Vitaliy's Contrarian Edge - Latest Comments

Re: Mea Culpa – Whistler Blackcomb

Capitalistic — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:56:25 -0000

Great article.

Re: Mea Culpa – Whistler Blackcomb

Mike Derbyshire — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:42:26 -0000

With respect to your last line - yes - anyone can make a mistake - however - it takes someone with real integrity and values to own up to it. Thank you for demonstrating these important, but not so common values for all of us. You made my day with this post and for a moment in time - reaffirmed my faith in the investment adviser community.

Re: Finding Yield and Value in Dividend-Paying Stocks

jason klein — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 14:16:01 -0000

Good article. Your book rocks.

Re: Understanding Apple Requires an Analysis of Fundamentals and Psychology

David — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:21:33 -0000

Vitaliy,
As a firm that currently does not own AAPL for clients, I thought this was an excellent article. Interesting to note client reaction to your purchase.

David

http://www.disciplinedinvestin...

Re: Bargain Hunting at J.C. Penney

goatwig — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:31:40 -0000

Great piece except the part about "short run stock movements are random and require no skill to capture" those movements take an incredible amount of skill, discipline and emotional fortitude to harvest consistantly if that is the time frame you choose to trade in...

Re: Bargain Hunting at J.C. Penney

Mark Larson — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:47:28 -0000

Great piece. By the way, I loved your book Active Value Investing.

Re: Sideways Markets Presentation

discus_911 — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:20:15 -0000

Thanks for sharing this presentation. A great read on your thoughts.

On page 35 you say buy and hold is a coma; To me that means buy and sell actively

On the conclusion page you say fewer decisions is better; To me that means fewer scrips

So, IF I summarise, do I conclude that you opine / summarise that one should "trade" / buy and sell , fewer, quality scrips ?

thanks

regards

Re: Investment Process Presentation

Buddhistmingle — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 11:20:06 -0000

Thanks for the stuff...buddhistmingle.com

Re: Anti-Social Investing

karlylle — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 22:49:27 -0000

The lag time is minimised to the greatest possible extent. So, with the
extensive information shared above, I hope there has been an increment in the
awareness and a decrement in the insensitivity towards the locksmiths.

Locksmith in Woodstock

Re: VALUEx Vail 2012 – Amazon’s Valuation

Family Office Guru — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:53:22 -0000

IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY MONEY!!!!! What else do you need to know? Great for the consumer - horrible for the investor. You would have to be insane to buy $AMZN at these levels.

Re: Fed is Measuring U.S. Economic Health by the Wrong Number

John — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:39:59 -0000

I beg to differ.

Economic stability rests on social stability.

Saying unemployment among low-paid workers isn't an economic problem worth measuring is like saying confirmation bias isn't an investing problem.

Re: Fed is Measuring U.S. Economic Health by the Wrong Number

Lee Adler — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:08:23 -0000

2004-2006 10 million fake jobs created by the credit bubble. Hard to replace what was phony in the first place. 5.5% unemployment was fake. 8.5% is normal. ZIRP will not bring back fake jobs, but it is the driver of the financial genocide of America's formerly middle class elderly.

I call it ZIRP Bernankecide. Fed hasn't figured out that ZIRP suppresses spending by those desperately trying to preserve what's left of their retirement nest egg. And those whose nesteggs are gone, not only can't spend, but the pressure to cut spending then falls on their children, who must divert a portion of their income into the unproductive eldercare system.

Re: Why Windows 8 Made Me Sell MSFT

aagold — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:36:08 -0000

Vitaliy,

If a user hates the new Metro interface or just doesn't want to use it, can't they just turn it off and make it look just like Windows 7? That's what I plan on doing. I'll probably try and learn the new interface if/when I get a Windows tablet or tablet/laptop combo, but I'm guessing that most people with desktops and laptops will opt to just make it work using the "old" interface. So if I'm right about that, wasn't your decision to sell a bit extreme?

Regards,
aagold

Re: Why Windows 8 Made Me Sell MSFT

vitaliyk — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 22:18:48 -0000

Doug, thank you for your thoughts. See you next year at Billy Blue's.

Re: Why Windows 8 Made Me Sell MSFT

Doug M. — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:29:56 -0000

I am happy to hear you tested the Win8 preview. Its always a good sign see someone willing to change their mind when they uncover new facts. (Yes, I know that's obvious, but unfortunately its not so common).

IMHO, Win8 is going to be as successful as the Zune media player. Metro is not getting deployed in corporate America. It just ain't gonna happen. In the past this would not necessarily be a problem. The first versions of all Microsoft's programs have always had deficiencies but with each successive version the application/OS would just get stronger and stronger.

