkel et. al. would just capitulate and let ECB print massive amounts of money (quantitative easing) and let everyone default in gentleman's way (inflation and currency devaluation), while Merkel may actually trying to seize crisis as an opportunity to ultimately deal with problem in an ultimately constructive manner. (I have read comments while web surfing that Germans are savers and renters, not home owners, don't know if they have a current account surplus because of exports, and they don't seem to have their currency markets cornered like Japan's central bank, but does seem like they could try and ride out storm like Japan (5 years of harsh austerity in Germany's case) and emerge stronger against Asian competitors years down the road (
http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2011/9/21/how-long-can-japan-play-the-endgame.html and
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2008/07/deflation-and-bank-bailouts-in-japan.html )
(how's that for random, stream of consciousness thought!)
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