on Yahoo! Breakout – 3 Stocks to Buy Instead of Facebook
While attending Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, I was interviewed by Matt Nesto of Yahoo! Breakout about Microsoft, EA, Facebook.
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Warning for an Eager Facebook Investor (my shortest article, ever!)
Here is a thought for an eager Facebook investor: Google revenue – $40 billion; market capitalization $200 billion (plus $40 billion of cash). Facebook revenue $4 billion; market capitalization $100 billion. So Facebook has to grow revenue 10x for you to double your money. Good luck! follow on twitter Vitaliy N. Katsenelson, CFA, is Chief [...]
Omaha & Bubbles
I have to confess, I am tired of writing “structured” articles, the ones where I have to limit my thoughts to 800 words. So with this email I am taking a break. This is an unstructured stream of thought, in no particular sequence. Deadline to register for VALUEx Vail is May 1st. I am [...]
Not Buying Best Buy
Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn did a courageous and proper thing for shareholders by resigning. He was not the right person to lead Best Buy into battle against online-only competitors that use Best Buy’s spacious and beautiful stores as the showroom for their products. To make things even worse, smart cell phones make comparison shopping [...]
Investor Alert: Xerox is a Cash Machine
On the surface Xerox Corp. smells a lot like its Nifty 50 brethren, once-hotter-than-the-sun-but-now-bankrupt Eastman Kodak Co. and Polaroid Corp. Its stock has gone nowhere since forever. But Xerox was not your typical overvalued blue chip of the 1990s, like Cisco Systems, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft Corp., whose earnings have tripled or quadrupled since [...]
Yahoo!Finance: Beware of the Cyclical Stock Value Trap! Says Katsenelson
With the split between the improving U.S. economy and the weakness in the rest of the world getting ever wider, even as markets rally, it’s more important than ever to position your portfolio in the right sectors. According to value investor Vitaliy Katsenelson, author of “The Little Book of Sideways Markets,” the risk facing investors [...]
The Value Trap of Deeply Cyclical Stocks
Just as it is easier to draw straight lines than to think in nonlinear terms, it is simpler to buy stocks that have gone up a lot over the previous decade than to remain committed to the ones that have done nothing. However, linearity is for suckers. Success in investing comes from being able to [...]
Krugman’s Missed Call; Europe/China/Japan; Sideways Markets; Profit Margins; Microsoft
I wanted to share with you my interview with my friend Bob Huebscher who runs a terrific website Adviser Perspectives. I am very excited about this interview because in a very unconstrained format we had a chance to discuss Paul Krugman’s latest bearish article on China, the linkage between the European crisis and Chinese and [...]
Microsoft Is Not as Boring as it Appears
I am bored and exhausted. I am on my third cup of coffee, but my lack of excitement has not changed, as I am about to explain why the sleepiest, most boring stock in the universe—Microsoft Corp.—offers a very compelling r eward with very reasonable risk. Microsoft was the bright light in the tech firmament [...]
Why Hewlett-Packard Is Today’s Most Hated Stock
There is a good reason John Lennon wrote “All you need is love.” We want to be loved and usually gravitate toward people and things that others cherish. But when it comes to investing, love is not cheap. The trick is to identify misplaced (or mispriced) hate that will turn into love. This brings us [...]
On CNBC: Making Money in Sideways Markets
CNBC interview discussing sideways markets, Xerox, HP, Vivendi
On Yahoo! Breakout
Interview with Matt Nesto, segment 1: HP, Xerox, Vivendi (we own all of them) Segment 2: China
Some Thoughts on Buffett’s BRK Buyback Announcement
Most CEOs are not good capital allocators when it comes to their stock: They are not objective analyzing their company and thus not objective in share buyback. In majority of cases they think their stock is a buy all the time. Why? Because they spend long hours trying to grow the business, they keep telling [...]
