Friday, April 30, 2010
The diversification of risk in buying SPG
Simon Property Group and General Growth Properties
So what is happening to SPG and GGP?
UPDATE 4-Simon Property first-quarter FFO rises
Stocks
* Q1 funds from operations up 3 pct
* Raises low end of full-year forecast
* Simon shares down sharply: GGP shrs down slightly (Rewrites first sentence, adds CEO quotes, updates stock price)
By Ilaina Jonas
NEW YORK, April 30 (Reuters) - Simon Property Group Inc (SPG.N), the largest U.S. mall owner, reported higher-than-expected first-quarter results, but its shares fell nearly 4 percent after it downplayed a potential deal with rival General Growth Properties Inc (GGP.N).
Simon has been trying to induce bankrupt rival General Growth to accept its plan to help the rival mall owner emerge from bankruptcy as an independent company. But Simon has not ruled out acquiring all of General Growth.
It is up against a General Growth-supported plan led by Brookfield Asset Management Inc (BAMa.TO), which would also help General Growth emerge as a stand-alone mall owner.
"We have been exclusively focused on that transaction," David Simon, chairman and chief executive, said during a conference call with analysts. "So, if it so happens that there is nothing there for us, which is a distinct possibility, you know, I'm very comfortable with the ability to grow our business externally."
So far General Growth, has rebuffed Simon's current offer, as well as an earlier one from Simon to buy the entire company.
At the end of the quarter, Simon had $3.6 billion of cash on hand and $3.2 billion available under its corporate credit line. It said if the deal with General Growth did not materialize, it would use some of its cash booty to pay down its own debt.
"When we look at deals, we look at what the value of the real estate is, not what we can pay for the real estate," David Simon said.
Shares of Simon fell 3.4 percent, or $3.12, to $89.30 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon. Shares of General Growth, which had been higher in early trade, dipped 8 cents to $15.86.
"People have read from his comments that Simon may not have a good shot of winning General Growth," said Jeung Hyun, Adelante Capital Management portfolio manager..
"Clearly there are a number of shareholders or investors who are in the stock partly for that accretion that is going to come from that acquisition.
"For a company the size of Simon, if they don't win the General Growth Properties bid, there are not that many sizable opportunities for the future."
Simon reported on Friday that first-quarter funds from operations (FFO), excluding a debt-related charge, rose to $491.2 million, or $1.41 per share, from $476.8 million, or $1.61 per share, in the year-earlier quarter.
Including the debt-related charge, the company reported FFO of 94 cents per share.
Analysts, on average, were looking for 84 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Net operating income, which reflects the cash the properties generate less expenses, rose 2.5 percent growth in the quarter. Sales at its malls and shopping centers rose 6.6 percent from a year earlier, the company said.
Although the consumer spending environment is improving, Simon said it has not seen a full-fledged return to stronger days and it still expects some stores not to renew leases when they expire this year.
The Indianapolis-based company owns or has an interest in 381 properties comprising 261 million square feet of leasable space in North America, Europe and Asia. It owns such well-trafficked malls as Roosevelt Field on New York's Long Island and Sawgrass Mills Circle near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as well as outlet centers such as Woodbury Commons, north of New York City.
General Growth owns more than 200 U.S. malls, some of which are the most productive in the nation.
For the full year, Simon raised the low end of its outlook for 2010 FFO per share and now sees $5.77 to $5.87, excluding the debt-related charge. That compares with its earlier outlook of $5.72 to $5.87,
Including the charge, the company sees FFO of $5.30 per share to $5.40 per share. FFO, a measure of performance, removes the profit-reducing effect of depreciation, a noncash accounting item. (Reporting by Ilaina Jonas; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Gerald E. McCormick)
Thanks
Thursday, April 29, 2010
This is for the Risk Lovers
What goes down must come up. That is not a slogan, instead it is a fact.
Today, I am recommending investors to purchase Sterling Financial Group (STSA).
This company is currently in need for financial aid. According to
ranked Sterling Financial Group the highest in customer satisfaction for the Northwest region in
its 2010 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study.
Thus, I would recommend a "Buy" for this stock. But keep in mind, this stock contains many
uncertainties.
Thanks
MC
Berkshire Hathaway INC.
