If I were a prosecutor I’d be thanking Al Gore for inventing the internet and email (I don’t know if Mr. Vice President claimed the email invention, but without the internet there is no email). Especially email, because now you can amass evidence of wrongdoing in a very searchable and easy-to-use format. TheStreet.com has dug [...]
Financial stocks had a huge run up from their bottom. Many have doubled and tripled, but are they still cheap? It’s almost impossible to value big financial institutions like Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), or Goldman Sachs (GS) — they’re a lot like hot dogs — you don’t really know what’s inside of them; [...]
Got a letter from Bank of America (BAC) today that informed me that I am a great customer and also mentioned that B of A will be raising fees and canceling rewards on my credit card. Maybe this is the time to own well-run bank stocks with solid balance sheets. They’ve got incredible pricing power. Though [...]
S&P 500 earnings topped out at about $84 a share in June 2007, while corporate profit margins were 44% above their average since 1980. At the time, these numbers were inflated by global bubbles in real-estate, commodities, liquidity, and growth expectations–a lot of global bubbles. Since 2007, most of the bubbles deflated, stocks plunged, [...]
I did three 5 minute segment interviews on Yahoo TechTicker with Aaron Task and Henry Blodget. Here are links to the videos: Only Time Can Cure What Ails Us: Stocks Slump on Bailout, Stimulus News Range-Bound at Best: The Long View on Stocks Isn’t Much Better, Says Vitaliy Katsenelson Active Value Investing: The Bull Case for [...]
I had a fun radio/podcast interview today with Chuck Jaffe at MarketWatch (here is a link, my portion of the interview starts on the 10:40 mark), we “played” hold it or fold it with some of the stocks we own: American Express, eBAY, Nokia; stocks I would NOT want to own: GE, Goldman Sachs, Bank [...]
I welcome the Bank of America (BAC) acquisition of Countrywide (CFC), as for the first time as I can remember BAC acts as a contrarian investor. I really don’t know what CFC is worth but I know it is worth more in BAC’s hands than as a stand alone company. BAC will be able to [...]
Who would have thought that an almighty Citigroup (C ), a diversified financial giant that should have benefited from the sub-prime mess by scooping up weaker competition at pennies on the dollar, would be taking out a sub-prime no-income verification $7.5 billion convertible preferred loan from Abu Dhabi – a country that most of us [...]
If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that people don’t learn. Recently, I talked to my cousin who is an executive with a Russian airline company. In our discussion he mentioned that his company just received semi-unsecured loans (all planes are leased so they are not used as a collateral) from western banks at 10% [...]
February 10, 2006 – Motley Fool By Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA Investing in the stock market is a never-ending learning experience. That’s what makes it so appealing and intellectually stimulating. And I inadvertently had one of those live-and-learn experiences just the other day. In my piece on Lloyds TSB(NYSE: LYG), I wrote that banks usually trade [...]