I’m very happy to introduce the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. The Mad Hedge Fund Trader is not all that mad (from what I can tell). He’s beenon a spectacular journey throughlife, and is now returning to the fun and excitement of actively managing a hedge fund. Here’s MadHedge’s diary entry from yesterday. Stay tuned for more. – Ilene
1) The one absolute, take it to the bank, bet the ranch fact you can count on right now is that there is no value in the stock market. We are at a lofty 20 X earnings, and historically, when the market sported such a rich valuation, a 7% drop ensued in the following year. But what is history, but the ravings of an angry, frustrated old trader? Maybe having seen the best bargains in a century only six months ago, I’m spoiled. I have always been a tightwad. I must be the only guy around who flies his own private plane to garage sales for the sheer love of the deal (where else can one find Dean Martin records in decent playable condition for 25 cents each?). I just reviewed all of the stocks and sectors I liked at the beginning of the year, and a more picked over field you never saw. (Click here for my New Year list.)
The list of big winners is long: FCX, FXI, BYDFF, BIDU, X, gold, silver, copper, crude, oil services, junk bonds (JNK), (HYG), emerging markets (EEM), BRIC’s, Korea (EWY), with shorts in long dated Treasuries (TBT), volatility (VIX), and the dollar (UDN), (ULE). Even tax exempt munis have been on a tear. Many of my core positions are up over 400%. When everything in your portfolio has done so well, it’s time to go hide. The problem is that my more loyal, even fanatical followers have taken out paid subscriptions for up to two years, so I must keep dancing. Hence, the recent increase in book reviews, political pieces, or just outright frivolous stories. What you do here is deep research and list building, so when the window opens you can jump…
We all know the foot race that is going on in the solar industry – companies are trying to achieve the lowest per megawatt cost for an installed system. Until the next leapfrogging technology comes along, the most important factor to drive down cost is scale*. Here is where the US solar companies will have serious problems competing against the Chinese solar companies because the US solar companies lack cheap, indiscriminate access to capital like their Chinese cohorts.
Let’s take First Solar (FSLR) for example. FSLR is funded by private money. Even though the US government is offering tax incentives for installing solar projects, they are not however involved in the funding of the company in any way. Why would they? FSLR has one plant in the US, the rest of the plants are mostly in "low cost locations" – ie. Malaysia. Have you ever heard of the "United Solar Workers"? I would guess a few hundred out of the 3,500 FSLR employees are Americans. My point is… if they closed shop tomorrow, there will be plenty of companies to fill the supply void. I wonder if the Malaysian government has the capacity or the desire to step up and lend.
The Chinese solar manufacturers are a different story. Remember, the number one goal of the Chinese government is to maintain social stability. Suntech Power (STP) employs close to 10k employees by itself, and these are "high quality" jobs that are looked upon favorably by the Chinese Government. If I include all of STP’s peers in China, their upstream suppliers such as LDK Solar (LDK) and the downstream system installers, I would guess the Chinese solar industry employs probably a few hundred thousand people throughout the value chain.
Now let’s look at the banking relationships. Many of these loans are unsecured and covenant lite and represent roughly on average 25% of total capital. Top 3 Chinese solar related company by market capitalization and their respective government backers are:
Suntech Power (STP) : China Construction Bank, Bank of Communication.
Yingli Green Energy (YGE) : Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank
LDK Solar (LDK) : China Construction Bank, China Development Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of
Here’s an interesting article by Susan Blackmore. While there are parts of Susan’s article I might disagree with, the general idea opens up a whole new set of memes, for me – the third replicators. So, the first replicators are our genes. The second replicators are memes – ideas, the basis of cultural evolution. Using the machinery of the second replicators (human minds), we have have built the third replicators.
WE HUMANS have let loose something extraordinary on our planet – a third replicator – the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.
What do I mean by "third replicator"? …
About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next…
Memes are a new kind of information – behaviours rather than DNA – copied by a new kind of machinery – brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages – copying, varying and selection – are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?
There is a new kind of information: electronically processed binary information rather than memes. There is also a new kind of copying machinery: computers and servers rather than brains. But are all three critical stages carried out by that machinery?
Machines now copy information to other machines without human intervention…
Here’s an interesting discussion on the medical industry’s reluctance to implement technological advances that could improve patient care and decrease costs. Courtesy of Andy Kessler.
The federal government is about to spend big on health-care IT. Too bad the medical industry has a vested interest in inefficiency.
Technology is once again being touted as a cure-all, this time for what ails the American health-care industry. The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan includes $19 billion for health-care IT spending that provides incentives for doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic health records. Starting in 2011, stimulus funds will provide additional Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for health-care providers using such systems.
These federal funding programs assume that the critical hurdle to widespread adoption of electronic medical records is cost. Indeed, hospitals surveyed in a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported cost as the major barrier. Yet compared with other businesses, the health-care industry has been unmoved by the logic of lowering costs to increase profits. The truth is that these folks could have digitized the whole industry ages ago. The technology has been around for a long time: Wall Street began phasing out physical stock certificates over 35 years ago. Even the cash-strapped airline industry has gone ticketless, removing huge labor and overhead costs. These industries started using electronic records because they believed it would save money. The health-care industry simply has not followed suit.
