One Guy's Investments

Is Sweden Picking the Vodka Top?

2008-03-31T16:42:00.002-04:00

I was very intrigued to see that Absolut has finally been sold, and it makes me wonder: is this the "top" for the premium, marketing-driven vodka market? Now this is just a crazy theory, so feel free to ignore me.But here's my rationale:Everyone talks about the fact that Steve Schwarzman "picked the top" in the private equity business by taking Blackstone Group public last summer, at the best

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Is "Commodity" Going to be a bad word again?

2008-03-19T12:50:00.002-04:00

Does anyone still remember when the one thing investors tried to avoid like the plague was a commodity investment? OK, so I'm being a little bit facetious -- but it strikes me that with commodities taking a bit of a hit recently on fears of a recession (or something much worse, depending on who you talk to, and on whether or not you work at Bear Stearns), maybe we're going to have to look at what

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Cancer Blaster vs. Surgical Robot?

2008-01-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

The stock market is presenting all kinds of buying opportunities that are making me interested this week, but the one dynamic that stands out most today is the dramatic difference between the performance of two companies in my portfolio that sell high tech products that both do essentially the same thing ... though in very different ways.Accuray (ARAY) is the maker of the Cyberknife, a targeted

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Eddie Lampert ... just like me?

2007-11-29T09:55:00.000-05:00

I don't want to pile on the Sears Holdings boo-fest that's happening across all financial media this morning -- but I thought I'd share a few thoughts I had about Eddie Lampert and what I think are some mistakes he might have made ... mistakes that are certainly similar to the kinds of things individual investors, myself included, do to sabotage themselves every day.What we have seen from Sears

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Buying Blackstone (BX)

2007-11-14T14:19:00.000-05:00

Steve Schwarzman spoke at the Merrill Lynch conference today, and I think some of what he said about his company, Blackstone, has been overlooked in the wash of John Thain rumors. I picked up a few shares of Blackstone today.So what did he say that was interesting?About the business:He said that the alternative assset industry is a "marvelous place."And that risk-adjusted returns are way above

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Bombardier's Bad New: Good for Embraer?

2007-10-29T12:44:00.000-04:00

I read a brief note today that summarized a few of the problems Bombardier has been having -- SAS, the scandinavian airline, just grounded their Bombardier turbo-props, and they've had some reported trouble in the US and Canada with their regional jets. I don't know if these problems will really turn out to be significant -- whether the scandinavians are the canary in the coal mine or are

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Amber Waves of Cash Money

2007-10-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

I heard an adviser today on Bloomberg Radio -- unfortunately, I tuned in too late to catch his name, but he had a very interesting investment thesis that I thought I should explore a little bit.He essentially said that though the rust belt is suffering, the farm belt is booming -- and clearly, the two are linked somewhat, especially in the middle when you look from Ohio through Michigan, Indiana

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Lampert Tends One Big Egg (SHLD)

2007-10-22T13:22:00.000-04:00

I owned a few shares of Sears Holdings a couple years ago, and sold them at more or less the same price they're going for today. I didn't make much money on them, but more or less broke even because I reconsidered my investment thesis in Sears and decided that I had already missed the Kmart/Sears real-estate fueled run. In retrospect, I missed a nice run over the ensuing year or so before the

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Your Ma or Mine? What's up with Tencent?

2007-10-10T11:55:00.000-04:00

OK, so I wake up this morning and one of my positions increased about 15% in value, with absolutely no particularly relevant news that I'm aware of. Huh? Tencent, one of the largest internet companies in China (listed in Hong Kong, also traded on the pink sheets at TCEHF.PK), climbed about 15% as those of us in the Western hemisphere rested our weary heads. What's going on? Well, there are a

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Temptation Under the Armour

2007-09-28T16:47:00.000-04:00

OK, so I have a bit of a tendency to buy popular growth stocks on pullbacks -- if I believe the growth story, my knee jerk reaction is often to pick up a few shares or a few call options when what appears to be a temporary setback brings the share price down.This is what happened when I doubled my Google holdings at $510 or so when their earnings disappointed slightly. And though I haven't

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Is it time to Reconsider Canadian Trusts?

2007-09-26T23:37:00.000-04:00

OK, so I spend a couple weeks pondering over my opinions about Canadian trusts, and just as I'm finishing up a little post on them, boom! There goes my thunder. First, Abu Dhabi buys up Primewest at a big premium and catches everyone's attention, and then, I hear Jim Cramer turn back to the trusts again today on Mad Money. Arg!Surprisingly enough, the Primewest buyout offer didn't really move

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Going de-CAF

2007-09-24T12:02:00.000-04:00

Well, this has been an interesting exercise in some more active investing for me -- essentially trading in and out of the Morgan Stanley China A Shares closed end fund a couple times this year, which is much more active than I tend to be with most of my holdings.If you've been following my transactions, you might have noted that I bought shares in CAF back in May at about $36, sold at about $55,

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Cheap Gold in the Ground? (CELTF)

2007-09-20T13:20:00.001-04:00

I'm not generally much of a "gold bug" -- I don't believe that the world economy is going to hell in a handbasket, and I don't think that paper currency is worthless. But I do believe that a little gold in your portfolio can be a nice buffer -- especially when prices are soaring, as they are lately.But buying the gold ETF is so booooorring. Kidding, sort of. Certainly if you like gold and

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Is Blackstone Actually Tempting Here?

