Wealth workout: can savers fight back in battle for better rates?

Wealth workout: can savers fight back in battle for better rates?

For the 11th month in a row the Bank of England has voted to keep the Bank Rate on hold at 0.5pc, a decision that continues to cripple savers.

By Michelle Slade of Moneyfacts.co.uk
Published: 3:53PM GMT 04 Feb 2010

So much so that, in the year to February 2010 on a £10,000 balance, savers in an average-paying easy-access account earned just £76 in interest, over four times less than they would have earned in the year to February 2009.

The average interest rate for a £1,000 balance in an instant or easy access account is currently 0.88pc, which is well below the latest inflation rate (2.9pc for the Consumer Prices Index and 2.4pc for the Retail Prices Index), according to Defaqto, the analyst. Some accounts pay as little as 0.01pc whereas the Coventry’s Building Society’s easy access 1st Class Postal pays 3.15pc on balances of £1,000 or more.

Those who have been hit hardest by such a significant decline are those who rely on their savings to supplement their income, many of whom are pensioners, who either had to make sweeping lifestyle changes or have eroded their capital to get by. However, disgruntled savers are fighting back with the launch of the action group Save Our Savers, which is putting pressure on the Government and policy-makers for a fairer deal.

The calls for a better deal for savers have so far failed to reach the ears of the providers as the trend for cutting rates, particularly on fixed-rate bonds, continued this week. The only positive news remains for those looking to invest their Isa allowance, where the average rate has increased from 2.05pc to 2.12pc since last month, with further rises expected in the next few weeks as Isa season really takes hold.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/savings/7155863/Wealth-workout-can-savers-fight-back-in-battle-for-better-rates.html

Savers should ask themselves why they are staying in cash

The Bank of England's decision to switch 70pc of its staff pension fund into index-linked gilts was a heavy hint about what to expect.

By Ian Cowie
Published: 7:55AM GMT 22 Jan 2010

It's a daunting thought that inflation would halve the purchasing power of money during the time many people now spend in retirement if it remains at the higher levels announced this week.


Worse still, no less an authority than the Governor of the Bank of England forecasts that inflation will continue to rise, when this month's increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) has its inevitable effect on prices.

While the nominal figures themselves look like pretty small beer to anyone who can remember the 1970s, this insidious disease of money remains a real threat to savers – who, let's remember, outnumber borrowers by six to one.

Pensioners and others who rely heavily on savings and have no scope to earn their way out of this fiscal black hole are the most vulnerable of all.

If the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) were to remain at its new level of 2.9pc – compared to 1.9pc a month before – it would take less than 25 years for you to need £2 to buy what £1 buys today.

While some comfort can be drawn from the fact that the Retail Prices Index (RPI) is running at only 2.4pc per year, this measure of inflation is rising even more rapidly than the CPI; having jumped from only 0.3pc.

None of this will come as any surprise to regular readers. As pointed out in this space several times last year, the Government's policy of "quantitative easing" was bound to boost inflation – as printing money has always done in the past.

The Bank of England's decision to switch 70pc of its staff pension fund into index-linked gilts was another heavy hint about what to expect.

Looking forward, fixed-return bonds and deposits seem set to disappoint savers by repaying them with paper that buys less than their original capital.

Anyone keen to preserve purchasing power over the medium to long term should consider shares and share-based funds, particularly while the FTSE 100 index of Britain's biggest stocks is yielding an average of 3.3pc net of basic rate tax.

The only argument for delaying a move out of deposits – where the average instant access account pays just 0.75pc gross – is that share prices may be lower, and yields higher, after the General Election. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/iancowie/7050204/Savers-should-ask-themselves-why-they-are-staying-in-cash.html

Valentine's Day: Top 10 tips for flirting

Valentine's Day: Top 10 tips for flirting
Flirting tips from the experts.


By Casilda Grigg
Published: 12:21PM GMT 12 Feb 2009

valentines day- top 10 tips for flirting Photo: Universal Studios

# Listen to what the other person is saying – it’s the most seductive thing in the world.
# Smile. ''When you smile you secrete hormones that make you feel good,’’ says Pete Cohen.
# Think positive. ''Don’t talk yourself into doubt, fear and angst,’’ says Peta Heskell.
# Try to stay calm. ''It’s like a radio station,’’ says Cohen. “If you are coming from Nervous & Anxious FM you’ll be transmitting that.’’
# Be comfortable in your skin. Natural flirts include Brad Pitt, George Clooney and even David Beckham.
# Don’t limit your efforts to people you fancy. Connect with people randomly. It’s a great way of building up flirting skills.
# Look at the other person properly. Successful flirting is all in the eyes.
# Don’t be afraid to use props. Dogs, hats and even spare babies (not your own) are natural conversation starters.
# Try not to argue with compliments. If a man admires your outfit resist the urge to say “What, this old rag? I bought it for two quid at Oxfam”. Just say thank you and move on.
# Avoid the impulse to tell sad loser stories, however entertaining and witty. Aim for a playful, light-hearted, spontaneous mood. Never mention exes.

Eurozone 'pigs' are leading us all to slaughter

Eurozone 'pigs' are leading us all to slaughter
The financial crisis is coming to a new, potentially more deadly phase, says Jeremy Warner.


