Albert Einstein quote

“Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.” -Albert Einstein

Source

Factory of Life

Synthetic biology was born a little more than a decade ago, an offshoot of traditional genetic engineering but distinct in its ambitions, precision and mind-set. Instead of randomly tweaking the genetic blueprints of living organisms and then working backward to identify a cell with a desirable trait, the new field offered the power of designing and building cells with novel functions. Its pioneers dreamed of making armies of organisms that could produce alternative fuels, churn out drugs to battle disease or fill every stomach on the planet by squeezing more food out of each crop acre.

Now, synthetic biologists have laid the groundwork for that radical new future, by building biology’s version of Silicon Valley. One research team has created a new and more complex set of biological building blocks that snap together like Legos, bringing large-scale production of engineered organisms closer to reality. Other scientists have hooked those parts up in a complex living analog of an electrical circuit and programmed it, much like programming a computer. Researchers are now writing code to make cells do things never before thought possible, like hunt down and kill cancer cells.

“This is not just — oh, we’re going to go build something that’s able to make pieces of DNA better,” says Knight, one of the field’s top visionaries. “This is — we’re going to go create a technology infrastructure in the same way that the semiconductor infrastructure was developed.”

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Brief Holiday Update

With Monday as the last opportunity for Congress to avoid some version of the “fiscal cliff,” there isn’t a great deal to say that will be relevant for long, but my impression remains that the most likely outcome is that fiscal policy will go over the “cliff” – if only for a week or so. The last Congressional Republican to vote for a tax increase was Pete Domenici in 1990. Whether one agrees with that position on taxes or not, it seems unlikely that House Republicans will violate their pledge to their own constituents and vote to raise taxes on December 31 – when precisely the same outcome can be obtained by voting a few days later to lower them immediately after they are automatically raised.

The House has already passed legislation that, if passed by the Senate, would avoid the fiscal cliff but wouldn’t raise taxes. That clearly isn’t acceptable to Democrats. A slightly modified proposal to raise taxes only on incomes above $1 million was pulled before a House vote, because even that tax increase was too objectionable to garner enough votes. So now, there’s some talk of the Senate passing a bill and sending it to the House, though this would seem to violate Article I Section 7 of the Constitution, which requires all bills for raising revenue to originate in the House. Then again, the Federal Reserve has repeatedly violated the Federal Reserve Act to encroach on the fiscal authority of the House in recent years (see The Case Against the Fed), so we shouldn’t rule out some novel interpretation of the law on this matter as well.

In any event, we shouldn’t be terribly surprised if we briefly go over the fiscal cliff. The real problem would be if there is significant difficulty in quickly passing legislation in early January, or if Congress merely passes an extension of existing law, which would result in a replay of the current situation – since some solution would still be required to avoid the need for the House to explicitly raise taxes.

Epictetus quotes

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” —Epictetus

“A ship should not be held by a single anchor; neither should life depend upon a single hope.” —Epictetus

Grant's Winter Break 2012 Issue

To the readers (and potential readers) of Grant’s: 

This compilation of recent articles, our annual Grant’s Holiday e-issue, is for you—and for your friends, co-workers, clients, classmates, shipmates, brothers-in-law and maids-of-honor, too. Please pass it along, with our compliments, to any and all prospective members of the greater Grant’s family.

Nassim Taleb quote

“You cannot say with any reliability that a certain remote event or shock is more likely than another (unless you enjoy deceiving yourself), but you can state with a lot more confidence that an object or a structure is more fragile than another should a certain event happen.” –Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

How the Kindle Paperwhite Works

Found via The Big Picture.

The Kindle Paperwhite uses a unique lighting system to illuminate its electronic ink display. Rather than using a backlight as on LCD-based tablets, the Paperwhite uses a transparent light guide that directs light from four edge-mounted LEDs down toward the surface of the display.

Premara Financial (PARA.OB)

If you have any interest in a micro-cap bank stock, some friends of mine have provided a summary of one they know well and which they think is significantly undervalued. Mr. Buffett's quote about the importance of knowing your banker when investing in banks also comes to mind, as they've gotten to know the founder and CEO quite well, and are extremely impressed with the way he approaches running Premara and how he plans to grow the bank going forward. 

Link to: Why Premara Financial Is The Most Undiscovered Gem In The Banking Sector

Friedrich Nietzsche quote

"Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole." —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (as quoted in the book Mastery)

Looming Port Strike Deadline Pressures Obama to Intervene

This seems like a story that should be getting a little more attention. I talked to someone this morning who works for a manufacturing firm and they've been having weekly meetings on this for 3 months. They've built up an extra month's inventory just in case, but since every day of strike means about 7 days of backup in the ports, that one month's supply would only be good if the strike lasted for less than about 5 days. Finding alternate routes is difficult, both because other companies will be doing the same thing and the fact that some of their product could freeze if the shipping route goes too far north.

President Barack Obama is facing pressure to intervene and prevent a strike that would gridlock eastern U.S. ports and risk damaging industries from retail to manufacturing. 

Federal mediators have been pushing for a deal between dockworkers and their employers before a Dec. 29 deadline. Talks between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance broke down last week amid a dispute over so-called container royalty fees, or levies that supplement wages. 

A walkout would be the first at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports since 1977, and would halt shipments of containerized cargo, including clothing, frozen foods and car parts. Obama would be left to choose between forsaking a pro-labor stance by invoking the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act and allowing a union action that could compound the effects of the fiscal cliff. 

Biotech and Mining comparison...

From the book Cracking the Code:

For every success in biopharma there are at least 10 failures. In a way, the biomedicine industry is a bit like the mining industry: it’s a capital intensive industry full of thousands of small companies trying to strike gold or other commodities; it’s an industry where travelling hopefully is often better than arrival; it has a fair share of charlatans; and when small exploration companies are successful, they often partner with mining giants, or sell outright to them. Mining is an industry where the time lags are long between the enterprise’s creation and the first mine (though not as long as in biotech) and, like biotech (although again, not to the same extent) it involves regulatory processes that create barriers both of time and of money.

