Wall Street Week Review. No Louis Da Rook this week. Two of my former colleagues, Gretchen Lash and Hank Hermann, were guests. Gretchen on the panel and Hank as the guy in the hot seat.
Hank was awesome, and this is from a guy who has often criticized him in the past. He gave a great answer on why eliminating the double taxation of dividends would be a good idea. Basically, Hank said that corporations haven't dealt well with surplus cash flow in the past, adding capacity when there was overcapacity, buying back stock at prices that were beyond high and buying other cos. at their highs. Paying dividends instead would be an economic good. His comment about the accounting profession was superb: "too many rules and not enough principles." <g> When asked about tech, and Hank was the third best tech analyst (after Ming Li and yours truly <VBG>) and best tech portfolio manager Waddell & Reed ever had, he said that we have not worked through the overcapacity at all and he isn't a buyer. The only slip he made, IMHO, was when he said he considered the PE ratio of the market to be 18 times. Only off by 100%, Hank.
Hank is now the top dog at Waddell & Reed. I knew him when he bossed nobody and then when he only bossed one equity analyst, and I was the guy. Which had nothing to do with me leaving W&R, though I'm not sure Hank believed that.
Gretchen is CIO at Roger Engemann. She was an equity analyst with American Capital when I was there and she got along well with everyone. She didn't say much tonight, other than that she liked tech, especially Oracle and Cisco. I kind of like Oracle, as a co., but hate Cisco. She was a bit too bullish for my taste. However, I do consider her a bright analyst. |
