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    • Mon Jul 28th 09:43 AM
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      Commented on:
      Equus Total Return: A Solar Inverter Play for Free!
      The above commenter is precisely right. I am interested in hearing how Mr. Morand justifies omitting the single most important fact about the stock.
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    • Mon Sep 17th 08:38 AM
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      Commented on:
      Buy Commodities In Canadian Loonies With Brookshire's CEF
      3 and 3? Good lord, I think I'd rather pay 2 and 20.
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    • Thu Sep 13th 10:31 AM
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      Commented on:
      EMC Corp.'s a Good Way To Play VMware
      VMW options are now available, and given the ludicrous implied volatility on VMW despite EMC being 60% levered to it, why wouldn't you write a call on VMW instead and hedge with EMC (given that you have privilege beyond simple buy-writes)? It's true that the relative valuation gap could continue to expand, but it could also contract, and the premium is a lot better.
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    • Tue Sep 11th 15:05 PM
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      Commented on:
      We're Listening: SA Homepage Now Includes Author Links
      Nice!
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    • Tue Aug 28th 08:16 AM
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      Commented on:
      Welcome to the New Seeking Alpha
      To give an example, of the top five commentaries in US Market, three are about the Fed. Am I supposed to use the headline to choose? In the old style I would have immediately gone to the author with the most credibility, or the article dealing specifically with impact on the Russell, etc. and gotten to the others if I had time. It's nice that you are improving the author recognition in the sidebar, but you just removed all front page visibility for authors!

      I do think the rebuild looks slick - there is way too much white space, in my opinion, but I can zoom out to help with that. I will stick with it and see how it wears.
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    • Tue Aug 28th 08:08 AM
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      Commented on:
      Welcome to the New Seeking Alpha
      I appreciate the reasoning for the change, but it just has the feel of two undifferentiated rivers to me. The information available to me immediately in the old style when deciding to click an article was headline, sector, tickers, author, date/time, even a brief snippet; now I am supposed to decide what to read based on the headline alone and whether it is "news" or "commentary" (I care about both).

      I can use my scroll wheel if you have more headlines than fit on one page, but the new layout just kills my ability to pick out meaningful articles. Unfortunately the quality of commentary is not uniform, and I don't want to read through a lot of trash or use the search function just to find something worth reading!
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    • Mon Aug 27th 09:55 AM
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      Commented on:
      Welcome to the New Seeking Alpha
      I already miss seeing bylines from the main navigation, but it doesn't look bad overall so far.
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    • Thu Aug 23rd 09:36 AM
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      Commented on:
      Is the Equity Market in its Statistical Infancy?
      The valuation of the stock market is determined by human nature more than fundamentals. Human nature is never "different this time" and has robust capability to hedge chaos into tedium and leverage tedium into chaos.
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    • Fri Aug 3rd 15:05 PM
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      John Hussman: We May Be Seeing a Phase Transition
      The numbers already include the impact of fees, as can be verified by checking the individual annual reports (Hussman is pretty on-the-ball regarding governance, although I agree that unfortunately you cannot just assume fees are subtracted these days).

      I'm not really sure why you're so concerned with the details of his prospectus mandate. I think you are overly concerned with the box, which is a helpful visual aid but only generally true. It's not a simple binary sum, but an analysis. He has stated continually that he feels the current overvaluation outweighs the mildly to decently favorable market action over the last few years.

      I guess my question is, why do you feel so strongly that 4 or 5 years is a better frame of reference than 6 years? Even if you include just that one extra year, 2002, and give him no credit for 2000 or 2001 performance, HSGFX destroys the S&P. Do you really think that having one year out of six be a bear year is so unusual and abnormal?
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    • Mon Jul 30th 12:55 PM
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      John Hussman: A Sack O' Potatoes Market
      No comment to most of that, but I would remark that Hussman documents his reasoning weekly, archived to 2003; he is one of the most transparent managers around. All you have to do to find out why he was X% hedged on date Y is look it up and get a several-paragraph explanation. Alternately you can write pages and pages of speculation based on incorrect assumptions, I guess.
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    • Fri Jul 27th 16:54 PM
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      Commented on:
      John Hussman: A Sack O' Potatoes Market
      He's beat the S&P 500 by nine points annually, inception (2000) to date, despite lagging the last four. His stock selections have actually outperformed the index six of seven years, but he sometimes hedges his returns, so they tend to be weaker in bull markets and stronger in bear markets.

      It's been a really horrible time to be hedging over the last four years, and he was early to the correction, but he's still up nine points a year on the S&P 500 over seven years despite that, which is terrific. I'm not affiliated, it just makes me sad when people misinterpret a really great record, and given that he convinced me to join the bears, I owe him one this week.
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    • Fri Jul 27th 13:08 PM
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      Commented on:
      John Hussman: A Sack O' Potatoes Market
      He's beat the S&P 500 by nine points annually, inception to date. Like a lot of great value-oriented managers, he looks stupid in bullish periods and brilliant in bearish periods (like yesterday, when he beat the S&P by three points and made a gain).
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    • Mon Jul 23rd 13:46 PM
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      Commented on:
      NovaStar's Death Spiral Financing Deal With Mass Mutual
      Yeah, the full 8-K is now out and it is adjustable based on dilution, but not based on market price. My error, I didn't hear the call.
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    • Wed Jul 18th 15:53 PM
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      Commented on:
      Bearish/Bullish Sentiment
      It's not so much that so many are excessively bullish, as that according to Investor's Intelligence, fewer than 20% are bearish.
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    • Wed Jul 18th 14:15 PM
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      Commented on:
      NovaStar's Death Spiral Financing Deal With Mass Mutual
      Straight from the 8-K:

      "The Series D-1 Preferred securities are initially convertible into 7.5 million shares of common stock of NovaStar based upon the initial conversion price of $7.00 per common share. The Series D-1 Preferred securities are convertible into common stock at any time at the option of the holders, based on a conversion ratio which is subject to certain adjustments. The Series D-1 Preferred also may be converted into common stock at NovaStar’s option, under specified circumstances. Dividends on the Series D-1 Preferred securities will be payable in cash."

      It sounds like death spiral financing to me, largely because of the vagueness. If it's an adjustable ratio, it's hard to believe it's not adjustable downward. On the plus side, the D-2 available to shareholders is also convertible at the same ratio, but that just makes it a play-at-home version; the negative incentives remain intact. I don't think there's malicious intent so much as a desire to preserve their investment at the expense of the common should things go sour.

      I don't think Herb pointed out that the dividend will be a preferred convertible stock dividend, terms TBA, payable to common and preferred holders; the only cash dividends available going forward accrue to the Series D-1, which is only available to MassMutual and Jefferies.
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