Book TV: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

This interview is from 2009.

Liaquat Ahamed presents in his book, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World that four of the world's central bankers attempted to rebuild the global economy following World War I but instead contributed to the economic collapse that led to the Great Depression.  Mr. Ahamed profiles the central bankers from England, Germany, France, and the United States and examines their collective fear of inflation, their interest in the gold standard, and their failed plans to stabilize the international economy.  Liaquat Ahamed discusses his book with Gerald Seib, executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal.  Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance was the 2010 Pulitzer Prize recepient for history.

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Related book: Lords of Finance

Graham and Dodd quote

From Security Analysis, 1940 edition: 

"Characteristically, stocks thought to have good prospects sell at relatively high prices. How can the investor tell whether or not the price is too high? We think that there is no good answer to this question —in fact we are inclined to think that even if one knew for a certainty just what a company is fated to earn over a long period of years, it would still be impossible to tell what is a fair price to pay for it today.....On the other hand, assume that the investor strives to avoid paying a high premium for future prospects by choosing companies about which he is personally optimistic, although they are not favorites of the stock market. No doubt this is the type of judgment that, if sound, will prove most remunerative. But, by the very nature of the case, it must represent the activity of strong-minded and daring individuals rather than investment in accordance with accepted rules and standards."

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Aspirin for a Broken Femur

Since 2009, both the stock market and the broad U.S. economy have been dependent on perpetual support from massive federal deficits and unprecedented money creation. Meanwhile, Wall Street is content to ignore the extent of this support, and looks on every movement of the economy as a sign of intrinsic health – which is a lot like admiring the graceful flight of a dead parrot swinging by a string from the ceiling fan. 

To put some numbers on this, it’s worth noting that since 1940, the S&P 500 has achieved an average annual total return of 14.5% in weeks where it was above its 200-day moving average as of the prior week’s close, and just 4.4% when it was below its 200-day moving average (only slightly more than the 4.2% average Treasury bill yield during that time, and with deep drawdowns usually concentrated in this partition). By contrast, since 2009, the S&P 500 has achieved an average total return of just 5.4% annually when it has been above its 200-day average, versus 36.7% when it has been below. Put another way, advancing trends above the 200-day average have repeatedly failed, making limited net progress overall, but declines have been halted and often breathtakingly reversed with each intervention. This pattern also reflects an unfinished cycle, the completion of which is likely to significantly damage the appeal of reflexively “buying the dip.” 

The recent pattern isn’t just an artifact of the rebound from the 2009 low. Even since 2010, the S&P 500 has gained just 1.5% annually when it has been above its 200-day moving average, versus a striking 46.3% annual return when it has been below. Needless to say, this pattern is not necessarily indicative of how the S&P 500 will behave in the future, and is in fact contrary to the historical pattern. Policy makers have committed a staggering amount of fiscal and monetary resources to kick-the-can strategies, following policies that ultimately cannot be sustained, in order to prevent outcomes that ultimately cannot be prevented. The eventual restructuring of unserviceable mortgage, sovereign, and financial debt is among those outcomes. 

A quick look at how the deleveraging of the U.S. economy is going - total credit market debt has now reached $55 trillion, including government, corporate and household sectors, representing 3.5 times GDP (down only slightly from the 3.8 multiple observed at the recession trough of early 2009). To put this in perspective, every 100 basis point change in interest rates on maturing and refinanced debt now implies a redistribution of income between borrowers and lenders on the order of $500 billion annually. The Fed has worked tirelessly to ensure that borrowing is as cheap as possible – the risk being that any departure from that would give every interest rate change of one percent an annual economic effect the same size as the “fiscal cliff.”

Frank Martin PBS Interview

Thanks to Steve for passing this along.

Watch The Fiscal Cliff on PBS. See more from Economic Outlook.

Link

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Related book: A Decade of Delusions: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession

Interview with Rachel Fox

Rachel Fox is a 16-year-old actress, most prominently featured on the shows “Desperate Housewives” and “Melissa and Joey”.  She has also become passionate about investing and trading, and has a website, Fox on Stocks, where she gives her thoughts and educates readers on things she's learned or is in the process of learning. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing her. My questions (in bold) and her answers are below. When speaking with Rachel and reading her answers to my questions, the one thing that really popped into my mind were Steve Jobs' words of advice at the end of his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." If the hunger and work ethic Rachel shows in everything she does stays with her, I think you're going to be hearing much more from her in the future, and I'm looking forward to following her progress.

Interview with Rachel Fox

The investing spark hits people in many different ways. I remember one investor describing his interest being sparked when his father explained the stock quotes in the newspaper to him, and he realized that he could make money by just buying shares of stocks and then sitting back letting the market work without him having to strain too much. From what I understand, you also got the investing spark through a desire to make your money work for you, and that you got some early education from your mom about how the markets work. So can you tell readers a little more about how your interest in investing and trading was initially started and how it has progressed since that time?

My interest in trading came about immediately after my mom explained the concept of the stock market to me when I was about 15 years old. When I was 14 years old, I explored different business opportunities to invest my money in. I considered real estate buying and selling, and was also very interested in owning billboards, that is until I heard about the stock market. I had never heard of a simpler way to make money. Letting the market do all the work seemed like the greatest thing ever. Not only is it a carefree way to make money but there is also an amazing level of excitement and adrenaline when I'm trading. I love it and couldn't live without it.

Initially, I traded stocks in a virtual trading account so I could learn the basics and show my parents that it was a profitable endeavor for me. I made my first real trade after my family went to our friend’s house for Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years ago. There, I met a man who told me about a stock that I should invest in that was trading for $2 and was sure to rise to $10 very soon. I was so excited to make the trade, I finally convinced my parents to let me do it...... I have to say, taking a stock tip was the worst mistake ever. The stock is currently trading for $.02. But I was excited anyway and knew I could figure out which stocks would rise and which would likely fall. I used this very difficult lesson to learn to trust only my choices. It was good to learn the lesson early and I'm glad I did it because it was the thing that got me started.