By Jeremy Warner
Published: 7:17PM GMT 05 Feb 2010

The 'pigs' of the Eurozone are causing worries for the other members Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Are we about to enter a third, and this time fatal, leg of the financial crisis? The problems of euroland which have so unsettled markets this week – and in particular those of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the "pigs", as they have become known in financial circles) – are worrying enough in themselves.

But they are also a proxy for much wider concern about how national governments extract themselves from the fiscal and monetary mire they have created in fighting the downturn. It's proving messy, though, and they are running the risk of provoking an even worse crisis in the process.


Think of the three phases of the economic implosion like this.

1.  The first was a fairly conventional, if extreme, banking crisis where a cyclical overexpansion of credit and lending suddenly, and violently, corrects itself in a great outpouring of risk aversion.

2.  In the second phase, governments and central banks attempt to counter the economic consequences of this crunch with unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary support. Temporarily, at least, it seemed to work.

Until now, investors have been happy to finance the resulting deficits, in part because government bonds have seemed the only safe place to put your funds, but also because central banks have, in effect, been creating money to compensate for the paucity of private-sector credit. The mechanism varies from region to region, but much of this new money has found its way into deficit financing.

3.  We are now entering the third, inevitable phase of the crisis where markets question the ability of even sovereign nations to repay their debts. Unnerved by this loss of fiscal and monetary credibility, governments and central banks are being forced, much sooner than they would have wished, to start withdrawing their support.

I say earlier than they would have wished because the recovery is not yet assured. Private demand and credit provision remain subdued. Policy-makers knew they would eventually have to abandon their fiscal and monetary support, but the timing of it may no longer be a matter of choice.

The first tremors around these so-called "exit strategies" occurred in Dubai a few months back when the emirate, fearing for its own solvency, shocked markets by announcing that it no longer stood behind the debts of its financially stretched state-owned enterprises. In this case, Dubai's fellow and richer emirate, Abu Dhabi, eventually came to the rescue.

It is much less clear that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland can rely on similar support, either from richer members of the euro area or the European Central Bank.

For the "pigs", membership of the euro excludes the easy option, which is to devalue and turn on the printing presses according to local needs. Instead, monetary policy, and increasingly fiscal policy too, are dictated by Germany and France, the core euro nations.

Whether the fiscal consolidation demanded is politically feasible looks questionable. And even if these countries do succeed in making the necessary adjustments, they may face a classic deflationary debt spiral, where slashing the deficit causes the economy to shrink further which, in turn, increases the deficit.

Little surprise, then, that one of the big bets in markets right now is that these distressed members of the euro will be forced either into default, or rather like Britain with the ERM in the early 1990s, out of the single currency altogether. Serious knock-on consequences for creditor economies would follow.

Yet to true believers in the doomsday scenario, even an outcome as extreme as this would not be the end of the crisis. Fiscal ruin is not confined to the southern European nations. The hors d'oeuvre consumed, it would be on to the main course – the default of one or more of the big, triple-A rated sovereigns. Financial and economic chaos would follow quickly in its wake.

There's a world of worry out there, fed by self-interested speculators, which is proving hard to counter. Yet things rarely work out as predicted, and though nobody should be in any doubt about the scale of the economic adjustment still to be made in Western economies, more benign outcomes are still possible. Bigger, advanced economies with their own currencies are better placed to manage their exits than the "pigs".

However, right now, both Washington and London seem gripped by the sort of political paralysis that can indeed prove lethal. We should not assume that the sudden loss of market confidence that has afflicted Greece – essentially a developing market economy that should never have been in the euro in the first place – will be confined to the "pigs". The burgeoning size of public indebtedness the world over makes all economies vulnerable.

Even so, this week's tremors should be seen as more of a warning than the beginning of a fatal endgame. The austerity of tighter fiscal and monetary conditions is coming to all of us. With or without the compliance of policy-makers, the markets will impose it. But it doesn't have to be a rout.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/7168631/Eurozone-pigs-are-leading-us-all-to-slaughter.html

Share investments soar as consumers hunt for returns

Share investments soar as consumers hunt for returns
Consumers paid a record amount into investment funds last year as they looked for a better return on their money than putting it in the bank.


By Philip Aldrick
Published: 6:30AM GMT 03 Feb 2010

Net sales of UK-based unit trusts and OEICs (open-ended investment companies) shot up to £25.8bn, the highest level since records began in 1992, according to the Investment Management Association (IMA).

The figure was 45pc higher than the previous record set in 2000, when new investments totalled £17.7bn. It was six times higher than the £3.8bn of sales in 2008.

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A spokesman said: "Low returns on savings accounts caused people to look at putting their money into other assets. At the same time, the recession caused them to increase their savings levels."

Overall, £9.9bn of new funds were invested in bonds and £7.3bn in shares over the year – a sharp turnaround from 2008, when people withdrew £1.3bn from the stock market. Richard Saunders, chief executive of the IMA, said: "This trend can be traced back to the autumn of 2008 in the immediate aftermath of the Lehman crash.

"Investors have prudently chosen wide diversification both across asset classes and geographically – in marked contrast to the previous record year of 2000. And it is good to see people once more investing via ISAs, after five years in which ISAs saw higher levels of withdrawals than investments."