Win 2.0 was a total dog used by no one, but Win 3.0 changed the tune, and win 95 sealed it. Maybe Win 9 or 10 will return Microsoft to its glory days, but that's not a sure thing. Microsoft is still a great cash generating business, but that's exactly its problem. Its the classic innovatator's dilemma. For the same reasons that Microsoft overtook IBM, Apple is stealing Microsoft's lunch on the laptop/tablet. Its really hard to eat your children, but at a certain point Microsoft is going to have to separate itself into a corporate company and a consumer company with different code bases, price points, and lifecycles. They desperately need an enterprise supportable tablet, but once every company with a need has bought a few thousand ipads to serve as glorified e-readers, the opportunity will be lost.

My Microsoft bashing aside, Microsoft has a fantastic moat on the enterprise applications like Office, Exchange, SQL, Active Directory, etc.. So, after the bad publicity of win8 comes out and the stock price drops, its not inconceivable that I might just buy it to grab a low downside, moderate gain opportunity, but its highly unlikely that I will ever be buying Microsoft in the future because I think it deserves a higher valuation ratio that the market average. Microsoft's desktop operating moat is very, very slowly but surely being filled in. Microsoft's margins will never be so high again, but that's just the way capitalism works.

See you next year at Billy Blue's in Omaha...

-Doug
Houston, Tx

Re: Investor Alert: Xerox is a Cash Machine

Gve — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:52:42 -0000

You've been unlucky lately, with XRX, HPQ and MSFT...

Re: Investor Alert: Xerox is a Cash Machine

John Yu — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:33:41 -0000

Hi Vitaliy,

What's your view on XRX vs LXK? With the exception of (the lack of) revenue growth, LXK looks like a better company on all other metrics.

Re: Seek out people who disagree with you; The budget deficit is a stimulus; China = post-bubble Japan?

Jonathan Deng — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:51:28 -0000

One more little data to add to the China bear picture is car sales. According to data provided by GM, Q1 car sales in China for the entire Chinese auto industry has fallen by close to 2%. Car is symbol of prosperity for the average Chinese. The decline in sales, seems to illustrate that Chinese consumers are also feeling the downturn.

Re: Lecture: China & Global Economy

Jonathan Deng — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:15:18 -0000

To answer the question the first gentleman asked regarding warning signs, I think the warning sign has already occurred, which is the Chinese government reining in growth in real estate sector through loan limitations. This is a classic Minsky moment. Minsky argues that when an economy experiences a long-period of growth, risk perception in the economy decreases and leverage build up, and high risk loans began to increase. The Minsky moment occurs when central bank increase interest rates to control the inflation created by high growth from cheap credit. This tightening of credit will cause the most highly leveraged firms to become bankrupt and liquidate their assets. This causes asset prices to fall, and hits the lower tier of high leveraged firms and cascade downward. As this chain reaction continues, banks will become holders of assets themselves through owning collateral, thus creating a financial crisis. In China's case, the Minsky moment, instead of increasing interest rate is loan tightening reacting to skyrocketing property value. In fact bankruptcy is spreading across China. Currently they are limited to mostly non-large cap firms. But due to the highly leveraged nature of almost all Chinese firms, we will soon see bankruptcy spreading to large cap companies.

Re: The case for Pfizer

spute02 — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:01:10 -0000

SOUNDS TO ME LIKE IT'S TIME TO CASH IN THE PFIZER STOCK.

Re: Warning for an Eager Facebook Investor (my shortest article, ever!)

vitaliyk — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:43:31 -0000

Facebook and Google are very similar and will likely have a very similar cost structure. This is why comparison makes sense. At $40 billion of revenues Facebook will be a mature company. If it has GOOG's net margins of 25%, at 25x revenue it will be trading at 100x earnings. Good luck betting on this valuation.

Re: Warning for an Eager Facebook Investor (my shortest article, ever!)

Leigh Drogen — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:30:13 -0000

While I tend to agree with the sentiment that the relative multiples of Facebook and Google are misaligned to a degree that may not be warranted, I honestly find the way that point is made to be, well, dumb, and frankly inaccurate. While historical multiples do matter, it is 100% false to say that Facebook must grow revenues 10X in order for the stock to rise by 100%. Who says Facebook's multiple should or will come in to line with Google's? Who says Facebook won't continue to trade at 25X revenue?

Make the point that Facebook's multiple should and will shrink, but don't butcher the simple math.

Re: Not Buying Best Buy

Bryan Daniels — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:29:20 -0000

If they added free same day delivery and people didn't need to leave there house even amazon can't compete with that.

Re: How stealing Chrysler threatens our markets

Sample Stuff — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:27:30 -0000

Chrystler came a long way since this article.
sleep aids

Re: The Making of CAPITALISTIC PIG

vnfin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:09:42 -0000

Great story and I admire your work. Did you marry a Russian girl?

Being married to a Russian girl and living in Colorado sounds near perfect to me. I know first hand.