Monday, April 26, 2010
The List of ETF
UWM.MX PRSH ULTRA RUS2000 489.00 ETF MEX
UYG.MX PRSHS ULTRA FINANCL 908.65 ETF MEX
UYM Ultra Basic Materials ProShares 38.86 ETF PCX
UGE Ultra Consumer Goods ProShares 60.03 ETF PCX
UCC Ultra Consumer Services ProShares 46.40 ETF PCX
UCD Ultra DJ-UBS Commodity ProShares 26.33 ETF PCX
UCO Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil ProShares 13.45 ETF PCX
DDM Ultra Dow30 ProShares 51.00 ETF PCX
ULE Ultra Euro ProShares 26.04 ETF PCX
XPP Ultra FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ProShares 69.97 ETF PCX
UYG Ultra Financials ProShares 74.38 ETF PCX
UGL Ultra Gold ProShares 48.57 ETF PCX
RXL Ultra Health Care ProShares 50.80 ETF PCX
UXI Ultra Industrials ProShares 43.00 ETF PCX
EFO Ultra MSCI EAFE ProShares 81.49 ETF PCX
EET Ultra MSCI Emerging Mkts ProShares 93.66 ETF PCX
EZJ Ultra MSCI Japan ProShares 73.37 ETF PCX
MVV Ultra MidCap400 ProShares 56.85 ETF PCX
DIG Ultra Oil & Gas ProShares 39.75 ETF PCX
UKW Ultra Russell MidCap Growth ProShares 41.02 ETF PCX
UVU Ultra Russell MidCap Value ProShares 33.93 ETF PCX
UKF Ultra Russell1000 Growth ProShares 45.17 ETF PCX
UVG Ultra Russell1000 Value ProShares 28.78 ETF PCX
UKK Ultra Russell2000 Growth ProShares 41.00 ETF PCX
UWM Ultra Russell2000 ProShares 39.90 ETF PCX
UVT Ultra Russell2000 Value ProShares 32.59 ETF PCX
UWC Ultra Russell3000 ProShares 71.96 ETF PCX
SAA Ultra SmallCap600 ProShares 43.43 ETF PCX
SSO Ultra S&P500 ProShares 45.34 ETF PCX
USD Ultra Semiconductor ProShares 40.78 ETF PCX
AGQ Ultra Silver ProShares 63.00 ETF PCX
ROM Ultra Technology ProShares 60.29 ETF PCX
LTL Ultra Telecommunications ProShares 41.67 ETF PCX
UPW Ultra Utilities ProShares 39.00 ETF PCX
YCL Ultra Yen ProShares 25.41 ETF PCX
Sunday, April 25, 2010
UBC MBA Blog
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wanna become a Hedge Fund Manager?
Something about History
One out of ? ................A MILLION?
Check this out
Have you seen a woman who is smart, pretty, and rich?
The one who I think who has all three of these merits is:
Is this the ideal boss for the Males? Give us some comments
Thanks
MC
Some Quotes from John Maynard Keynes
- Reply to a criticism during the Great Depression of having changed his position on monetary policy, as quoted in Lost Prophets: An Insider's History of the Modern Economists (1994) by Alfred L. Malabre, p. 220
- A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) Ch. 3; many have thought this meant Keynes supported short terms gains against long term economic performance, but he was actually criticizing the belief that inflation would acceptably control itself without government intervention.
- As quoted in The Economist (13 February 1982), p. 11
Lehman Brother's leftover
Thursday, April 22, 2010
More about Benjamin Graham
A Conversation With Benjamin Graham
In the light of your 60-odd years of experience in Wall Street what is your overall view of common stocks?
Common stocks have one important characteristics and one important speculative characteristic. Their investment value and average market price tend to increase irregularly but persistently over the decades, as their net worth builds up through the reinvestment of undistributed earnings--incidentally, with no clear-cut plus or minus response to inflation. However, most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions, as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble--i.e., to give way to hope, fear and greed.
What is your view of Wall Street as a financial institution?
A highly unfavorable--even a cynical--one. The Stock Exchanges appear to me chiefly as a John Bunyan type of Vanity Fair, or a Falstaffian joke, that frequently degenerates into a madhouse--"a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each other's washing--nowadays to the tune of 30 million shares a day--without true rhyme or reason. But technologically it is remarkably well-organized.
What is your view of the financial community as a whole?
Most of the stockbrokers, financial analysts, investment advisers, etc., are above average in intelligence, business honesty and sincerity. But they lack adequate experience with all types of security markets and an overall understanding of common stocks--of what I call "the nature of the beast." They tend to take the market and themselves too seriously. They spend a large part of their time trying, valiantly and ineffectively, to do things they can't do well.
What sort of things, for example?
To forecast short- and long-term changes in the economy, and in the price level of common stocks, to select the most promising industry groups and individual issues--generally for the near-term future.