Net new investment in ISAs, tax-free investment funds, climbed to £2.8bn – the highest since 2001.

The surge in investments, combined with strong stock market growth during the year, also helped to push up the value of funds under management to record levels.

At the end of December funds under management, including money held for institutional investors, totalled £481bn – £119bn more than in 2008.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/7139872/Share-investments-soar-as-consumers-hunt-for-returns.html

Global stock market shakeout spreads to Asia

Global stock market shakeout spreads to Asia
Asian stocks tumbled on Friday after Wall Street dropped overnight on worries the global recovery is weaker than many expected.



Major markets from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Sydney dropped about 3pc or more after US stocks fell on bad news about American unemployment levels and European debt.

Oil prices slipped to near $73 a barrel, adding to a big slide overnight, while the dollar continued to gain against the euro, which was at its lowest since May.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 2.8pc, or 293.33 points, to 10,062.65 and China's Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.6pc, or 50.85, to 2,945.13. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 3.2pc at 19,701.33.

In the US on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 268.37, or 2.6pc, at 10,002.18 after briefly trading below 10,000 for the first time in three months. That came after the Labor Department said claims for unemployment benefits rose by 8,000 to 480,000 last week, disappointing investors who hoped for a decrease.

The slide began in Europe, where markets were dragged down by concern about high debt levels in Greece, Spain and Portugal. It is becoming harder for countries to contain rising debts and to borrow money to spend their way out of recession. Spain's IBEX tumbled 5.9pc, London's FTSE 100 2.2pc, Germany's CAC 2.5pc, and France's CAC 2.7pc.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea's Kospi was off 3pc at 1,568.33 and Taiwan's Taiex dived 3.3pc. Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 slid 2.8pc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/7162843/Global-stock-market-shakeout-spreads-to-Asia.html

Greece crisis: There but for the grace of God goes Britain

Greece crisis: There but for the grace of God goes Britain

Should markets pass the same verdict on Britain as on Greece, the results would be almost identical - and just as disastrous, says Edmund Conway.


By Edmund Conway
Published: 6:47AM GMT 04 Feb 2010



It was one of those moments that can only happen in a place like Davos. There I was last week, having a coffee and minding my own business, when from a nearby table I heard a desperate voice. I assumed it belonged to a beleaguered bank executive, or a stricken hedge fund manager. “We are doing everything we can,” he said, “but the markets don’t care.”

I looked up and realised the voice belonged to the Greek prime minister. His arms crossed defensively, George Papandreou was now listening as one of the world’s top economists told him he thought his best bet was to seek an emergency bail-out from the International Monetary Fund.

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A recession for the many, not the few

Greece is indeed buried deep in the financial mire. At first gradually, and then with alarming speed, the country has lost credibility with investors to such a degree that it is now having to offer an interest rate of 7 per cent to persuade them to buy its debt, compared with 4.5 per cent a few months ago.

Some, including Papandreou, characterise this as a speculative move aimed at splitting up the euro; others see it as a statement of economic disgust at a country whose public finances, always bad, have now dipped into no-hope territory.

There is some truth to both theories, but, more important, at least for both Gordon Brown and David Cameron, there is a broader lesson: the only thing that matters more than knowing what to do about the deficit is persuading the markets that you know what you’re doing about the deficit. Because there but for the grace of God goes Britain. There is no knowing how and when investors will lose their faith in a government, but when it’s gone, there isn’t much you can do to get it back.

Greece, in other words, is the fiscal Petri dish that reveals in gory detail what could happen in the UK if this Government – or the next – fails to maintain the confidence of investors. It is not merely that those interest rates are already inflicting an awful toll on borrowers in Athens and beyond. It is that they are sending the national government towards a full-blown debt spiral, in which the cost of its annual interest bill becomes so unmanageable that it can hardly afford to supply its citizens with basic services.

I have pointed out before that countries, like individuals, occasionally reach the point where they have borrowed so much that their debt simply becomes impossible to whittle away. Greece, the markets seem to think, has now passed that point. And an IMF bail-out would only layer new debt on top of the old. In the end, the only solution is to find some way to slash spending and raise taxes without a) sparking riots or revolution and b) critically damaging the economy.

Should markets pass the same verdict on Britain as on Greece, the results would be almost identical. In its Green Budget yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, with the help of Barclays Bank, attempted to map out what would happen if the Government failed to achieve the necessary cuts in its budget in the coming years. The verdict: a “very large, and fast-acting” impact on interest rates, pushing them even higher than Greek rates today.

Still, we are not there yet. And there are four reasons to be cautiously optimistic about Britain’s chances. The first is that much of the population is already reconciled to some form of austerity. Both main parties want to cut the deficit sharply, and although the Tories talk a little tougher, in economic terms there is actually not that much clear water between their proposals and those already laid out by the Treasury.

Second, the UK started the crisis with national debt below 40 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with Greece, whose national debt was already close to the 100 per cent of GDP – near the tipping point for a debt spiral. Third, it is a little-appreciated quirk of the British market that, rather like a homeowner on a long fixed-rate mortgage, the Government has to roll over its debt far less regularly than other countries, so is significantly insulated from a Greek-style crisis.

And fourth, unlike Greece, Britain has its own currency, which affords it more leeway to adjust.

