Category: Investing

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US Bancorp share looks cheap

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(Update) According to Dow Jones News, USB sold 139 million shares at $18 per share. See the news at WSJ.

(Original) When I say cheap, I meant in relative terms.

US Bank logo

My benchmark: Buffett endorsed 2 banks in Berkshire annual shareholder meeting: US Bank (NYSE: USB) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Many people did not know current Wells Fargo is not the good old Wells Fargo in the west coast, a little more than 10 years ago Norwest and Wells Fargo merged, and adopted the Wells name. Ok, back to the topic. Both USB and WFC stocks had a fun ride in the last 12 months. But more interestingly, as of today, WFC is down 5% YoY, while USB is down 42%. In the past 12 months a lot things have happened to Wells, the biggest one being the Wachovia acqusition. Both took TARP money. Both issued common stocks: twice for Wells (last Fall and last week), once fot USB (today). But the purpose of issing stocks is slightly different: Wells needed the money for captial, USB needs the money to pay back TARP.

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Stock misconception: listen to experts

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A guranteed way to lose money: listen to so-called experts. Barrons is a pretty reputable magazine in investment community. I read them, but I don’t listen to them. Here is an example: the reporting card of Barrons Roundtable 2008. Every year (Jan) Barrons will assembly a group of experts, from famous money managers to analysts such as Bill Gross (Pimco) to Abey Cohen (Goldman Sachs), discussing the outlook of the year, and each expert will share some picks.

Here is an example how things go terribly wrong (I hope no one copied his strategy).

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Stock misconception: volatility is not always bad

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We often from financial experts that volatility in our portfolio is bad. Or in other words, not only do we want good return, but we also want the path to that is smooth. I think most people would agree with that. My CFA preparation book also talked about this idea in “Portfolio Management” section. So basically this “less volatility” is preached and accepted in investment community.

But in Poor Charlie’s Almanac, Charlie challenged that less volatility notion and I think I agreed with him. Bascially he was arguing that this is very similar to (in old days) the Chinese women tied their feet, obviously that would not help them walking.

In another instance, volatility is good for the investment banks in this past Q1, as they made a lot of money selling the bonds (wider spead yield). I think they made money from selling stock options too (more volatility, more expensive the options).

For me personally, I am still learning about this volatility thing. Like “buy and hold”, I need to get out of this old habbit of “less volatility bias”. In late March I bought some Patroit Coal (NYSE: PCX), but I sold it after 2 days after it went up then down. Today the stock traded about 80% above what I bought 🙁

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CIT group

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(Update 24Apr09 afternoon) Sold my position. Moody just downgraded its debt rating: reminds me of the WaMu debt rating downgrade shortly before its fall.

(Original) Warning: this is a very speculative play. Also don’t confuse this with CitiGroup (NYSE: C). The ticker of CIT group at NYSE is CIT.

CIT group at NYSE pic

(Source: NYSE)

4 Analysts downgraded this stock this morning (source: theflyonwallstreet, also Yahoo Finance).

Wiki entry for CIT group, noticed it was a part of Tyco (a smaller GE if you will) at one time. Chinese news on CIT (about one year old). The company recently coverted to a bank holding company so that it could get fund access to TARP, FDIC, and more importantly bank deposits.

Q1 2009 earning release. Conference call.

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Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely talk at VA book fair

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Dan Ariely (bio) is an expert in behavioral economics, and his recent book Predictably Irrational is well received. It is also quite relevant amid this financial market (and institutions) meltdown.

