“Your life is made of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.” Twice a year a client of mine leaves the comforts of home to patrol 26,000 sq. miles in Southeastern Utah for the Department of Interior. He spends two weeks in the Spring and two months in the Fall, September and October. I spoke with him the other day, the first day back from his Spring trip. I asked him what he does out there. He said he is either out on his own for 3-5 days patrolling, or working from the base station going out on day jobs to fix things, do field study, or work on his research at the base … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2014
This is Criminal
Reuters is reporting that former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is holding $250,000 speaking “dinners” where he gives hedge fund managers (and others willing to pay), the inside track on the Fed’s plan for interest rates. It was only a couple of months ago that Bernanke was the Chairman of the world’s most powerful central bank. He undoubtedly has some insight on the Fed’s future plans and thinking on interest rates that hasn’t yet been shared with the public. How can the regulators allow this? If Bernanke was a recently retired CEO he would have been locked up months ago for passing insider … [Read more...]
What Goes Around…
How about these numbers reported last week in The WSJ: Young technology-company stocks fell out of favor in the blink of an eye. But their valuations remain sky-high and many investors say they have a lot more room to decline before bouncing back. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. has tumbled 72% from its peak March 5, the day the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index hit a 14-year high. Meanwhile, advertising-technology firm Rocket Fuel Inc. is down 61%, software firm Splunk Inc.is off 50%, microblogging service Twitter Inc. is down 41% and electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc.is off 28%. The … [Read more...]
Feldstein Dismantles Piketty’s Socialist Tome
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal Martin Feldstein elegantly dismantles Thomas Piketty’s Das Kapital for the 21st century. Piketty is a French economist whose book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has made the NY Times best seller list. In it, Piketty highlights growing income inequality in America and offers as a solution, confiscatory taxes. Piketty has long advocated for an 80% marginal tax rate and a tax on wealth. Feldstein calls out Piketty for “a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.” Mr. Piketty's … [Read more...]
Save Money. Live Better
Wal-Mart’s slogan is “Save Money. Live Better.” Just don’t do your banking there. Check-out this WSJ analysis: On a rainy morning in April, Anna Proctor entered a Wal-Mart Supercenter near some of this city's poorest areas to get $300 for urgent car repairs—money she didn't have. Inside, she joined a line at a Woodforest National Bank branch and intentionally overdrew her account. When her paycheck was deposited 12 days later, she said, the bank would take the borrowed sum plus a $30 fee. "It's cheaper than a payday loan," said Ms. Proctor, a 35-year-old customer-service worker. If her … [Read more...]
Turn $100 into $1 Million
More reasons to like dividends. In his January issue of Intelligence Report, Dick Young writes: I recommend dividend payers to you not because of some idealized view of history, but because the data proves that dividends win over time. Below is a chart of the data from the French data library, possibly the most comprehensive data library of American stock market returns in existence. You’ll see in the chart that the stock market is broken down into four groups based on their yields…As you can see in the chart, the Hi 30 performs the best by far, breaking $1 million on an investment of $100 … [Read more...]
All Hail the Dividend
Historically dividends make-up about 2/3rds of stock returns. The S&P 500 has a miniscule dividend yield of 1.95%. That’s not saying much for future stock returns. That’s why we continue to pound the pavement for yields twice that. More on dividends in The WSJ: Ultimately, dividends drive long-term shareholder performance. From 1970 to 2012, the dividend yield accounted for about two-thirds of real stock-market returns in major markets, Credit Suisse notes. Sometimes the market appears to forget that in its enthusiasm for the latest fad offering the prospect of large price … [Read more...]
His $3.5 Billion Haul
Hedge fund managers aren't getting the job done–losing money for investors in back-to-back months for the first time in two years. Last year when the S&P 500 was up over 30%, the average hedge fund made only 9.5%. But don't worry, the hedge fund managers are just fine. The billions of dollars they've pocketed in fees won't have them dining on canned tuna. Let’s not forget that investors pay hedge fund managers a derivative of "2 and 20"–2% on your assets under management and 20% on your profits. That’s 20% on profits that were off by more than 20% relative to the S&P 500. To add insult … [Read more...]
Wall Street Research or Paid Advertising?
Most seasoned investors have long suspected that Wall Street research is compromised. Wall Street is not in the research business. Wall Street’s big banks are in the business of distributing securities. The “research” departments at banks are best viewed as branches of their marketing departments. Sell recommendations are rare from the big brokerage houses because they are bad for business. Corporations don’t hire banks to issue stock or bonds if the bank has a sell rating on the company’s shares. If you are still relying on Wall Street’s buy and sell recommendations to manage your … [Read more...]
Sell in May
It’s been a great year for dividend paying stocks. Not so much for emerging markets. It would be a shame to sell dividend payers in May to miss a Summer of payments. Here’s a snapshot of utilities and emerging markets YTD. What’s not to like? … [Read more...]