But as Greece has shown, a credibility collapse can take place even when you least expect it. Despite George Osborne’s pledge earlier this week to safeguard Britain’s credit rating, some still reckon there is an 80 per cent chance of the UK losing its coveted triple-A status – something that could trigger an investor panic.

So both main political parties should, as a matter of course, prepare detailed emergency plans saying what overnight cuts they would impose in the event of a similar crisis.

However, avoiding such a credibility collapse will not spare Britain from having to drag itself through an economic transformation with the same end: to reduce debt and to live within its means. For some countries, the financial crisis was painful because people suddenly started spending less. For Britain, it uncovered the fact that the nation had duped itself into believing it was more prosperous than it really was. We mistook a debt bubble and the proceeds of financial engineering for sustained and lasting growth. Time to get real. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/7153169/Greece-crisis-There-but-for-the-grace-of-God-goes-Britain.html

Fears of 'Lehman-style' tsunami as crisis hits Spain and Portugal

Fears of 'Lehman-style' tsunami as crisis hits Spain and Portugal

The Greek debt crisis has spread to Spain and Portugal in a dangerous escalation as global markets test whether Europe is willing to shore up monetary union with muscle rather than mere words.


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 7:29PM GMT 04 Feb 2010


Julian Callow from Barclays Capital said the EU may to need to invoke emergency treaty powers under Article 122 to halt the contagion, issuing an EU guarantee for Greek debt. “If not contained, this could result in a `Lehman-style’ tsunami spreading across much of the EU.”

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring bankruptcy risk on Portuguese debt surged 28 basis points on Thursday to a record 222 on reports that Jose Socrates was about to resign as prime minister after failing to secure enough votes in parliament to carry out austerity measures.

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Parliament minister Jorge Lacao said the political dispute has raised fears that the country is no longer governable. “What is at stake is the credibility of the Portuguese state,” he said.

Portugal has been in political crisis since the Maoist-Trotskyist Bloco won 10pc of the vote last year. This is rapidly turning into a market crisis as well as investors digest a revised budget deficit of 9.3pc of GDP for 2009, much higher than thought. A €500m debt auction failed on Wednesday. The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds has risen to 155 basis points over German bunds.

Daniel Gross from the Centre for European Policy Studies said Portgual and Greece need to cut consumption by 10pc to clean house, but such draconian measures risk street protests. “This is what is making the markets so nervous,” he said.

In Spain, default insurance surged 16 basis points after Nobel economist Paul Krugman said that “the biggest trouble spot isn’t Greece, it’s Spain”. He blamed EMU’s one-size-fits-all monetary system, which has left the country with no defence against an adverse shock. The Madrid’s IBEX index fell 6pc.

Finance minister Elena Salgado said Professor Krugman did not “understand” the eurozone, but reserved her full wrath for the EU economics commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, who helped trigger the panic flight from Iberian debt by blurting out that Spain and Portugal were in much the same mess as Greece.

Mrs Salgado called the comparison simplistic and imprudent. “In Spain we have time for measures to overcome the crisis,” she said. It is precisely this assumption that is now in doubt. The budget deficit exploded to 11.4pc last year, yet the economy is still contracting.

Jacques Cailloux, Europe economist at RBS, said markets want the EU to spell out exactly how it is going to shore up Club Med states. “They are working on a different time-horizon from the EU. They don’t think words are enough: they want action now. They are basically testing the solidarity of monetary union. That is why contagion risk is growing,” he said.

“In my view they underestimate the political cohesion of the EMU Project. What the Commission did this week in calling for surveillance of Greece has never been done before,” he said.

Mr Callow of Barclays said EU leaders will come to the rescue in the end, but Germany has yet to blink in this game of “brinkmanship”. The core issue is that EMU’s credit bubble has left southern Europe with huge foreign liabilities: Spain at 91pc of GDP (€950bn); Portugal 108pc (€177bn). This compares with 87pc for Greece (€208bn). By this gauge, Iberian imbalances are worse than those of Greece, and the sums are far greater. The danger is that foreign creditors will cut off funding, setting off an internal EMU version of the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, gave no hint yesterday that Frankfurt will bend to help these countries, either through loans or a more subtle form of bail-out through looser monetary policy or lax rules on collateral. The ultra-hawkish ECB has instead let the M3 money supply contract over recent months.

Mr Trichet said euro members drew down their benefits in advance -- "ex ante" -- when they joined EMU and enjoyed "very easy financing" for their current account deficits. They cannot expect "ex post" help if they get into trouble later. These are the rules of the club.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7159456/Fears-of-Lehman-style-tsunami-as-crisis-hits-Spain-and-Portugal.html

Acronym: PIGS = Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain

What triggers an exit from your portfolio? Do you set sell targets?

What triggers an exit from your portfolio? Do you set sell targets?

Stephen Yacktman: Many people set a price target by saying, “Okay, I think it is worth $X.” Well, we don’t think that way. We look at

• what the forward rate of return is, 
• stack it up against other investments and 
• determine which one is the highest and 
• which one is the lowest and 
• what risk we are taking to get that rate of return. 

We account for things like

• leverage, 
• cyclicality of earnings, and 
• the quality of the business. 