My interest in trading hasn't evolved too much and I don't want it to. I'd hate to turn into one of those jaded, fearful traders who have been doing this for too many years and who have grown cynical with the process. When that happens, it dampens your results. Having traded almost daily for a little over a year, I don’t think about the risks I'm really taking everyday. But that's great and it makes me a fearless trader.

I think a lot of medical students learn medicine using the ‘see one, do one, teach one’ method. Similarly, I think learning investing can be done in a similar way, and using a blog to do it is one way to go about the teaching part of that process. So for you, how much has writing about investing and explaining concepts to readers helped you develop and learn?

Oh my gosh, writing about investing is a perfect way to better understand the market. It has helped a huge amount. The research I do to produce each blog goes deep so I learn so much about individual companies, individual stocks, entire industries, ratios, stochastics charts, earnings reports, Fiscal Cliff…it’s endless and exciting. I can never get enough and I can never learn too much.

The danger, on the other side of this, is that sometimes, too much information can take you off your game. It can make you paranoid and it can make you change what you would otherwise do successfully. Too much information can mess you up. The trick is to take what you need and then not consider information that is irrelevant, redundant, or that you simply don’t agree with.

In this world of information overload, that is sometimes difficult to do.

One of my favorite investing quotes is this one from Seth Klarman, whom I think is one of the greatest investors of all-time: “To achieve long-term success over many financial market and economic cycles, observing a few rules is not enough. Too many things change too quickly in the investment world for that approach to succeed. It is necessary instead to understand the rationale behind the rules in order to appreciate why they work when they do and don't when they don't.” In your young investing career, what are some of the rules you’ve learned, and some of the rules you maybe thought you had learned but where hands-on experience led you to change your mind?

I love this question.

The first and most important rule that I've learned that hasn't changed is never take a stock tip. Trust your own gut and act fearlessly on your own beliefs. You should only make trades that come from your own mind.

Second, buy low sell high. It works every time :) especially when the stock actually goes higher.

Third, don’t buy overbought stocks and don’t sell short oversold stocks.

Fourth, don’t be emotional when trading and don’t get attached.

As far as rules that I learned but I quickly changed due to hands on experience are

1. Diversify your risk. I truly understand diversification and appreciate it and know that in a long-term portfolio it is essential to diversify. However, I'm a day trader. In order for me to gain a comfortable sum of money on each trade, I need to buy large quantities of stock so I generally do and therefore, I tend to favor one or two stocks at a time instead of 10 or 15 at a time to attain large volume trades.
2. Stay away from stocks with a high P/E ratio. I’ve successfully traded stocks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Starbucks with a high PE ratio and although I look at it as a factor, I don’t stay away from it.
3. Some experts believe it is not good to employ dollar cost averaging techniques after you buy a stock and the stock price goes down. On one of my most profitable trades ever, I faced fear square in the eyes after I went long on a stock, the stock price dropped substantially and I went ahead and bought more. A lot more. The stock price soared and I made a killing.

I was looking through some quotes from the book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and this one stood out: “Don’t misunderstand me.  I never allowed pleasure to interfere with business.  When I lost it was always because I was wrong and not because I was suffering from dissipation or excesses.  There were never any shattered nerves or rum-shaken limbs to spoil my game.  I couldn’t afford anything that kept me from feeling physically and mentally fit.  Even now I am usually in bed by ten.  As a young man I never kept late hours, because I could not do business properly on insufficient sleep.” As someone who is a successful actress, rock star, and investor, how do you balance your life to make sure you can give all your interests their proper time?

Haha! I wish I couldn’t do business on insufficient sleep and I wish I never kept late hours and got a lot of sleep…but I don’t really. I try to live big every single minute of my day so I sometimes go to bed at 1am, 2am, or later and sometimes I fall asleep from exhaustion earlier. I’m not into illegal drugs or anything not age appropriate, I’m just on the go, love to work, perform, and travel as much as possible.

Even though I live big during the day and often into the am (sometimes writing Fox on Stocks blogs), I am very disciplined and I get up at 6:00am most weekdays to prepare for the 6:30am (9:30am EST time) NYSE opening bell.

I work best and accomplish the most when I have a million things to do at one time. My favorite days are when I’m on set shooting a tv show or film, making trades in between takes, then running off to a singing session, then out to a movie or a party with friends, then getting up early the next day to do it again.

Since I’m 16, my body is physically able. (I also run 5 miles, sometimes each day, but at least every other day.) I’ll likely slow down and need more balance when I get older…but until then, balance is not for me. I think it’s more living big fearlessly and I’ll balance when my physical body forces me to.

One of the topics I’ve frequently brought up on this blog is the idea of expertise and the process it takes to be successful at something, whether it’s investing or in some other arena. When we briefly talked about this on the phone, you mentioned that there was more to becoming an actress than just being good at acting, similar to the fact that there is more to building a successful investing business than just being a good investor. One needs to build networks of people, get clients, navigate the politics of the business, and other things that turn a particular skill into a successful, complete package. Can you discuss some of the lessons you’ve learned along these lines from the acting business, and how you are trying to apply those as you continue to get more and more into investing?

In the entertainment industry, it's more important to have those connections and to learn how to navigate the political side of the business. Because I don't work for an investing company and only trade on my own, there really isn't too much political navigating to do. That's another thing I love about stock trading. I get to do something I love that I have complete control over. There are no political games or people to impress. I trade to make money. It’s that simple.
 
One very important thing that carries over from the entertainment industry to my day to day stock trading is the element of doing everything fearlessly. Every time I film something, I know I have to make my choices and execute them fearlessly. In stock trading, I have to do that same thing...enter into every trade with full confidence and strength.

