The Sleazy Side Of Wall Street: I Interview A Stock Promoter
In this business, you’re only as good as your last deal. There are people that might give you some ticker symbol on a deal they did last year. But they can burn their list very quickly. A list that was hot in September might mean absolutely nothing in December. In fact, if you were to … Read more
BVSN: Massive Short Squeeze
If this were optionable, I would be selling calls here. This is another successful stock promotion by Jonathan Lebed. This week I should be getting a “hot” list from a stock promoter.
Tempurpedic Cannot Possibly Be Worth Its Current Price
I think I did an OK job of preparing for the January effect, as we had no sizable shorts going into the new year. However, there are two investments that have cost more than 300 basis points of performance. One of them is Tempurpedic (TPX). Bulls are downplaying the competitive pressure from Serta’s iComfort line … Read more
Mattress Firm Should Provide More Details To Investors
I hold a short position in Mattress Firm (ticker: MFRM) because it offers multiple ways to win: 1. The business of selling mattresses is a time bomb for everyone except IKEA and Nebraska Furniture Mart. Virtually every mattress retailer has been through some form of reorganization or outright bankruptcy. After 25 years of operation, Mattress … Read more
Healthcare Stocks are “Defensive”? Cheap? I Think the Paradigm is Guaranteed to Change. How Do We Time This?
Skim over these articles: http://seekingalpha.com/article/313850-20-healthcare-stocks-with-strong-sources-of-profitability?source=yahoo http://seekingalpha.com/article/310010-protect-your-portfolio-with-these-15-defensive-healthcare-stocks?source=yahoo What’s the problem with their logic? Not only are they are driving while looking out the rear-view mirror, but there’s also a dagger mounted on the steering wheel, pointing at their faces. How do we settle on which healthcare companies to add in our portfolio? Below are the filters … Read more
Jim Chanos: You can’t have meaningful deficit reduction without cutting healthcare spending and liabilities; I will begin investigating SEM, HLS, and KND shortly
With Medicare reimbursement being cut, healthcare providers are going to have much lower revenue going forward. They have to adjust their costs to survive. In 1999 and 2000 when Medicare reimbursement was suddenly cut, several companies went bankrupt. I want to take a look at companies that are highly levered. There’s going to be a … Read more
It’s Options Expiration Day. How Did I Do This Month? How Am I Doing This Year?
Most money managers calculate their performance at the end of a month or the end of a quarter or the end of a year. Since I have been trading options so much, I think a good time to calculate my performance is every options expiration day. This is always an exciting day for me because … Read more
Olympus hid losses. There’s more than one cockroach in Japan. I think the entire country is beyond the point of no return. Shorting Japanese life insurers.
In my favorite episode of The Simpsons, the family goes on vacation in Japan. Homer, being the usual simpleton, does not want to eat at a traditional Japanese restaurant, instead preferring to eat at America Town–a place serving American food and staffed by waiters who pretend to be American. Here is a picture: I love … Read more
When should you listen to a short seller? David Einhorn is 4-1 with his short sale calls; I have a lot of respect for that kind of track record; Respect is always earned
“When should you listen to a short seller? If you go on a message board and there’s some anonymous guy saying that this company is garbage, that’s not good enough information. But if someone gets up in front of a thousand people and makes a 20-minute presentation, you should pay attention to that. Then if … Read more
DRAFT: Thanks To Nuance’s Technology, I’ll Never Again Have To Write Down Anything; It’s So Good The CFO Will Never Have To Write Down Goodwill!
THIS IS A DRAFT. I’ll probably finish this in a few weeks. Not sure whether I have Asperger’s Syndrome, but I sure have been reading a lot of dry documents lately. Summary One funny thing I realized about NUAN is that the stock has had a phenomenal year (up 50%), yet it is back to … Read more
The Monday after options expiration… FUN, FUN, FUN!
Today was a marvelous day. I had a lot of short options expire on Friday (all worthless except my CHK puts) and so my buying power shot up to 100% of the portfolio. Right in time for today’s 2.5% drop in the indexes. And LNKD, ACTV, QIHU and AMZN dropped like rocks. I had to … Read more
Faded the gap ups in LNG and ACTV today.
Well short sellers have more to look forward to on November 21 than LNKD’s lockup expiration. ACTV has the same catalyst that day. Should be fun to watch this overpriced stock collapse.
Angie’s List is going public. Have I been transported back to 1999? Quick, sell the house and go all in IPET (Pets.com)! Let’s put money on the Yankees winning the World Series!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Angie-List-prepares-66-4-apf-577701457.html?x=0&l=1 This article should induce all intelligent readers to shake their heads. Add another ticker to your list of questionable business models going public. Angie’s List must be the most ludicrous of them all. “Unlike review sites such as Yelp.com, Angie’s List charges consumer-users a monthly fee, betting that people will want to pay for … Read more
Amazon to the SEC: Kindle revenues “not material” in 2010. Amazon deliberately and disingenuously reported Kindle sales growth. Will they do it again? I still don’t understand why any smartphone owner would buy the Fire.
“We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle–the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189.” -Jeff Bezos, 2010 Read that sentence a few times over. “We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle–the growth rate of Kindle device … Read more
Amazon: Poor earnings quality, nonexistent business strategy, Kindle Fire hyped beyond rationality. Why is the sell-side so bullish?
On the last conference call, an analyst asked this very common-sense question: “I guess the implied margin for Q4 is effectively zero at the midpoint. It again begs the question, what’s the financial model going forward? Is it to try to maximize growth at the top line even at zero margin?” At first glance this … Read more