An investment that is going to make it into the portfolio with the lowest rate of return would be a company like Coca-Cola that

• has high predictability and good management. 
• We can just go into autopilot. 
• It becomes our AAA bond.

A sale is triggered by two things.

* If the rate of return is not sufficient or

* if there is a better opportunity elsewhere with a larger margin of safety to get a similar or higher rate of return, we’ll sell it.

The overall market dropped and consumer product names held up and the media companies got killed.

* News Corp. went from the $20s to $5.
* That drop opened up a huge rate of return gap and encouraged us to sell some of our Pepsi and buy News Corp.
* We viewed that decision as going from a low teens rate of return to something that was going to make a 20% return.

There’s no price target ever set, it’s just a function of the environment.

* What ends up happening, unfortunately, in an environment where everything goes up, is fewer of these returns are satisfactory and we end up more heavily in cash.
* It’s not that we’re trying to time the market; it’s just there’s nothing to buy.

Indonesia: 2010 market outlook: Who will pull the trigger first?

Friday, February 5, 2010 9:32 PM


2010 market outlook: Who will pull the trigger first?

Harry Su , Senior Vice President, Head of Research | Thu, 02/04/2010 12:06 PM | Business

During our recent Indonesia strategy marketing trip we spent two full days in Singapore and another two full days in Hong Kong, meeting with various fund managers. We found that all of those in Singapore were still very much bullish on Indonesia, agreeing with us that the Indonesian market performance would be better in the first half of 2010 than in the second, because the risk of rising inflation and interest rates was expected to be higher in the second half of 2010.

Virtually everyone was overweight in cyclicals, with coal clearly the single-most preferred space. Some fund managers disagreed with us on banks, because of the contagion effect from regional de-rating, expensive valuations and concerns over loan growth — particularly given the reduced in spending on infrastructure in 2010. It is worth noting here that the Public Works Ministry will be spending only Rp 34 trillion in 2010, down 18 percent year on year.

In Hong Kong, fund managers had mixed views on Indonesia. Some were overweight on energy, again as the preferred area of exposure. We found this group of Hong Kong fund managers was in agreement with us to underweight the consumer sector because of rising raw materials prices, particularly sugar (up 123 percent year on year).

Some were neutral, adopting a trading stance because they believed easy money had been made and that markets (i.e. not just those in Indonesia) would be choppy this year because of the current global
market volatility.

Others were underweight or had no exposure in Indonesia. This set of fund managers believed Indonesia would not outperform its strong performance last year. With China tightening and the US dollar gaining strength, prices of commodities would disappoint, which is a negative for Indonesia because one-third of the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) market capitalization is in commodity-related counters.

Many fund managers told us that regional strategists were all advising that markets around the region would perform better in the first half of 2010 than in the second. When we began our roadshow in Singapore, Bahana was also in this camp, believing that the first half would be a more benign period given that inflation and interest rates were set to remain low during this period.

However, with Singapore fund managers all planning to get out of the Indonesian markets by April-June, the first half of 2010 could turn out to be weaker than the second.

It is worth highlighting that in all meetings we faced more questions about Indonesia’s deteriorating political landscape than we have ever faced before — which is not surprising given the de-rating of the Thai market as a result of the political situation there. It is also worth highlighting that the House of Representatives inquiry committee for Bank Century is expected to provide its preliminary findings on Feb. 4 — but won’t present its final recommendations until March 4.

Theoretically speaking, if the Bank Century case is pursued, Indonesia’s political environment could remain tense until August, when the Constitutional Court is due to hand over the case to the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR).

Coupled with concerns over China and the US markets, it is possible in our view that profit taking could occur sooner rather than later. In fact, 2010 is shaping up to be a year when big funds will pull the trigger first and exit the market.

The key to the success of stock market portfolios will lie in the timing of exit strategies. On the flip side, once the selling pressure subsides and valuations fall to more reasonable levels, the second half of 2010 could provide more lucrative entry levels for investors.

Happy trading!

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/04/2010-market-outlook-who-will-pull-trigger-first.html

How to properly assess the stock market today

How to properly assess the stock market today

By: Christina Pomoni

The current financial crisis has made investors extremely nervous.

• In majority, they doubt that there are buying opportunities in such downturn, or at least opportunities that will give them a return that can compensate them for the extra risk they undertake under these extremely risky market conditions. 
• On the other hand, equity analysts and stock market theorists consider that this is the perfect timing for entering the stock market and buying good stocks at low prices instead of entering the options markets and buy defensive puts.

1.  One good strategy to assess the potential of stock markets in today’s economy is to evaluate the daily performance of NASDAQ and Dow Jones. The decline of the stock markets is expected given the negative climate of global economy and therefore, the NASDAQ and Dow Jones demonstrate a negative performance, often over a series of trading sessions. However, the index performance alone is not enough to assess the overall performance of the stock market. Investors should also evaluate the performance of the individual stocks. For instance, there are companies that perform really well within the financial crisis such as copper and gold companies that expose positive increases. Therefore, investors can read accurate stock reports on Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg in order to get an idea of the market performance as a whole and be able to evaluate the overall performance of the economy.