Another thing I’ve learned from the entertainment industry that I use in stock trading is to constantly and quickly learn more than it seems possible to learn and take into my brain then with piercing focus, I take action – make a choice at the very highest levels. After that, I have to QUICKLY LET GO, learn from what I did, then move on to the next. No dwelling. Move onward.

Warren Buffett—one one of the investing heroes of this blog—has said that the only diploma hanging on the wall in his office is a certificate of completion for a Dale Carnegie course he took when he was younger that allowed him to get comfortable speaking in public. He has called it “the most important degree that I have.” Similarly, I believe your mom put you into a program to get you comfortable with public speaking when you were young. At what age did you enter that program, and how much do you think that helped your acting career?

It's the reason I'm an actress today. When I was four, almost five years old, my mom put my sister and me into theatre classes so we could get really comfortable with public speaking. I ended up falling in love with acting but in addition gained an incredible amount of confidence speaking to large groups of people.

I think it’s about being comfortable in your own skin, knowing your strengths and weakness, being confident enough to do huge things, then being fearless.

To conclude, can you give us some thoughts on your future goals, both in investing and acting, which seems like it is still your number one passion? And can you also let readers know how they can follow you more closely?

Acting is by far my number one passion. I love it more than everything and nothing could ever replace it.

My goals are to work on sets almost every day of my life, win an Oscar, and always trade fearlessly.

To follow me more closely, readers can visit foxonstocks.com to read my daily blog and follow my twitter @foxonstocks. For all things acting and rock related, follow me on instagram @rachelgianafox.
 

Follow me on Twitter @rachelgfox and check out my website www.rachelgfox.com

Thank you Rachel!

FT Alphaville’s Christmas podcast: Dylan Grice

Found via The Big Picture.

David Keohane and Izabella Kaminska are joined for FT Alphaville’s Christmas podcast by Dylan Grice, until recently part of Société Générale’s global strategy team, to discuss the economy in 2013, robots, patents, inflation and, perhaps most importantly, the difference between a Star Trek and a Star Wars economy.

Simoleon Sense: Miguel Barbosa's Interview with Michael Mauboussin

Link: Miguel Barbosa's Interview with Michael Mauboussin

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Related book: The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing

Related previous post: Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success

Jack Schwager on Opalesque.TV

Found via ValueWalk. Schwager discusses his newest book, Market Sense and Nonsense, in which Joel Greenblatt wrote the forward to the book.

Link to video: Jack Schwager's new book “Market Sense and Nonsense” – 30 years observing investment mistakes

Good question to ask management teams...

From the book The Investment Checklist by Michael Shearn:

“If you were away for one year, which key metrics would best tell you how the business was doing?”

This Is Not a Profile of Nassim Taleb

Taleb is in the university but not of it. He spent the first couple decades of his career as a derivatives trader before turning to scholarship and essay writing in his mid-40s. Taleb is a professor of risk engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. Despite his wall of degrees (he has an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a doctorate from the University of Paris), he believes that universities propagate "touristification," another term he coined, a phenomenon that occurs when what should be an exciting exploration turns into a programmatic exercise. It's better to be an adventurer than a tourist. Education isn't the only result of this modern sin; gym machines and "the electronic calendar" fall short as well. 

Taleb has a low opinion of most professors. He titles one section of the new book "The Charlatan, the Academic, and the Showman." In a chart, Taleb divides professions into three categories: fragile, robust, and antifragile. It's bad to be fragile, better to be robust, best to be antifragile. Artists and writers are antifragile. Postal employees and truck drivers are robust. Academics, bureaucrats, and the pope are fragile. Benedict, beware. 

Most of Taleb's ire is directed at business schools, specifically the one at Harvard. At Harvard they "lecture birds to fly," then arrogantly claim credit when the fledglings become airborne. He rails against the "Soviet-Harvard delusion," linking an institution that's graduated thousands with a state that killed millions. What is the delusion, exactly? It is a belief in a top-down system that tries to control and protect, purportedly for mankind's benefit, thereby eliminating the natural stressors and necessary randomness that create strength and encourage enterprise. Dekulakization and course catalogs are symptoms of the same ailment. 

Taleb has no patience for so-called structured learning. "Only the autodidacts are free," he writes in the book. He pursued his real education in his spare time, doing only as much as was required to pass his courses. At 13, he set himself a goal of reading for 30 to 60 hours a week, pretty much a full-time job. 

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Related book: Antifragile

Bill Ackman on CNBC: Why I Am Shorting Herbalife

Link

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UPDATE: The presentation (over 300 slides) is available HERE.

Spider That Builds Its Own Spider Decoys Discovered

A spider that builds elaborate, fake spiders and hangs them in its web has been discovered in the Peruvian Amazon. 

Believed to be a new species in the genus Cyclosa, the arachnid crafts the larger spider from leaves, debris and dead insects. Though Cyclosa includes other sculpting arachnids, this is the first one observed to build a replica with multiple, spidery legs. 

Scientists suspect the fake spiders serve as decoys, part of a defense mechanism meant to confuse or distract predators. “It seems like a really well evolved and very specialized behavior,” said Phil Torres, who described the find in a blog entry written for Rainforest Expeditions. Torres, a biologist and science educator, divides his time between Southern California and Peru, where he’s involved in research and education projects. 

“Considering that spiders can already make really impressive geometric designs with their webs, it’s no surprise that they can take that leap to make an impressive design with debris and other things,” he said. 

Pershing Square's Ackman shorts Herbalife; stock skids

Ackman's presentation will also be streamed live at 9:30am today, HERE. 

(Reuters) - Activist investor William Ackman confirmed on Wednesday that he is betting against the stock of Herbalife Ltd (HLF.N) in a move that sent shares of the weight management product company reeling and sparked a caustic rebuke from its chief executive officer. 

... 

On Thursday, the fund manager is scheduled to lay out his argument for the move at a hastily arranged investment presentation in New York. But Wall Street was already abuzz with the move on Wednesday afternoon when his position became public. 

