Category: Investing

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Investing

Brookfield Properties

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(Google finance NYSE:BPO) company web site

Wikipedia: link
Brookfield Properties Corporation (TSX: BPO, NYSE: BPO) is a Toronto-based North American commercial real estate company. Brookfield Asset Management owns 50% of its outstanding common shares.
Brookfield owns, manages and develops premier office properties in the downtown core of New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Brookfield’s properties include One Liberty Plaza and the World Financial Center in New York City; Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place), First Canadian Place, and Queen’s Quay Terminal in Toronto; Canadian Western Bank Place and Enbridge Tower in Edmonton; Suncor Energy Centre, Fifth Avenue Place, Altius Centre, Herald Building, and Bankers Hall in Calgary; and Royal Centre in Vancouver. It also operates real estate service businesses and has a land-development business primarily based in Canada.

Secondary offering August 12
(From Reuters) Brookfield Properties Corp. Prices $900 Million Common Share Offering
Wednesday, 12 Aug 2009 10:23am EDT (F-10 here)

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Investing

Portfolio management: lessons learned from Lehman collapse

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I have NOT added any new money to my brokrage account since Sept 15 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, so it’s easier to calculate the performance of my portfolio (+25%, from Sept 30 2009 to today Sept 14 2009), and compare to benchmark (S&P -16.75%, from Sept 15 2008 to Sept 14 2009). We can not predict catastropic events, if we really want to predict future or talk about any lessons for industry, I think one thing is clear:

one either becomes too big to fail (like AIG), or becomes the first to fail (like Bear Stearns), the last thing one wants to be is being No. 4 investment bank, leverage heavily and caught in the financial and political turmoil. We all know the day before Lehman fall, Merril Lynch (No. 3 investment bank) got bought by B of A, and shortly after that No. 1 Goldman and No. 2 Morgan Stanely converted into bank holding company.

For me personally, I can think of the following.

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Investing

Portfolio management: trade to lower cost

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Buy and hold, long term investing? I hold CROX from $75 to $20, hoping for a rebounce. It never came. Sometimes we got to trade stocks to take advantage of price volatility (up and downs). I was successful on this aspect from time to time, especially since the stock rally started this March. I made some money back from NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) and Huntsman (NYSE:HUN), to cover the loss from holding Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). Here again the lesson of “buy and hold”, even for a good company like Berkshire, I bought it at wrong time (April, May 2008).

BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buy Apr 9, 2008 1.00 4,349.89 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buy May 12, 2008 1.00 4,130.00 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Sell Mar 23, 2009 1.00 2,894.25 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Sell Mar 26, 2009 1.00 2,939.51 7.00

Pros and Cons of low cost trading: Sogotrade

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Investing

Portfolio management: keep some cash

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This is the second piece of Portfolio Management series. I started this series, mostly to record what I have learned in last few years, since I wrote Stock Lessons (as a beginner). The stock market since last year is humbling, but I also learned quite a bit in the process, with some real results. For instance: my stock portfolio is up about 51% YTD (year to date), vs. Dow’s +6.21% YTD, and S&P 500 +11.16%. Note I only use cash account and only long stocks in my account.

One thing I learned more recently is always keep some cash at hand, I can think of two reasons:
1) This one is easy, if I have some cash at hand, when some good stocks really go on sale (like at March 5 market lows), I can pick up them and feel good about it.

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Investing

Portfolio management lessons: don’t sell all at once

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Was talking to this to a close friend yesterday. My rationale of “not selling all at once” is because: it’s usually happens a stock (or something else) will go up in price after a person sells it. Very simple.

Appearently that’s what happened to some Tongkang Zijin shareholders in recent years (FT article “Woes after a windfall“). The story is a bit long, so let me summerize. Apprearently in June 2001 the residents in Tongkang villiage (in Fujian Province) received around Rmb1,338.85 ($196, £117, €138) Zijin stock for the compensation of their land use right. At the time Zijin was not in good financial shape and its stock was not listed. Eight years later, after the public listing at Hongkong and Shanghai (and fundamental change of the business), the stock is worth Rmb 800,000. Obviously not everyone kept the stock. Quote FT:

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Investing

Huntsman Corp

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Huntsman corp (NYSE:HUN) is a specialty chemical maker in the US, with operations all over the world. It was founded by Jon M. Huntsman in 1970.

Huntsman settles lawsuit with Apollo and banks
June 25 2009, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with banks.

Dec 15 2008, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with Apollo Group.

Matlin Paterson, who owns a big chunk of Huntsman stocks, sold his stake in 2007 (in hindsight, that’s a good price. Source: Yahoo Finance; Forbes). It seems he still has a significant stake though (source: MSN MoneyCentral, HMP Equity Trust).

Jon Huntsman (father, founder and chairman) and Peter Huntsman (son, CEO) on Fox Business News (link here)

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Investing video

WealthTrack

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I found this program when doing research for Huntsman (NYSE:HUN). I found value investor Jean Marie Eveillard has a little of Huntsman stocks at gurufocus. Noticed there are some video clips for Jean Eveillard in this gurufocus web page, including one from YouTube.

So I looked around and found this program.

WealthTrack Podcast
Here is the web site: www.wealthtrack.com

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Investing

NRG Energy: a better way to play Buffett?

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When I say “play Buffett” I meant people who follows Buffett investing strategy, more specifically people who buy and hold his company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) stock. This is not easy as Buffett’s strategy is not clear cut, and his company stock is mostly overpriced in recent years (because of his fame), not to mention doing homework on Berkshire is almost mission impossible (at least I felt I cannot understand his corner stone business: insurance). So here is a better way:

Buying the stocks Buffett bought

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Investing

Eaton Corporation

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Eaton Corporation (Wiki entry; NYSE: ETN)

Secondary offering April 2008 (24x7wallst). They offered 17.5 millions of shares at $84, and the proceedings is about $1.43 billion.

Business Overview (diversified manufacturing)
Electricity power equipment; truck powertrain & fuel systems; aerospace fuel and hydraulics systems

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Stock misconception: listen to experts (II)

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It is reported that Pequot Capital will go out of business in next few months (from CNBC). Pequot was headed by Art Samberg (one of the Barrons Rountable 2008 expert), who would have dismal performance if he followed his Barrons Roundtable pick. Quote his best and worst picks (loss > 80%):

Company Ticker 1/4/08 12/31/08 Change

MEMC Electronic Materials WFR 81.40 14.28 -82.5
Qualcomm QCOM 37.03 35.83 -3.2
Focus Media FMCN 55.71 9.09 -83.7
Dogan Yayin DYHOL.Turkey 4.44 TRL 0.66 TRL -85.1

Interestingly, the latest WSJ article still brags about his success. (If he is really that successful, why not stay in the business?) Quote WSJ:

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