2.  Another way to assess market performance is to evaluate the fundamentals of the listed companies. Fundamental analysis examines the economic factors, industrial factors and company variables that define the intrinsic value of an investment. Hence, investors can take into account all these parameters in order to observe how a stock performs in this kind of economy and compare its intrinsic value to its market price. In doing so, investors take well-informed investment decisions. Besides, not all companies under-perform within financial crises. Companies are different, have different products, goals, missions and organizational structures and all these diversities are reflected on their interim financial statements and, of course, on their annual reports. Therefore, by following daily trends, but also by getting to know the company fundamentals, investors acquire a general idea of the market and stick to the hot shots, while avoiding the stocks that decline sharply.

3.  For those investors who are not so much into fundamental analysis, technical analysis may be the answer to their inquiries about the prospect of a stock and the market in general. Technical analysis observes historical data of market performance such as price and volume and identifies new trends in order to estimate the market prospects. In this context, investors can use technical analysis to base their investment decisions on historical market data and psychological factors.

4.  Finally, investors can visit the company website in order to get information on historical data, past performance, market positioning, how well the company does in relation to competition and what are their estimates for the future. Besides, corporate websites are always a good source of information in regards to major organizational or other sort of changes and how smooth they occurred. Stability is extremely important in a company and consequently in an investment decision. Stable companies typically rise upwards. Unstable companies are volatile and fluctuate too much.

http://www.simama.org/article/how-to-properly-assess-the-stock-market-today

Major psychological factors that can make an investment strategy make or break.

Investor behavior is irrational as a result of psychological biases. 

Risk aversion, fear, or over-confidence, are the major psychological factors that can make an investment strategy make or break.

With the help of Behavioral Finance, stock market theorists, finance managers, equity analysts and anyone involved in stock market analysis can identify

• how investors evaluate certain events and 
• react in stock market changes. 

Also, investors can understand and evaluate market changes gaining a broader understanding of the factors that drive their behavior.

Method of fundamental analysis to find out cheap stock, particularly in banking sector.

FINDING OUT CHEAP STOCK

February 5th, 2010 | Author: admin

It is for those who like method of fundamental analysis to find out cheap stock, particularly in banking sector. There are 6 methods that can be used to, those are:

Price to Book Value (P/BV)

It is a method that has common tool used for evaluating bank stock, usually used to see the real value of a bank’s net asset. Investors usually have

• a will to buy stock at P/BV,  ROE 2 times when at least by 15% or
• a will to buy at P/BV, ROE 3 times if at least 20%.

Price to Earning Ratio (PER)

It is commonly understood as price of share compared with net income. This ratio is also often used as P/BV. But, the difference, it is usually used to compare PER of stock with

• PER of industry or
• PER of market.

The weakness of PER calculation is easy distortion by revenue that is unrelated to operation such as foreign exchange earning (or other) that could affect net income position outside the operational performance. PER of banking in 2010 reached 20 times, inline with PER of market in range of 12.5 times.

Price to Pre-Provision Profit (P/PPP)

Ratio of P/PPP is used to measure operational performance of company. Net income volatilities caused by imposition of provisional costs and tax costs can be avoided with this method which is only focus on company’s core business. Still there is criticism of this method, because cost of provision should also essential for the calculated to reflect bank’s management quality. Because of the lower-and-lower P/PPP value of bank’s stock, then it is said that bank’s stock price is considered cheap.

Market Cap to Deposit

This method is used to see how far a representation of bank’s potential growth prospect. The logic which is used in application of this ratio is representing fund that can be used by the bank to be channeled into productive asset, particularly loan channeled into high-impact result. Measurement of this ratio will only be valid if banking sector in good condition and not in financial crisis because of curtain reasons of bank.

Dividend Yield Compared with Risk Free Rate Return

It is valuation method used to accommodate those who argue that buying stock is only worth doing if offered dividend yield could be upper yield offered by risk free rate. The weakness of this method is not count possibility of price increase, especially for countries in category of emerging markets, which have capacity to provide high-enough investment return level from price appreciation only. Therefore, there are investors that more likely tend to get profit from higher price multiplication compared to dividend income.

ROE Compared With Cost of Equity

Rationality that is used in applying this ratio is when ROE of bank under its COE (number of return or minimum required return of investor to invest in a stock), then it is felt better to invest fund in other bank that give more profit. The weakness of this ratio is in risk premium or beta coefficient. Meanwhile, the weakness of ROE is difference of net income quality used to calculate ROE and capital optimizing (equity) owned by bank (whether too little or too much) that can affect the level of bank’s ROE.

(from: inter-sources)
http://techbostonworks.com/?p=407

Donald Yacktman's Investment strategy and methodology. “A low purchase price covers a lot of sins.”

Donald Yacktman's Way (Part II)


Feb. 04, 2010


(GuruFocus, February 4, 2010)

This is the second and the last part of my attempt to analyze Donald Yacktman’s investment strategy and methodology. In this part, I want to deal with questions such as

• how the Yacktmans treats the big picture, 
• how they manage cash level, and 
• how they reach a sell decision, and finally, 
• I will summarize their comments on some individual stocks as examples for the methodology in practice.

If you have not done it, please read Part I before reading any further.

What about the Big Picture?

Consciously or not, investors always form their own opinion towards how the economy and the stock market might do in the near future and position their portfolio accordingly. The press is full of such predictions, and good careers have been made. The dilemma for investors is, in any given market, there are always at least two camps, the bulls and the bears, with seasoned and successful professional managers in each camp.