The move is particularly noteworthy because Pershing Square became the first hedge fund to publicly acknowledge its short position in Herbalife, with some investors beginning to question its business strategy.

Kyle Bass' Keynote at AmerCatalyst 2012

Found via ValueWalk.

Link to: Kyle Bass' AC2012 Keynote

Don't Fall for the Shale Boom Hype - Chris Martenson Interview with OilPrice.com

We are in the midst of an amazing energy boom, but by sweeping the idea of peak oil under the rug we are ignoring a significant fact: the relationship between hydrocarbon reserves and flow rates are not the same as they used to be—reserves have increased but flow rates are not as high or sustainable. 

Perhaps the most important thing we need to pay attention to is net energy returns, on which we run society. Massive new discoveries are only netting a fraction of the returns compared to earlier decades. 

While we must proceed into the energy future with caution—and the knowledge that analysts may be overselling the shale boom—there are also, as always, major opportunities in this story and they can be found in the wider trends related to improving energy efficiency. 

Looking at our energy future in more detail we were fortunate to speak with the well known economist and author of the Crash Course Chris Martenson. You can find out more about Chris and the Crash course at his website Peak Prosperity.

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UPDATE: Link to Part 2

Meredith Whitney: Why I'm Now Bullish on Banks

Earlier this year she didn't like the BAC and C when the prices were lower, but now she says it is the best opportunity in 4 or 5 years. I don't know enough about the banks to tell if things are a lot different and more clear than they were then, but I thought it was something worth pointing out.


Link

Bill Gates' Top Reads of 2012

Link to: Bill Gates' Top Reads of 2012 

The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Got Its Way in Mexico

Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited, an examination by The New York Times found. 

Jared Diamond: Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers

This is an excerpt from his new book (which comes out on 12/31) The World Until Yesterday.

I find myself thinking a lot about the New Guinea people with whom I have been working for the last 49 years, and about the comments of Westerners who have lived for years in hunter-gatherer societies and watched children grow up there. Other Westerners and I are struck by the emotional security, self-­confidence, curiosity, and autonomy of members of small-scale societies, not only as adults but already as children. We see that people in small-scale societies spend far more time talking to each other than we do, and they spend no time at all on passive entertainment supplied by outsiders, such as television, videogames, and books. We are struck by the precocious development of social skills in their children. These are qualities that most of us admire, and would like to see in our own children, but we discourage development of those qualities by ranking and grading our children and constantly ­telling them what to do. The adolescent identity crises that plague American teenagers aren’t an issue for hunter-gatherer children. The Westerners who have lived with hunter-gatherers and other small-scale societies speculate that these admirable qualities develop because of the way in which their children are brought up: namely, with constant security and stimulation, as a result of the long nursing period, sleeping near parents for ­several years, far more social models available to children through ­allo-parenting, far more social stimulation through constant physical contact and proximity of caretakers, instant caretaker responses to a child’s crying, and the minimal amount of physical punishment.

Broyhill Asset Management on Coca-Cola Hellenic (CCH)

An investment in CCH represents a compelling opportunity to own a high quality business characterized by high customer captivity with significant economies of scale at a substantial discount to intrinsic value.  Shares have been dragged down by the weight of the Greek stock index at the same time that revenues have suffered from volume declines in established markets, further compounded by double-digit cost inflation which has proven to be detrimental to margins. Importantly, each of these factors appears to be transitory.  If we are right, we should get paid in two ways as both the earnings and the multiple improve.

The coming shift in the company’s listing from Athens to London appears to have sparked a change in investor sentiment.  We expect this move to serve as an inflection point for the stock, driving further multiple expansion over time.  While current sales and future growth are largely driven by the world’s emerging market population, investors have been unable to take their eyes off of the slow-motion European train-wreck represented by CCH’s more mature market exposure – at least until now.  We believe the voluntary share exchange and the London listing should do the trick and properly refocus investor attention on fundamentals.

Ben Franklin quote

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

David Tepper on CNBC

Link to videos:

Tepper: 'Pretty Good Economy, Right Now'

Tepper: Not Much Downside in Markets 

Fed Betting 6% Unemployment Rate Inflation Trigger: Tepper

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Roach Motel Monetary Policy

Strong leading indicators such as the CFNAI and the Philly Fed Index have been weak for many months, and the deterioration in new orders has moved from a slowing of growth to outright contraction in recent months. In the order of events, a slowing in real sales, personal income, and personal consumption expenditure typically follows – these are called coincident indicators. These growth rates generally only weaken materially once a recession is in progress, and reach their highest correlation with recession about 6-months into the downturn. That’s what we’ve begun to observe over the past few months, adding to our impression that the U.S. joined a global (developed economy) recession during the third quarter of this year. The most lagging set of economic indicators includes employment measures, where I’ve frequently noted that the year-over-year growth rate of payroll employment lags the year-over-year growth rate of real consumption with a lag of about 5 months. As a result, the year-over-year growth rate in payroll employment reaches its highest correlation with recession nearly a year after a recession has started – another way of saying that it is among the last indicators to examine for confirmation of an economic downturn. 

All of that said, our concern about recession emphatically is not what drives our concern about the stock market here. In early March, our measures of prospective return/risk moved to the lowest 1% of historical data based on a broad ensemble of indicators and consistent evidence of market weakness following similar conditions in numerous subsets of historical data. Those conditions remain largely in place today. 

There’s no question that massive fiscal and monetary interventions have played havoc with the time-lag between unfavorable conditions and unfavorable outcomes in recent years, which prompted us back in April to introduce various restrictions to our hedging criteria (see below). Still, present conditions remain strongly negative on our estimates. Meanwhile, the stock market is not “running away” – at best, these interventions have allowed the market to churn at elevated levels. Only a month ago, the S&P 500 Index was below its level of March 2012, when our estimates shifted to the most negative 1% of the data, and was within about 11% of its April 2010 levels, which is the last time that our present ensemble approach would have encouraged a significant exposure to market risk. Notably, as of last week, an upward spike in long-term Treasury yields took market conditions to an overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising yields syndrome – which has tended to be anathema to the stock market, even prior to the more limited downward bouts of recent years. 

