Liz: how high up is your source? what department does he/she works in? I do not have any insider information just what is publicly available out there but just a glance at the latest 10Q shows equity of 5+ billion and liabilities of 174 billion this is about a 35:1 leverage or higher than LTCM was said to have at the point it started to crack. Notice that at this level of leverage a 3% swing in your asset-liabilities value wipes you out. "Yes Virginia, you may feel you are perfectly hedged but if you are also highly leveraged, the probability your longs will go down and your shorts up in such a way that a LTCM situation develops is not as small as many people thought. Leverage greatly affects the magnitute of the swings.
Do you like living dangerously? IMO the risk/benifit balance here is not worth the hassle. In general be aware of the talking heads that show up in cnbc and the press telling you to buy this deep. This is not a time to buy stocks but to sell them. People are thinking in relative terms, they think: The dow was 9300 at 7600 there must be some great bargains out there! False! At 6000 the dow would still be greatly overvalued given the earnings outlook! remember, the Nikkei was 40000 a few years back, now it is at 13000 despite rates in the neighborhood of 1%. The fact that LEH traded at 60 does not mean 27 is cheap, it may still be 27 bucks too expensive.
The big picture has changed the Asian/latin American miracles were fiction. We have created a production aparatus ready to sell a lot of junk but people in these economies do not have the resources to buy the goods. While they were borrowing and selling capital assets they did have the liquidity. Now, that is gone.
The old value MM that made a bundle buying CCI the previous time its priced collapsed admits he started buying way too early.
BTW, I am short this puppy.
Short interest increased to 2,863,251 shares in September from 1,035,051 in August for a 176.6% increase. i have no info. on short volume activity since then. my bet is that it is going up. |