The Yacktmans are bottom-up guys. When asked, their initial response is that they are not distracted by big picture issues. This dialog is from the recent Q&A with GuruFocus users[2]:

Question 16. Although your focus (both) is stock-picking, do you occasionally get caught up with big pictures issues that distract you from your main goal of picking great stocks? How do you deal with it and why do you think it can happen to investors?

Don: I don’t get distracted by big picture issues but I think many others do. I think most people have trouble buying stocks that are in price decline either because of 

• lack of knowledge, 
• a short time horizon, or
• emotion. 

It is important to be objective.

And the Yacktmans think trying to predict the market is not only useless, it could also be harmful, as illustrated by this dialog in the same Q&A session:

Question 4. At this level of market valuation, how do you think the market will do in the next few years?

Don: We don’t predict the market. Frankly I think that most of the time it is a waste of time. Looking at individual businesses and buying them at good value is a much better use of time. If someone correctly predicted the market 10 years ago, they would have been in cash and not our funds. Who is better off?

• Indeed, knowing what we know now about how the market performed in the last decade, most of us would be better off to put money in cash in the past decade. 

• But knowing what the Yacktmans know about value investing, one is better off investing in stocks.

So the Yacktmans totally ignore the macro factors in their managing money? Wrong! The Value Investor Insight interviewer was rather persistent and direct on this point. Here is a quote from the interview [4]:

Speaking generally, do views on the broader economy make it into your analytical process at all?

SY (Stephen Yacktman): We spend almost 

• no time trying to forecast things like inflation, interest rates and the value of the dollar, but 
• we do try to pay a lot of attention to cycles in how we normalize earnings. 

If margins are at a peak, for example, we don’t necessarily assume they’ll stay there forever. That alone kept us out of a lot of the financials that got hurt the most in the meltdown.
Potential inflation, or the lack thereof, seems to be fairly top-of-mind for investors. What’s your take on that?

DY (Donald Yacktman): Over time, we’re very concerned about the risk of higher inflation, but we expect that the kinds of businesses we own – those that can re-price their products fairly flexibly and that are heavily exposed to currencies other than the U.S. dollar – will navigate an inflationary period fairly well.

So long term inflation finds its way to Expected Rate of Return in the Yactkmans’ world of investing.

Manage Cash Level

Keeping the right level of cash is a key decision for individual investors as well as for fund managers. It is important for individual investor, it is vital for active fund managers. When market crashes, the right thing to do is to buy and take advantage of the lower prices, typically what the fund managers have to deal with is all the redemption requests. It is just an inconvenience in a fund manager’s life that one has to deal with.

Fearing of lagging behind peers and benchmarks, many fund managers tend to be fully invested. In May of 2009, during the MorningStar meeting, Robert Rodriguez was very critical towards this practice in his speech:

Did the industry try and prepare for this tsunami of a credit debacle? I don’t think so. 

• Whether in stocks or in bonds, it seems as though the same old strategies were followed--be fully invested for fear of underperforming and don’t diverge from your benchmark too far and risk index tracking error. 
• The industry drove into this credit debacle at full speed. 
• If active managers maintain this course, I fear the long-term outlook for their funds, as well as their employment, will be at high risk. 
• If they do not reflect upon what they have done wrong in this cycle and attempt to correct their errors, why should their investors expect a different outcome the next time?

Since the beginning of 2007 Robert Rodriguez, Rodriguez kept an unusual amount of cash (as much as 45%) in his FPA Capital portfolio. The Yacktmans, on the other hand,

• had as much as 30% in cash at the market peak of 2007.
• In November 2008, they were “all in”. 
• They even had to swap out some high quality stocks to buy some more cyclical ones. 
• And as of November 30, 2009, they are back to 15% again.[4]

So what drives their cash position up and down?

• Why 15% now? 
• And why as much as 30% at market peak in 2007?
• Is it by design or by luck? 

Careful exam of the Yacktmans's thinking on the matter tells us that the high cash might be a build-in function of their investment methodology. Here we dig into the The Wall Street Transcript Interview[1]:
TWST: What triggers an exit from your portfolio? Do you set sell targets?
…

Donald Yacktman: Think of everything being priced against the long-term Treasury, and we want to see a large spread over what the long-term Treasury yield is.

Stephen Yacktman: But in the present environment the dollar is being deflated and the Treasury rate of return is very low. At some point we say, “Hey, the rate of return of an investment is not acceptable to us.” We walk away. It’s the hardest thing to do because we have to wait for something else to come along. We can’t create something out of nothing.


And in theValue Investor Insight interview [4]:

Are you much less active when markets are calm?

DY: We’re not inactive when markets are relatively calm – there’s always something creating opportunity somewhere – but we do tend to be a lot less active overall. Our turnover has fallen compared to this time last year.

We also don’t let cash burn a hole in our pocket when the number of good opportunities decreases. While we were all in last November, our cash position in the funds today is around 15%.



In another word, the cash level is a result of insisting on

• minimum Forward Rate of Return on the investments and 
• minimum spread between the rate of return and the Treasury yield. 