Steve Jobs at Apple's 1997 WWDC

A big thanks to Bill for passing this along! When watching, remember to keep in mind that this was 1997. His foresight into the way much the future would play out was pretty remarkable.


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Forbes interviews Cliff Asness

Found via ValueWalk.


Link to Part One


Link to Part Two

Jim Grant on Capital Account

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The Death of the Dollar? – By Rob Arnott

To no one’s surprise, the Fed announced that it will replace the expiring “Operation Twist”—in which it was selling $45 billion of short maturity treasuries and buying a like amount of long maturity treasuries every month—with continued purchases of long bonds. The Fed announced in September that it will buy $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds, to help bring life back into the real estate market.

What does this mean?

The Federal Reserve Board will now be “printing” $85 billion a month in new U.S. dollars in order to buy $85 billion a month in bonds, up from $40 billion a month previously. Doing the math, that’s $1,020 billion—just over $1 trillion—a year. The Fed’s balance sheet had $800 billion in assets before the Global Financial Crisis started in 2008; it’s now over $3 trillion, set to rise $1 trillion a year.

If we’re spending $1 trillion a year more than we produce as a nation (the national deficit) and are financing it by printing $1 trillion a year of crisp newly printed bills (actually, bits in a computer), we’re on a dangerous path. Printing our own money to buy our own debt works fine… until it doesn’t.

Richard Duncan: Wealth Preservation through Diversification

The excerpt below is from the final chapter of The New Depression by Richard Duncan on inflation and deflation.

Wealth Preservation through Diversification

The hard truth is that it is not easy to preserve wealth. If it were, the families who were wealthy 200 years ago would still be wealthy today—and generally, they are not. In the very harsh economic environment that is likely to prevail over the next ten years, it is likely that a great deal of wealth is going to be destroyed. The economic system is in crisis and government policy, rather than market fundamentals, will determine the direction of asset prices. If the government fails to borrow and spend enough, the economy will collapse into a deflationary spiral. If it borrows, prints, and spends too much, there will be very high rates of inflation.

Future government policy simply cannot be foretold with any degrees of precision. Active wealth managers will have to rapidly adjust their portfolios in response to changes in policy. That will be no easy task, even for the experts. Those unable to devote all their time and energy to deciphering the kaleidoscopic changes in the politics and policies of Washington have the option of constructing a broadly diversified investment portfolio that would ensure significant wealth preservation regardless of whether the price level moves up or down.

The following are five components of a diversified portfolio:

1. Commodities generally perform well in an inflationary environment and suffer in times of disinflation or deflation. Gold and silver benefit most from quantitative easing, which undermines public confidence in the national currency.

2. Stocks tend to rise (1) in a healthy economic environment, (2) when central banks create money and pump it into the financial markets (so long as they don’t cause too much inflation), (3) when the government runs a budget surplus and crowds in the private sector, and (4) when the trade deficit is larger than the budget deficit. The last two will be explained below. Stocks tend to perform badly when inflation at the CPI level exceeds 4 percent, in a weak economic environment, and, particularly, during a severe period of debt deflation.

3. Bonds benefit from disinflation or mild deflation and suffer when there is inflation. In the third quarter of 2011, the yield on ten-year government bonds fell to a record low of 1.7 percent. The Fed played a role in pushing the yields down by printing money and buying bonds. There was more to it than that, however. There was also a private sector flight to safety into government bonds as a result of fears that the Greek government would default on its debt, which would have resulted in a systemic banking crisis. Furthermore, U.S. yields seemed to be declining for the same reasons that Japanese bond yields had fallen after Japan’s economic bubble popped: the lack of viable investment opportunities elsewhere in the economy.

The yield on ten-year JGBs (Japanese government bonds) has fallen below 1 percent. It is possible that U.S. government bond yields will as well. However, the risk-reward tradeoff of investing in government bonds with such low yields appears highly unfavorable, particularly given the risk that inflation could easily move very much higher at some point during the next ten years.

4. Rental property can provide a relatively steady stream of income, although, as the experience of the last 15 years demonstrates, the capital value of the property can fluctuate widely. U.S. home prices have fallen by more than 30 percent on average since the crisis began and they could fall further, even significantly further in the case of a severe debt-deflation scenario. Even then, if well located, rental properties would continue to generate rental income. In a worse-case scenario, rents would fall significantly from current levels. If they do, however, most other prices would also tend to be much lower, leaving the owner relatively just as well off.

5. Financing rental properties with fixed-interest-rate debt adds a further element of portfolio diversification. Borrowing at fixed interest rates provides a hedge against inflation. Should inflation move higher, the rents would adjust upward, but the debt owed would remain the same, which would effectively reduce the burden of the debt. The risk, however, is that in a severe debt-deflation, rents would fall so much that the rental income would be insufficient to service the mortgage. A prudent loan-to-value ratio mitigates that danger.

Those are the basic options: commodities (including gold and silver), stocks (preferably stocks with a good dividend yield), bonds, rental property, and fixed-interest-rate debt. In combination, they form a broadly diversified portfolio capable of preserving a significant amount of wealth in practically any conceivable economic environment.

During a period of high rates of inflation, the value of the bonds and the stocks would fall, but the price of the commodities would appreciate. Meanwhile, the rental property would continue to generate cash flow and the inflation-adjusted burden of debt would decline.

In case of deflation, commodity prices would fall. Stock prices would also fall, but the decline would be offset to some extent by dividend income. The value of the bonds in the portfolio would rise. And the rental income would continue to generate cash flow, although in lower amounts if rents adjust downward. Mortgage payments would remain unchanged.

Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? or, What I Learned while Studying Apoptosis – By Y. Lazebnik

A quote from this article that I think relates to investing: “It becomes slowly apparent that even if the anticipated gold deposits exist, finding them is not guaranteed. At this stage, the Chinese saying that it is difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat, comes to mind too often. If you want to continue meaningful research at this time of widespread desperation, David said, learn how to make good tools and how to keep your mind clear under adverse circumstances.”

This article by Yu. Lazebnik, Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? or, What I Learned while Studying Apoptosis has already been published in English (Cancer Cell, 2002, 2, 179-182) and in Russian (Uspekhi Gerontologii, 2003, No. 12, 166-171). Nevertheless, we have undertaken its secondary publication in our journal for two reasons: first, our journal has different readers, and, second, the great significance of this manifest of Yuri Lazebnik. The author in bright and clever form shows the emerging necessity to create formalized language designed to describe complicated systems of regulation of biochemical processes in living cells. The article is published with permission of Cancer Cell and Uspekhi Gerontologii.

The Manual of Ideas: Interview Jean-Marie Eveillard

Link

Dealbook Conference Video: Ray Dalio, Steve Schwarzman and David Rubinstein

Link

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Related previous posts:

Bridgewater's Dalio on Europe, Economy, Strategy (video)

A Conversation with Ray Dalio (Video)

Related links:

An In-Depth Look at Deleveragings

How the Economic Machine Works

Book excerpt for “Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat” - By Paul Jaminet, Shou-Ching Jaminet

There are some differences from Art De Vany (my usual, go-to resource on health), but this looks like a very interesting read. Click on the text below to go to the excerpt.

Do NOT eat:

• Grains and cereals (including wheat, oats, and corn but excluding rice) or any products made from them (including bread and pasta). However, it is okay to eat gluten-free products made from rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch. 

• Sugar, corn syrup, or products containing them (soda, sweets). 

• Beans or peanuts (such as soybeans, kidney beans, jack beans, or pinto beans). 

• Omega-6-rich vegetable seed oils (such as soybean oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, and canola oil).

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Book: Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat

Acquisitions....

From the book The Investment Checklist by Michael Shearn:

“Understanding how and why management makes acquisitions is one of the few concrete ways for investors to reduce uncertainty in assessing a company’s chances of success.”

Historic Fed Announcement Yet Unchanged Markets? – By Mohamed El-Erian

Analysts will be hard pressed to explain how equity markets ended unchanged on the day of an unprecedented policy announcement from the Fed. Rather than resort to cliches, they could consider the competing emotions felt by a patient taking an experimental drug that has not been through clinical tests. Let me explain.

UNDERSTANDING IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR CONVEXITY (ANTIFRAGILITY) - By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Something central, very central, is missing in historical accounts of scientific and technological discovery. The discourse and controversies focus on the role of luck as opposed to teleological programs (from telos, "aim"), that is, ones that rely on pre-set direction from formal science. This is a faux-debate: luck cannot lead to formal research policies; one cannot systematize, formalize, and program randomness. The driver is neither luck nor direction, but must be in the asymmetry (or convexity) of payoffs, a simple mathematical property that has lied hidden from the discourse, and the understanding of which can lead to precise research principles and protocols.

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Related book: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

RAY DALIO: The US Economy Is Facing A Rare Set Of Circumstances That Will Be Bad For Markets

Found via ValueWalk.

At the Dealbook conference, Ray Dalio, Steve Schwarzman and David Rubinstein just wrapped up a panel on investing and markets.

Of particular interest was Ray Dalio, the hedge fund god who has been killing it throughout the crisis.

And so you have to be intrigued that he's bearish.

He's not wildly so (thinks stocks will do better than bonds) but his basic idea is that risk premiums are maxed out, and have to come down. In other words, people have paid up max dollar for all risk assets thanks to the Fed dropping rates to rock bottom. Now that will reverse.

His novel set of circumstances he sees is an economy that faces austerity (due to the Fiscal Cliff, etc.) coupled with a  Fed that's mostly blown its bazooka, and can't get much more juice out of QE (he believes that QE does less and less because the Fed can't push that much that much more money from bonds into riskier assets).

So the novel set of circumstances are:

• Yields can't go down anymore.
• Austerity is coming.
• Economy is running out of steam.
• QE is losing its efficacy.
• Rate turn probably finally coming late in 2013.

So there you go: Rates going up, austerity coming, Fed out of bullets. Bad for risk assets.

Berkshire Hathaway buys back $1.2 billion of Class A stock

With the share repurchase ceiling increased to 120% of book value, Berkshire can now buy back A shares up to a little over $134,000 per share, and B shares up to a little over $89 per share.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK-A) spent $1.2 billion buying back 9,200 of its Class A shares from the estate of a long-time investor, Warren Buffett's conglomerate said on Wednesday.

Berkshire, which operates a variety of companies in the insurance, energy, rail and utility sectors, bought the shares at a cost of $131,000 apiece and may buy more stock in the market at prices up to 120 percent of book value.

The stock repurchase was authorized by the board of directors, which raised the price limit for Berkshire's repurchases to the 120 percent of book value level.

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Related previous post: Berkshire's book value and share repurchases

Related link: T2: An Analysis of Berkshire Hathaway (updated)

23andMe lowers price to $99

This price cut is a key part of our drive to grow the 23andMe member base to one million people. This will power research and medical breakthroughs and allow all of us together to revolutionize health care and help people live longer, healthier lives.

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Related article: 23andMe wants to change the face of health care

Mohnish Pabrai on The Fiscal Cliff and the demand for autos

Found via the Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax.


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Jeff Gundlach's latest presentation

Found via Zero Hedge. Mebane Faber also commented on the presentation (HERE), and posted a very good chart showing the Japan, US, Poland and Indonesia CAPEs from 10 years ago, and how the markets have performed since then.

Link to: “To Catch A Thief” – by Jeffrey Gundlach

How to Control an Army of Zombies – by Carl Zimmer

Found via The Big Picture.