2007-09-20T10:23:00.000-04:00

Everyone -- myself included -- has had their fun ridiculing hedge funds and private equity lately. The implosions of a few relatively high profile funds, the growing awareness of the fact that most hedge funds make their money not on successful investments but on fees (and the investor backlash from that), and the very strong feeling that Steve Schwarzman has played everyone for a fool by taking

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Another quick note on CAF

2007-09-19T12:31:00.000-04:00

Well, one day -- actually a little bit less than 24 hours -- after I bought shares of the Morgan Stanley China A Shares closed end fund again, and the market tries to force some decisionmaking on me.Why? Because the domestic Chinese stock market remains largely cut off from and uninfluenced by the rest of the world's markets.Now, one argument is that this is certainly a reason to buy in if you

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The Downside to Insider Ownership (GOL)

2007-09-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

Many people talk about how important it is to buy shares of companies that have strong family or management ownership, because that means there is someone intimately involved with the day to day operations who has the same motivation as common shareholders.And I agree ... in general. But when a family or individual has a real majority of the shares, or a majority of the voting shares, you can

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And ... back to the A Shares

2007-09-18T13:21:00.000-04:00

Like a sloppy drunk returning to the roulette table, I've repurchased a position in the Morgan Stanley China A Share Closed End Fund (CAF). Those who've been keeping up here (not so many of you, since I keep neglecting to post in a timely fashion), will remember that I bought these in the Spring because the discount was ridiculous, then sold when the discount shrunk to about 15% and the price was

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Clearing out More Positions

2007-09-13T10:50:00.000-04:00

As we gird our loins for what appears to be an extremely unsteady market -- though whether it will go up or down, I have no idea -- I've taken the opportunity to simplify my investments a little bit.What does that mean?Well, in my case, it means selling some of the more vulnerable, long-shot, non-profitable or highly valued companies in my portfolio -- particularly the small positions that I

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Long-Overdue Portfolio Adjustments

2007-09-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

I've been remiss in keeping my portfolio up to date here, having spent much more time hacking away at email teasers on my Stock Gumshoe site that many of you have also been kind enough to subscribe to and read.But still, I always have intended to keep my portfolio holdings and changes an open book -- so I'm sorry that I'm so late in making these changes here for you to see (and hey, many of them

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Closing some Asian positions

2007-08-09T13:33:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note that I'm closing my positions in a couple of Asian funds -- I've liquidated my holdings in the Morgan Stanley China A Shares Fund (CAF), and in the South Korean iShares Index (EWY).CAF I bought because the pessimism over the domestic China market was overwrought, and the discount was too steep. Since then, the shares have gone up about 45%, and the discount has closed to about

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Buying the Google Dip (GOOG)

2007-07-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

Well, this is certainly not a contrarian assessment -- the web is achatter with people who are musing about this earnings shortfall as a buying opportunity in Google shares, including most analysts -- but sheep or no, I'm jumping in a little.I've been a GOogle shareholder for about two and a half years, but I did sell a portion of my holdings about 18 months ago -- taking profits after my one

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Taking Profits on one ... giving up on another

2007-07-18T10:07:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to post some changes in my portfolio -- after watching MEMC Electronic Materials grow into one of my larger holdings on the back of near-300% gains, I decided to give in to some of my misgivings about the company's valuation and take profits on about 40% of my holdings.I'm still holding the balance of my WFR shares, and I do think that it's certainly possible that they will

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Switching Commodity Plays (NTO, AMNZF.PK)

2007-06-29T10:41:00.000-04:00

I'm taking advantage of the Yamana offer for Northern Orion that boosted prices by close to 10% at one point, and selling my NTO shares in order to open a position in a very different kind of commodity investment.Northern Orion (NTO) has been good to me -- I bought shares a couple years ago at around $2.20, and sold them yesterday morning at $5.90. I do think that their reserves are worth more

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Some Different High Yield Ideas (PVD, CHC)

2007-06-21T14:34:00.000-04:00

One of the trends I've noticed in the past few months as I've been building up my other site, StockGumshoe.com (and neglecting this site -- sorry!), is that some investment newsletters are focusing quite a bit on dividend paying stocks -- especially obscure ones that I've never heard of.A few of these ideas percolate to the top as being fairly interesting for further research, so I thought I'd

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A little Crazy ... a Little China

2007-05-31T10:53:00.000-04:00

In what might be a dumb move, I've picked up shares in a couple of China closed-end funds in the last few days. I've tried to hedge my bets a little bit, however: I have acquired shares of both the China Fund (CFN) and the Morgan Stanly China A Shares fund (CAF). These are extremely different investments, which I'll explain briefly. Basically, the China Fund is a mutual fund that buys stable,

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