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• The corporate cash mother lode

  Posted Jun 25 2008, 10:27 PM by Matt Koppenheffer
  Filed under: Investing, CAPS
  Rating:

  High gas prices. High food prices. Slow economy. Job cuts. Our economy's health is quickly heading downhill from under-the-weather to downright Amy Winehouse.
  
  Ok, so we're not that bad yet, but it's certainly not a good picture.
  
  It's anybody's guess when broader business conditions will pick up -- the housing market continues to provide a huge overhang for both consumers and financial companies while oil prices have been astonishingly stubborn. So hoping on an economic uptick to be a trigger for stocks in the near term is probably not our best bet.   Read More...

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• Buffett's bet against hedge funds

  Posted Jun 10 2008, 01:02 PM by Matt Koppenheffer
  Filed under: Investing, CAPS, Warren Buffett
  Rating:

  For those familiar with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, it probably doesn't come as a shock that he's not keen on the idea of modern hedge funds and funds of hedge funds. In fact, if we flip back to Buffett's 2006 letter to Berkshire shareholders, we can read an amusing story that illustrates why investors are best off avoiding high fee money managers like the plague.
  
  Now Buffett is putting his money where his mouth is -- literally. Fortune's Carol Loomis recently revealed a wager that Buffett has set up with funds of hedge funds manager Protégé Partners that pits the S&P 500 index against funds of hedge funds. Specifically, the bet, which is being managed by Long Bets, reads "Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S&P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses."   Read More...

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• Scoping out investing sluggers

  Posted Oct 23 2007, 12:15 PM by Matt Koppenheffer
  Filed under: Investing, CAPS
  Rating:

  Though the baseball/investing analogy has gotten a lot of mileage, it's always been one of my favorites. And in the spirit of the World Series, I thought I'd take a look at my favorite piece of that analogy: swing hard at fat pitches.
  
  In baseball, if you swing at anything that comes in your direction you have a pretty good chance of striking out a heck of a lot. Even if you do happen to make contact here and there, your chances aren't all that good of getting the sweet spot of the bat on the ball.
  
  In investing it’s a similar deal -- if you buy stocks indiscriminately, there's a good chance you'll be unhappy with the results. However, if you hold out for stocks that are great businesses selling at great prices, you will likely goose the ol' investing slugging percentage.   Read More...

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• Hooray for yesterday's decline!

  Posted Oct 12 2007, 11:22 AM by Matt Koppenheffer
  Filed under: Investing, CAPS
  Rating:

  Many investors were likely grinding their teeth yesterday, as the markets shed early gains to drop firmly into the red. Like Danny Bonaduce tossing Jonny Fairplay over his head, the indices took a turn for the ugly and didn't look back.
  
  But not everyone was wincing. In the CAPS community today, CAPS player EPS100Momentum writes "thank god for yesterday's correction," adding that the drop presented good opportunities to pick up stocks that had gotten a little too hot.
  
  He specifically points out China Finance Online, which fell 11% yesterday. China Finance may be a questionable example, though, since the stock carries a lousy one-star rating on CAPS. Many of CAPS' top players have been solidly negative on the stock -- including chk999, who thinks that it's part of a bubble in its native country   Read More...

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