In the rain forests of Costa Rica lives Anelosimus octavius, a species of spider that sometimes displays a strange and ghoulish habit.

From time to time these spiders abandon their own webs and build radically different ones, a home not for the spider but for a parasitic wasp that has been living inside it. Then the spider dies — a zombie architect, its brain hijacked by its parasitic invader — and out of its body crawls the wasp’s larva, which has been growing inside it all this time.

The current issue of the prestigious Journal of Experimental Biology is entirely dedicated to such examples of zombies in nature. They are far from rare. Viruses, fungi, protozoans, wasps, tapeworms and a vast number of other parasites can control the brains of their hosts and get them to do their bidding. But only recently have scientists started to work out the sophisticated biochemistry that the parasites use.

“The knowledge that parasites can manipulate their hosts is old. The new part is how they do it,” said Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, a co-editor of the new issue. “The last 5 to 10 years have really been exciting.”

John Mauldin: Peak Oil or Peak Energy? – A Happy Solution

A consistent theme in this letter has been the connections between items that may seem to be far removed from each other but are actually linked at the very core. If you push on one end you get a reaction in what would seem to be the most unlikely spots. Today we explore the connection between the fiscal deficit and energy policy. Everyone in Washington is starting to “get religion” about wanting to fix the deficit, with serious thinkers on all sides acknowledging that there must be reform and a path to a balanced budget. Burgeoning healthcare and Social Security costs are rightly pointed to as the problem, and entitlement reform will soon be front and center.

But the fiscal (government) deficit in the US cannot go away unless we also deal with the trade deficit. As we will see, it is a simple accounting issue, and one based on 400 years of accepted accounting principles. And dealing with the trade deficit in the US means working with our energy policy.

Bruce Greenwald and Richard Koo: The Great Recession: Structural and Cyclical Causes

Found via csinvesting.


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Genetics for Fun and Profit: Andrew Hessel at TEDxVilnius

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HOW TO WIN AT FORECASTING: A Conversation with Philip Tetlock

There's a question that I've been asking myself for nearly three decades now and trying to get a research handle on, and that is why is the quality of public debate so low and why is it that the quality often seems to deteriorate the more important the stakes get?

About 30 years ago I started my work on expert political judgment. It was the height of the Cold War. There was a ferocious debate about how to deal with the Soviet Union. There was a liberal view; there was a conservative view. Each position led to certain predictions about how the Soviets would be likely to react to various policy initiatives.

One thing that became very clear, especially after Gorbachev came to power and confounded the predictions of both liberals and conservatives, was that even though nobody predicted the direction that Gorbachev was taking the Soviet Union, virtually everybody after the fact had a compelling explanation for it. We seemed to be working in what one psychologist called an "outcome irrelevant learning situation." People drew whatever lessons they wanted from history.

Jeremy Grantham, Starving for Facts – By Vaclav Smil

A big thanks to Kent for passing this along. Two guys I really respect, with two very opposing views. Grantham’s article that Smil is referencing is available HERE.

Link to: Jeremy Grantham, Starving for Facts – By Vaclav Smil

Chris Anderson on EconTalk

Chris Anderson, author of Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his new book--the story of how technology is transforming the manufacturing business. Anderson argues that the plummeting prices of 3D printers and other tabletop design and manufacturing tools allows for individuals to enter manufacturing and for manufacturing to become customized in a way that was unimaginable until recently. Anderson explores how social networking interacts with this technology to create a new world of crowd-sourced design and production.

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Related book: Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

Related previous post: Chris Anderson on Why He's Leaving Digital for DIY

The Fed Chairman Is Not Always the Key Speaker at Jackson Hole - By Frank Martin

Found via Santangel’s Review.

If you hung on the words of Ben Bernanke at the August 31, 2012 Jackson Hole Symposium, you may have listened to the wrong speaker – or perhaps chosen the wrong time – if you were looking for clues about whether the markets for risk assets are trading at more or less than what they are intrinsically worth.

Two years earlier, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, nestled in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, was just another cozy mountain resort and conference center.  The annual gathering of central bankers and academics had drifted from place to place until the promoters discovered that a crowd-drawing luminary like Paul Volcker could be induced to participate because of his recreational passion for, of all things… trout fishing.  But in 2010, Jackson Hole was the location chosen by Fed Chairman Bernanke to famously promise, in so many words, that he would induce another rally in the markets in risk assets through a second round of quantitative easing.  And in truth, QE2 was spectacularly successful if measured by the 28% advance in the S&P 500 (an index of 500 stocks weighted by market value, considered widely held, and therefore thought to be representative of the stock market as a whole).

However, the most prophetic and yet simultaneously reviled (or simply ignored) speech at Jackson Hole came five years earlier, on August 27, 2005.  That was two years before the global financial system began the meltdown that is to some extent contained today only because of ongoing massive infusions of liquidity. The speaker during the otherwise upbeat celebration of Alan Greenspan’s larger-than-life career was a then obscure University of Chicago professor and former director of the IMF’s research department.  Raghuram G. Rajan’s  words were considered apostasy by many attendees, leaving Larry Summers livid.  Rajan had dared pose the question, “Has Financial Development Made the World a Riskier Place?”

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Fast-forward to August 31, 2012.  On that day when Ben Bernanke delivered his Jackson Hole assurances to a world of investors hanging on his every word, another speaker from a different central bank delivered a message that nearly slipped through the cracks.  Were it not for the keen eye of one reporter, Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal, about whose thoughtful work on behavioral economics I’ve written frequently, the speech may never have seen the light of day.  Even though he did not arrive at the podium accompanied by drum rolls, Andy Haldane, Executive Director for financial stability at the Bank of England, is not a man who should be taken lightly.  Unfortunately, even the intriguing title, “The Dog and the Frisbee,” was not bait enough to hold the attention of an audience for which a presentation on the application of complexity theory to regulatory oversight was simply … too complex.