Can the average manager of institutional funds obtain better results than the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Standard & Poor's Index over the years?
No. In effect, that would mean that the stock market experts as a whole could beat themselves--a logical contradiction.
Do you think, therefore, that the average institutional client should be content with the DJIA results or the equivalent?
Yes. Not only that, but I think they should require approximately such results over, say, a moving five-year average period as a condition for paying standard management fees to advisors and the like.
What about the objection made against so-called index funds that different investors have different requirements?
At bottom that is only a convenient cliche or alibi to justify the mediocre record of the past. All investors want good results from their investments, and are entitled to them to the extent that they are actually obtainable. I see no reason why they should be content with results inferior to those of an indexed fund or pay standard fees for such inferior results.
Turning now to individual investors, do you think that they are at a disadvantage compared with the institutions, because of the latter's huge resources, superior facilities for obtaining information, etc.?
On the contrary, the typical investor has a great advantage over the large institutions.
Why?
Chiefly because these institutions have a relatively small field of common stocks to choose from--say 300 to 400 huge corporations--and they are constrained more or less to concentrate their research and decisions on this much over-analyzed group. By contrast, most individuals can choose at any time among some 3000 issues listed in the Standard & Poor's Monthly Stock Guide. Following a wide variety of approaches and preferences, the individual investor should at all times be able to locate at least one per cent of the total list--say, 30 issues or more--that offer attractive buying opportunities.
What general rules would you offer the individual investor for his investment policy over the years?
Let me suggest three such rules: (1) The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means, in sum, that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase--in other words, that he has a margin of safety, in value terms, to protect his commitment. (2) The investor should have a definite selling policy for all his common stock commitments, corresponding to his buying techniques. Typically, he should set a reasonable profit objective on each purchase--say 50 to 100 per cent--and a maximum holding period for this objective to be realized--say, two to three years. Purchases not realizing the gain objective at the end of the holding period should be sold out at the market. (3) Finally, the investor should always have a minimum percentage of his total portfolio in common stocks and a minimum percentage in bond equivalents. I recommend at least 25 per cent of the total at all times in each category. A good case can be made for a consistent 50-50 division here, with adjustments for changes in the market level. This means the investor would switch some of his stocks into bonds on significant rises of the market level, and vice-versa when the market declines. I would suggest, in general, an average seven- or eight-year maturity for his bond holdings.
In selecting the common stock portfolio, do you advise careful study of and selectivity among different issues?
In general, no. I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when our textbook "Graham and Dodd" was first published; but the situation has changed a great deal since then. In the old days any well-trained security analyst could do a good professional job of selecting undervalued issues through detailed studies; but in the light of the enormous amount of research now being carried on, I doubt whether in most cases such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost. To that very limited extent I'm on the side of the "efficient market" school of thought now generally accepted by the professors.
What general approach to portfolio formation do you advocate?
Essentially, a highly simplified one that applies a single criteria or perhaps two criteria to the price to assure that full value is present and that relies for its results on the performance of the portfolio as a whole--i.e., on the group results--rather than on the expectations for individual issues.
Can you indicate concretely how an individual investor should create and maintain his common stock portfolio?
I can give two examples of my suggested approach to this problem. One appears severely limited in its application, but we found it almost unfailingly dependable and satisfactory in 30-odd years of managing moderate-sized investment funds. The second represents a great deal of new thinking and research on our part in recent years. It is much wider in its application than the first one, but it combines the three virtues of sound logic, simplicity of application, and an extraordinarily good performance record, assuming--contrary to fact--that it had actually been followed as now formulated over the past 50 years--from 1925 to 1975.
Some details, please, on your two recommended approaches.
My first, more limited, technique confines itself to the purchase of common stocks at less than their working-capital value, or net-current-asset value, giving no weight to the plant and other fixed assets, and deducting all liabilities in full from the current assets. We used this approach extensively in managing investment funds, and over a 30-odd year period we must have earned an average of some 20 per cent per year from this source. For a while, however, after the mid-1950's, this brand of buying opportunity became very scarce because of the pervasive bull market. But it has returned in quantity since the 1973-74 decline. In January 1976 we counted over 300 such issues in the Standard & Poor's Stock Guide--about 10 per cent of the total. I consider it a foolproof method of systematic investment--once again, not on the basis of individual results but in terms of the expectable group outcome.
Finally, what is your other approach?
