• Goldman Sachs Apologizes
    Posted by on November 18th, 2009 at 8:32 am

    How exactly do you apologize for being smarter than everyone else?

    A little more than a week after Goldman’s chairman and chief executive drew fire for saying the Wall Street giant was “doing God’s work,” the bank said Tuesday that it would spend $500 million — or about 3 percent of the $16.7 billion it has so far set aside to pay its employees this year — to help thousands of small businesses recover from the recession.
    At the same time, the executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, also showed a bit of humility, acknowledging at a conference in New York that Goldman had made mistakes, and that it was sorry. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” he said. “We apologize.”

  • Seaboard Corp. (SEB)
    Posted by on November 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    I like finding oddball stocks that few people know about or bother following. One of the great things about investing is that little-known stocks can be great investments. Just look at the great performance of a stock like Leucadia National (LUK) which is up about 22,000% over the last 30 years. LUK is rarely mentioned in the news, which is how the company likes it. I can’t think of another company with a market cap of $5.5 billion that had a website that looks like this.
    Recently, I’ve been looking at Seaboard Corp. (SEB) which is another little-known stock. Seaboard is in the pork business. There’s almost no news. Tiny volume. Not much volatility and no analysts follow it. Plus, they never split their stock.
    Thirty-five years ago, you could have picked up a share for $5-1/8. Today, it’s going for $1,549. That’s over 30,000%. Over the same time, the S&P 500 is up by 1,500%.
    I think I don’t get is why Seaboard pays a quarterly dividend of 75 cents a share. At the current price, that’s less than 0.2% a year. Why bother?

  • Oh Charlie!
    Posted by on November 17th, 2009 at 1:19 pm


    (Via TBI)

  • The Barofsky Report
    Posted by on November 17th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Neil Barofsky’s report is out today and it says that the government gave away too much when AIG went under. I can’t say I’m surprised nor can I claim to be terribly upset. To me, the mystery is that some folks actually expected the government to get it right. What were they expecting? The policy was to throw as much money as possible at the problem and hope that it will work. Only UBS (this Swiss??) agreed to take a haircut. Barofsky said that TARP will almost certainly lose money. The lesson is that when the market panics, the government can panic just as well.

  • Was Belichick Right to Go for it?
    Posted by on November 17th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Brian Burke says yes:

    A punt from the 28 typically nets 38 yards, starting the Colts at their own 34. Teams historically get the TD 30% of the time in that situation. So the punt gives the Pats about a 0.70 WP.
    Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a whole. You’d have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30% chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to score from the Pats’ 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field position increases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it’s pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.

    Greg Mankiw adds: “Randomness is a fact of life, even if Patriots’ fans do not fully appreciate it.”

  • What Do You Think?
    Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    Check out this chart. Do you think it’s forming a bottom?
    image872.png
    Could be. I honestly can’t say. So what’s the stock?

    Read more…

  • Buy List +42% YTD
    Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

    Thanks to big gains from stocks like Joe Banks (JOSB) and Nicholas Financial (NICK), our Buy List made a new high for the year (up 42%) and a new relative strength high (19.19% more than the S&P 500). I think the big surprise was NICK breaking out today without any warning.
    Not only is this blog completely free, but it makes you money. If you started with $1 billion at the start of the year, I made you $420 million!
    You’re welcome.

  • Guess How Much Money GM Lost…
    Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 11:20 am

    Between January 2005 and its Chapter 11 filing on June 1?
    Answer = $88 billion.

  • S&P 500 = 1,100
    Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 10:59 am

    The Suckers Rally continues to be very kind to our Buy List. We’re now up over 40% for the year. FactSet (FDS), Donaldson (DCI), Danaher (DHR) and Cognizant (CTSH) are all at new 52-week highs today. Plus, Stryker (SYK), Medtronic (MDT) and Amphenol (APH) aren’t too far away.
    The S&P 500 is up to 1,110 which is its highest level in 13 months.

  • Your Handy Guide to Wall Street Conspiracies
    Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Gary Weiss provides a nice overview of the various conspiracy theories floating around Wall Street. The Giant Vampire Squid won’t be pleased.