The reason lies neither with cost nor with inadequate technology. Rather, the health-care industry’s reluctance to digitize its records is rooted in a desire to keep medicine’s lucrative business model hidden. Dangling $19 billion in front of a $2.4 trillion industry is not nearly enough to get it to reveal the financial secrets that electronic health records are likely to uncover--and upon which its huge profits depend. In those medical records lie the ugly truth about the business of medicine: sickness is profitable. The greater the number of treatments, procedures, and hospital stays, the larger the profit. There is little incentive for doctors and hospitals to identify or reduce wasteful spending in medicine.
The amount of unnecessary spending is huge. In a project that analyzed 4,000 hospitals, the Dartmouth College Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice estimated that eliminating 30 percent of
Here’s the REAL DEAL NO BS Situation with Europe (Warning What Follows is EXTREMELY BAD).
The media is rife with misrepresentations and analysis of the EU. Here’s the real deal.
The ECB is tapped out. Having provided over €1 trillion in funding via LTRO 1 and LTRO 2, taking on over €700 billion in PIIGS debt putting its own solvency at risk, it simply cannot launch another LTRO scheme for th...
"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident...And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way."
~ Charles Ferguson, Inside Job
"I know that my retirement will make no difference in its [my newspaper's] ca...
The S&P 500 got off to weak start and, after retracing a modest morning rally, spent most of the day in the shallow red with an intraday low of 0.63%. But in the last seven minutes of trading, the index recovered enough to a make a small gain of 0.14%. This is the fourth advance, the first was Monday's 1.60 surge, but the last three have ranged from 0.05% to 0.17% with today's close near the high of the miserly three-day series.
The index is now up 5.02% for 2012, which is 6.93% off the interim closing high.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 95.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.6% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
TIF - Tiffany & Co., Inc. – A surprise earnings miss and a reduced full-year profit and sales forecast from luxury jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co., took some of the luster out of its shares today, with the stock trading down 8.5% at $56.55 as of 11:50 a.m. in New York. Options activity on Tiffany this morning suggests mixed sentiment on the st...
RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Washington State Attorney General over discontinued e-commerce practices. In accordance with the settlement agreement, RealNetworks has committed to:
Discontinuing the use of pre-checked boxes for purchases of RealNetworks subscription products; Spelling out more clearly the material terms of RealNetworks product offerings; Offering online cancellation of subscription offerings; Enhancing RealNetworks customer support guidelines regarding cancellation. Statement from Thomas Nielsen, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
"About two years ago, the Washington State Attorney General's Office contacted us regarding concerns they had with some of our e-commerce practices.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
First we'll go to the technicals. Back in mid April I had opined a 'bear flag' formation was being created. [Apr 17, 2012: Potential Bear Flag Forming] But the market being the difficult beast it is, head faked everyone and rather than a break down from said flag it first went UP and nearly touched yearly highs. This caused everyone to think the bear flag had failed…. only to lead to a horrid May in the market. Generally a bear flag will resolve relatively quickly but the longer...
Despite the fact that U.S. equities are well-positioned and well-supported to go up, once again it is the headlines out of Europe—especially Greece—that are scaring off investors. Some are saying that it is now likely (and even desirable) that Greece will default on all its sovereign debt, withdraw from the euro, and severely devalue its domestic currency (Drachma?). This will allow them to operate a balanced budget while pumping cash into growth initiatives, rather than suffer the ravages of Germany-mandated austerity.
Some say, so what? Greece makes up only about 2% of the Eurozone’s overall economy. Nevertheless, you might say that t...
Markets died and then rallied to flat again as European leaders “prepared contingencies” for a possible Grexit
Markets died hard and fast earlier today as major indexes registered as much as 1.5% of losses after news that Euro zone officials were unofficially “preparing contingencies” for a Greek exit from the Euro. Unofficial statements were not enough to keep markets down however, as major indexes rallied back to flat levels by the end of the day.
So the world continues to wait on Europe, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEACA:SPY) gained .05%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA:...
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
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NEW: Ilene is available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Here is this week's test version of the latest newsletter. We apologize for some formatting issues that need to be worked out. Please tell us what you think.
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
In this article, please revisit an article written two years ago titled, "The Calm Before the Storm." This article focused on the patent cliff that was looming in the pharmaceutical industry, that was later picked up by the New York Times and several other bloggers! Subsequent articles were written about big pharma company's revenue streams, and the pros and cons of of their later stage pipelines. Other articles have also attempted to identify smaller biotechs with the potential to reap big reward...
My last weekend update is dated from January 30 so after a long hiatus, here is an update of our virtual portfolio. Since the last update, we have closed the AA Money portfolio due to a lack of enthusiasm (and activity) and I have stopped tracking the FAS strangle as the low VIX makes it hard to get rewarded for the risk! But we have added a small $5KP virtual portfolio which does not use any margin.
FAS Money
We have had to recover from a big move up by FAS and a low VIX which keeps option prices low. But the portfolio has gaine about 10% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $5499.00
IWM Money
Not a lot of activity in this portfolio where the main focus is on the large IWM BCS. But the portfolio has grown over 20% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $1998.00
$5KP Portfolio
This is the virtual portfolio that replaced the AA Money portfolio. It does not use margin and we will keep holdings under $5K.
AAPL $50K P...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(