10 min audio (with slide show)

Full talk (c-span, about 38 minutes including Q&A)

Book at Amazon

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Investing

Stock lessons: sold the goose too early

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This is typically what happens, shortly after I sold a stock, it becomes golden goose. This can be best exampified by the US Bank stock (NYSE: USB). I bought some yesterday afternoon shortly before close. But I kind got a buyer remorse, thought my $16.50 price is a bit high. More importantly, I don’t know how financial stocks will go up and down as the earnings started roll out (WFC, GS), and the stock offering of Goldman. I am also unsettled by the charts: by looking at USB/WFC/JPM etc. at stockcharts.com, it appears to me the bank stocks are topping (higher price, lower volume). So I became nervous and sold it this morning, at $16.78. Shortly after that, USB took off, it closed at $17.89. In other words, I missed the potential gain, again 🙁


(Video from Yahoo Tech-ticker)

Traders’ market

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Google Finance stock screener

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(Update 02-03-2025) Google finance stock screener has been gone for a while. Robinhood App has a screener one may be able to use. I haven’t used their desktop version yet though (it’s called Robinhood Legend, I think).

(Update 20Apr09) Found this trick in google finance (chart), hold on mouse “up” or “down”, the time frame of stock chart extends or contracts.

Stock Screener
Here is an example: market cap $5 b to 25 b; PE ratio 10 to 20; dividend yield 2% to 5%; return on equity 15% to 25% (last 5 years). You can also sort the results by “52 week price change” etc (in ascending or descending order).

Customization: you can add other criteria such as “Return on equity (ave. last 5 years)”. The reason I like return on equity is that it means real return for shareholders. Ideally I am more intereted in the free cash flow yield (definition at investopedia).

Range: Google provides default. You can see the price change for all the stocks: -99.86% to 5,094% (52 weeks). Interesting. I left it here so I can see the range (in other words, I am not filtering out any stocks using this criteria).

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Pfizer Wyeth arbitrage game

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Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) agreed to buy Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) on Jan 26 2009 (forbes). Quote Forbes:

According to the terms of the deal, each outstanding share of Wyeth will be converted into $33.00 in cash and 0.985 of a share of Pfizer stock, valued at$15.57 per share, based on Pfizer’s current price.

Last I checked: $33.00 + $13.60 * 0.985 = $ 46.40 vs. Wyeth current price $42.53.

Hmm, 9% return in how long (one source says the deal could close in Q4 2009).

Potential risk:
0) Pfizer stock drops, because WYE stock is now tied to PFE stock (0.985 correlation);

1) The close could not close by Q4 due to financing or anti-trust issue;

2) Another bidder emerges (whch is a good thing);

Reference: arbitrage explained in Wiki.

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This “Wang Yang Bu Lao thing” on credit rating

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(Update) Big bro started to act now.

(Original) We all know the stock rating game: I mean those “buy”, “hold” and “sell” rating usually issued by sell side (brokeage) analysts. They are mostly not objective, because at the end of the day the dealers want to sell you more stocks, regardless they are good or bad. At the height of this analyst game is Goldman “conviction buy”, my question for them is why there are no “conviction sell”? Presumably, one can use a sell list to short stocks?

Oh well, Michael Lewis, the former Soloman bond salesman, described the analysts in his “Liar’ Poker” very well. So I won’t keep beat on them. My focus on this little article is on the credit rating (bond rating) game. We all know the credit rating agencies (agencies may have mislead some to think they are independent organization, they are really for-profit companies) have been under attack for the debale of housing/mortgage markets because they had been slept in the same bed with the issuers of MBS (mortgage backed securities).

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Glass half full? Glass half empty?

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Week in review 030109 to 030709

We are officially in Obama bear market (source: Bloomberg), in other words, the stock market (i.e., Dow industrial for most people) dropped 20% since President Obama took office in Jan 20. Yesterday S&P 500 briefly touched 666 (the number of devil), pretty scary, huh? I am sure this economy/financial crisis has been the hot topic in many kitchen table, or office cafeteria. The financial media is also taking the crisis as oppertunity — we have seen numerous experts, panel discussions, such as the “Help Wanted” talk last night on CNN money, which is mainly talking about the Feb. job (loss) number: 650,000. This number is actually small, if we put it into perspective that 20 million Chinese migrant workers already lost job since the end of last year (read my friend Bo Peng’s article if you are interested).

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