HP: Grow Up, Already
Anger and frustration are the two emotions pulsing through my veins as I write this. HP, once the symbol of innovation, is being dismantled by its high-pedigreed board and the CEO of the hour (I truly hope his tenure will be measured in hours, not years). I vividly remember the early 2000s, when Carly Fiorina, [...]
Thoughts on Brown & Brown: Stay Away!
I looked at Brown & Brown about a year ago (May 2010), here are my thoughts which are still relevant today: Risk of growth by acquisition Very significant portion of Brown & Brown’s (BRO) growth in the past came from acquiring brokers. I am naturally skeptical of sustainability of this type of growth as it [...]
Finding Investment Treasures in International Markets
This is the letter we wrote to our clients in the first quarter of 2011. It discusses the importance of international investing and our purchase of a UK retailer, Halfords PLC. If you want to read a shorter version, I’ve turned it into an article that was published in the June issue of Institutional Investor, [...]
The Boulevard of Broken Charts
Markets are efficient, or so we’ve been told. I am not here to put a rebuttal to this academic nonsense, but let me give you one of the core reasons why markets are and will remain inefficient: because human beings are efficient. To function in everyday life, our brains are used to simplifying complex problems, [...]
I am back!
I am back! It was an amazing trip. It started with Warren Buffett’s Omaha. I flew into Omaha on Thursday morning, and a few hours later received a call from the CFA Society of Nebraska, asking me to give a talk to their members. Whitney Tilson and his partner Glen were supposed to do a [...]
Microsoft Just Pulled Another “Microsoft” with its Purchase of Skype
When I wake up in the morning and check news for the companies I own, I worry. I don’t worry that my companies missed their quarterly guidance by a few pennies – running a business is an art, and things don’t usually work out in a precise, linear fashion. The companies that have a “deliver [...]
Quarterly Letter – Q1 2011 – Part 1
I’d like to share excerpts from our quarterly letter we send to our clients (this is Part 1; I’ll send out Part 2 in a few weeks). I’m not sharing the full letter for a simple reason: we are still accumulating shares in some stocks mentioned in the letter. Purchase of Big Lots Big Lots [...]
Buffett, Sokol, Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion
I was quoted in FT about David Sokol, CEO of a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, buying shares in Lubrizol a few months before Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought Lubrizol at a significant premium, which made Sokol 3 million dollars on his $10 million purchase. “Some investors expressed concerns about Mr Sokol’s actions. ‘Any time you buy stock [...]
Set the Bar High
The Ups and Downs of Flying I am a very nervous flyer. Whenever there is a little bit of turbulence, I look out the window, see shaking wings, and start to wonder whether they’ll keep holding the plane up. Then my rational self kicks in, and I tell myself that statistically it is safer flying [...]
On CNBC: Winning in Sideways Markets
Know these names? The Way to Wealth, The Intelligent Investor, One up on Wall St, Stocks for the Long Run ? They’re all books that redefined investing for their time. But they may be headed for the history section. A new little book is threatening to turn all that sage advice on its head. We’re talking about Vitaliy Katsenelson’s “The [...]
Barron’s Is Wrong On Medtronic
I love Barron’s. I really do. I read it from cover to cover, and I truly believe it is one of the few business publications that knows the difference between a good company and a good stock. Now that I’ve sugared it up, let me tell you this: its article on Medtronic is wrong!
On BNN: Range-Bound Markets, eBay, Pfizer, Vodafone
On BNN TV (Canadian version of CNBC) discussing sideways markets and my favorite stocks
A Few thoughts on the Burlington acquisition
I have tremendous respect for Mr. Buffett. But every word that comes out of his mouth should not be looked upon as prophecy, or the gospel truth. I get a feeling that Buffett has been canonized into a value investor saint – investors and the media worship the ground he walks on and the air [...]
The case for Pfizer
I understand why investors don’t want to own Pfizer (PFE); there is little excitement in the stock: It is down significantly from the Viagra-high it reached in 1998. Yes, Pfizer is the maker of Viagra, the drug that spawned a slew of commercials that made TV unwatchable (especially if you have little kids who ask [...]