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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (38425)	7/2/2010 6:29:28 PM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78476

LM does not look that great of a value to me. I'd rather try my luck with FII. STT is looking really cheap here but they still carry around baggage on their balance sheet. BK cleaned up their balance sheet well and they had less crap on it to begin with. Bought a little FWLT and rebought WINN again.. I sold my NE.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (38425)	7/2/2010 11:31:12 PM
From: puborectalis	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78476

Barton Biggs, whose investments in stocks 15 months ago gave his Traxis Partners LLC a 38 percent gain in 2009, said concern the economy will contract spurred him to sell almost all his U.S. technology shares this week. Biggs said he reduced the proportion of bullish bets in his hedge fund by up to 40 percentage points on speculation the withdrawal of government spending will turn a “soft patch” into a recession. On June 29, Biggs said long investments made up 70 percent of his fund’s holdings. Stocks in the U.S. fell for the ninth time in 10 days today after data on jobs and factory orders added to concern the economic rebound is slowing. Speaking in a Bloomberg Television interview today, Biggs said “policy mistakes” by politicians may curb the expansion in U.S. gross domestic product that economists forecast will be 3.2 percent in 2010. The S&P 500 has retreated 16 percent since April 23. “I’m worried that we could have not just a soft patch, but a double dip which lasts two or three quarters and where nominal GDP is only up 2 or 3 percent, and that’ll have a big effect on profits,” he said. “It’ll scare everybody and I’m afraid the market goes down another 10 or 15 percent if that happens.” Government Spending Biggs said it would be a mistake to rein in government spending at a time when global economic growth is weakening. The largest economies should aim to cut deficits in half by 2013, the Group of 20 nations said on June 27 after a meeting in Toronto. “The economic numbers that are coming through are very disappointing,” Biggs said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe the politicians respond. We don’t know.” The 77-year-old money manager said he’s pared back investments in the U.S. “I sold stocks pretty aggressively in the U.S. and we had a lot in tech,” Biggs said. “I’ve taken basically all of it out in the U.S. and we had a broader exposure to consumer stocks and just, in general, I’ve reduced my net long position by about 30 or 40 percentage points.” Biggs comments reflect the pressure on investors as the steepest rally since the Great Depression started to fizzle in April. Hedge funds lost an average of 2.6 percent in May, according to the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, as the European debt crisis triggered declines in stocks, the euro and commodities. Lehman Bankruptcy It was the biggest decline since November 2008, when hedge funds lost 3 percent following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy two months earlier. About $3.5 billion was withdrawn from hedge funds in April, according to TrimTabs Investment Research and BarclayHedge estimates. Traxis was buying household product suppliers, drugmakers and computer companies at the start of the year, speculating they would prove bargains as earnings surged, he said in a Dec. 29 interview with Bloomberg. In March, he said stocks remained cheap relative to forecast earnings and predicted the global economic recovery would be strong. “I’ve changed my mind,” he told Bloomberg today. “I’m not wildly bearish, but I don’t want to have a lot of risk at this point. I’m not putting my money into anything. I’m raising cash.” Biggs, who earlier this week predicted S&P 500 companies would earn a combined $85 to $90 a share in 2010, now says profits may be as low as $70 to $75 if the economy slows. The low end of that range implies a price-earnings multiple of 14.6 for the S&P 500 today, about equal to its historical average. Biggs said the second recession in three years isn’t inevitable, comparing the stock market to the end of the 1982 contraction when the S&P 500 declined 13 percent. An advisory firm founded by another equity bull, Laszlo Birinyi, published research yesterday drawing the same comparison. “This is what always happens at this stage of the cycle,” Biggs said. “We are at exactly the same stage in the cycle as we were in 1982, using the exact kind of words: ‘The U.S. economy is collapsing, the world is collapsing, it’s the worst time since the Great Depression.’ Blah, blah, blah.”