This is similar to the first in its underlying philosophy. It consists of buying groups of stocks at less than their current or intrinsic value as indicated by one or more simple criteria. The criterion I prefer is seven times the reported earnings for the past 12 months. You can use others--such as a current dividend return above seven per cent or book value more than 120 percent of price, etc. We are just finishing a performance study of these approaches over the past half-century--1925-1975. They consistently show results of 15 per cent or better per annum, or twice the record of the DJIA for this long period. I have every confidence in the threefold merit of this general method based on (a) sound logic, (b) simplicity of application, and (c) an excellent supporting record. At bottom it is a technique by which true investors can exploit the recurrent excessive optimism and excessive apprehension of the speculative public.
"It is fortunate for Wall Street as an institution that a small minority of people can trade successfully and that many others think they can. The accepted view holds that stock trading is like anything else; i.e., with intelligence and application, or with good professional guidance, profits can be realized. Our own opinion is skeptical, perhaps jaundiced. We think that, regardless of preparation and method, success in trading is either accidental and impermanent or else due to a highly uncommon talent."
"...we must express some serious reservations and perhaps prejudices that we hold about the basic utility of industry analysis as it is practiced in Wall Street and as its results are exhibited in typical brokerage-house studies. Industry analysis relates to the past and the future. Insofar as it relates to the past, the elements dealt with have already influenced the results of the companies in the industry and the average market price of their shares. ...When industry analysis addresses itself to the future it generally assumes that past characteristics and trends will continue. We find these forward projections of the past to be misleading at least as often as they are useful."
"If we could assume that the price of each of the leading issues already reflects the expectable developments of the next year or two, then a random selection should work out as well as one confined to those with the best near-term outlook."
-- Security Analysis, Third Edition, 1951
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
SECURITY ANALYSIS Graham and Dodd 1934 1st ed/1st print
Principles and Technique
Stated 1934 First Edition
Published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
New York and London
725 pages
This book was produced with two different cloth bindings; both are part of the first printing. One version is all black, the second has a maroon binding with a black block on the spine overprinted in gold. This copy is the maroon version. In very good condition, it has no writing anywhere in the text. The original owner's name is written neatly in pen on the inside front cover. Binding is tight, with no splits at the hinges. Cover shows light wear to corners, but no bumping. There is very light wear to the head and foot of the backstrip. There are some "splotches" to the front cover and one corner of the back cover that have a different sheen than the rest of the cover. There is a bit of unevenness to the spine. The gilt imprint on the backstrip is sharp, bright, and shows no signs of wear. The book displays beautifully.
The importance of this book is evidenced by its numerous reprints and multiple editions. But Graham and Dodd's original intent and theories are best discovered in this original version; undiluted by later contributors.
This is certainly one of the most sought-after and collected books on investing. Later printings can be found, as well as later editions, but the first printing is truly a rare item. The few copies that surface generally are handled by major rare book dealers that go quickly into the hands of private collectors.
This copy could easily be the cornerstone to any serious collection of rare books on finance and investing.
P.S. It is selling $23,000 USD in ebay~
Thanks
Paul
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is an American businessman, and the co-founder and chief executive officer ofApple. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney.
In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula,[10] and others, designed, developed, and marketed some of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series and later, the Macintosh. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface.[11][12] After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985[13][14], Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT's subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then.
In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios.[15] He remainedCEO and majority shareholder until its acquisition by the Walt Disney Company in 2006.[2] Jobs is currently a member of Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors.[16][17]
Jobs' history in business has contributed much to the symbolic image of the idiosyncratic, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has earned him a devoted following.[18]
Beginning in mid-January 2009, Jobs took a five-month leave of absence from Apple to undergo a liver transplant.[19] Jobs officially resumed his role as CEO of Apple on June 29, 2009.[20]
Thanks
Paul
Thanks To Mr. J for the inspiration
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
HISTORY
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2010
(131)
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April
(23)
- The diversification of risk in buying SPG
- Simon Property Group and General Growth Properties
- This is for the Risk Lovers
- ProShares
- Berkshire Hathaway INC.
- The List of ETF
- Soros Secret "Ideal Dinner"
- UBC MBA Blog
- Paul Krugman talks about Financial Crisis
- Value investing from Colombia University
- Wanna become a Hedge Fund Manager?
- Something about History
- One out of ? ................A MILLION?
- Some Quotes from John Maynard Keynes
- More information on GS
- Lehman Brother's leftover
- More about Benjamin Graham
- Warren Buffett's Tribute to Benjamin Graham
- A Conversation With Benjamin Graham
- SECURITY ANALYSIS Graham and Dodd 1934 1st ed/1st ...
- Steve Jobs
- Technology brings Growth
- The development of web magazine
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April
(23)