Archive for July, 2008
Investment banks not safe yet
For those thinking that maybe it’s a good time to start playing around with investment banks since their depressed pricing must mean there’s some value in there, today’s news on Merrill Lynch’s firesale of $30.6 billion in bonds for just 20 cents on the dollar along with plans of yet another equity offering has to raise alarm bells.
First [...]
Lower Prices, Lower Margins, Better Apple?
A few posts back, I wrote about the dangers of seeing your favorite retailer slashing prices and offering sale after sale especially as the economy softens. In the ensuing week, I posted about the opportunity that I see for big box discounters and Apple, one of my favorite companies, trumpeted what seems to be a [...]
read more »Saving Fannie and Freddie
Can’t take credit for this. This comes from someone much smarter than I am. Bill Ackman, a Fannie and Freddie short, who runs Pershing Square Capital put out a really interesting presentation to demonstrate a method that could save Freddie and Fannie through some create recapitalizing. You can see it for yourself by clicking the [...]
read more »Listen to the Little Guys
I received a very interesting comment on my post “Lessons in Business Analysis” a few weeks ago and just wanted to comment on it today. The original post was just a breakdown of the best tidbits from Eddie Lampert and Warren Buffet’s annual shareholder letters, but the comment was written from an ex employee of [...]
read more »Discounters will rule
Last week, Walmart, Target, and Costco all reported June sales growth well in excess of expectations with Walmart besting everyone and going as far as to up their guidance for Q2 2008. Some analysts seem skeptical, though, as they believed that increased sales were more a result of the first round of government stimulus checks [...]
read more »iPhone = Tickle Me Elmo?
As everyone knows by now, the new 3G iPhone debuted this Friday. Here in New York, lines at the 5th Ave. Apple store started weeks ago and supposedly forced the store to close the line for a period of the day due to overcrowding (and some issues with activation). More impressively, nearly all AT&T stores [...]
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