If the requirements do not meet, the Yacktmans would rather keep the money in cash.
Nowadays, with market recovered more than 60% from the March 2009 low, GuruFocus noticed that

• Robert Rodriguez’s fund is hoarding cash; 
• Bruce Berkowitz has upped his cash level to about 20%, more than historical normal level, which has been about middle teens.; and 
• the Yacktmans had about 15% in cash as of November 30, 2009. 

Since you have made so far in reading my article, I feel obliged to give away this observation. These three managers are not bears or market timers, rather, they are very constructive in managing their money through different market cycles.

When to Sell

Stephen Yacktman answered this one straight-forwardly in The Wall Street Transcript Interview[1]:



TWST: What triggers an exit from your portfolio? Do you set sell targets?

Stephen Yacktman: Many people set a price target by saying, “Okay, I think it is worth $X.” Well, we don’t think that way. We look at what the forward rate of return is, stack it up against other investments and determine which one is the highest and which one is the lowest and what risk we are taking to get that rate of return. We account for things like leverage, cyclicality of earnings, and the quality of the business. An investment that is going to make it into the portfolio with the lowest rate of return would be a company like Coca-Cola that has high predictability and good management. We can just go into autopilot. It becomes our AAA bond.

A sale is triggered by two things.

• If the rate of return is not sufficient or 
• if there is a better opportunity elsewhere with a larger margin of safety to get a similar or higher rate of return, we’ll sell it. 

The overall market dropped and consumer product names held up and the media companies got killed. 

• News Corp. went from the $20s to $5. 
• That drop opened up a huge rate of return gap and encouraged us to sell some of our Pepsi and buy News Corp. 
• We viewed that decision as going from a low teens rate of return to something that was going to make a 20% return. 

There’s no price target ever set, it’s just a function of the environment. 

• What ends up happening, unfortunately, in an environment where everything goes up, is fewer of these returns are satisfactory and we end up more heavily in cash. 
• It’s not that we’re trying to time the market; it’s just there’s nothing to buy.

That is the ideal world, in which every purchase is a win. What about if they made mistake and have to sell at a loss? Here is their perspective according to the GuruFocus Q&A [2]:



Question 14. How hard is it to admit a mistake on an investment thesis and what do you do to not repeat the mistake?

Don: It is important to be objective and not let our ego get in the way. As Will Rogers said, “Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment”.

Brian: I agree. In addition, we can’t let our emotions get in the way. When a mistake has been made, you can’t cross your fingers and hope to recoup your losses. You have to ask yourself, where do I go from here?

• On this day, what are my best options, where are my highest yielding assets? 
• Where would this capital best be allocated now? 
• Once you’ve experienced a permanent loss of capital, there’s only one gear from here and that’s forward. 
• But the key in this business is to avoid the permanent losses. 
• And as my father has often said, “A low purchase price covers a lot of sins.”

Just be careful next time you place a buy order.

Comments on Individual Stocks

As illustrations of how the Yacktmans use the concept of Forward Rate of Return, I include a summary of their comments on some of their top holdings.

Much of this material is from of Value Investor Insight interview found on www.yacktmanfund.com website [4]. You might be better served to read the original document. The document was published on November 30, 2009 and the interview could have happened somewhat before that, so please keep the time elapsed since then when you read it.

1. News Corp. (NWS-A)

· Stock trades half of what it was at the beginning of 2007, yet the business mix and growth prospects are much better than they were back then.

· Company has eight different operating units. The most important business by far is cable network programming. Revenues and earnings in this business have more than doubled over the past five years, driven by increasing subscriber fees from cable and satellite companies, as well as higher rates on the advertising side. Plenty room for growth exists in this line of business.

· Non-U.S. operations is another engine for growth.

· Company is believed to be able to generate more than $1 per share in free cash flow. With the stock price at $11.50 (Now it is $13.67 on Feb. 3, 2009), the free cash flow yield is roughly 8.5%. (Now it is 7.3%).

· On the top of that, the Yacktmans expect a total of 6.5% annual growth on the current free-cash-flow yield.

· So the estimated Forward Rate of Return is in mid-teens per year, double what can be expected from S&P 500 (about 7%, see Part I).

· The age of Rupert Murdoch (78) is not of concern in the time horizon that matters here, especially when one paid no premium for him.

2. Viacom Inc. (VIA-B)

· This is more of a pure-play content company, which owns various cable networks, including Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central, as well as the Paramount movie studio.

· As a content company, Viacom has an upside to demand higher carriage fees from the cable distributor companies over time.

· On the advertising side, Viacom’s advertising should more than bounce back when the economy improves

· Paramount is adding nothing in the valuation model as it is not generating any cash, but as a standalone company, it probably worth $5-7 per Viacom share.

· Cable networks alone will generate $2.50 per share in normalized free cash flow. That’s an 8% cash yield. Even if Viacom grew no faster than the average S&P 500 company – and the Yacktmans think it should do better – that produces an expected return of 12-13% per year.

· Internet delivery of content should not be destructive. As long as you have content, you should be able to sell it for something and make a profit.

3. PepsiCo Inc. (PEP)

· Somewhat distinct from Coca-Cola, Pepsi’s fortunes are much more driven by snack foods.

· The distribution and shelf space of Frito-Lay products create a very high barrier to entry.

· Frito-Lay now accounts for roughly half Pepsi’s overall business.

· The snack-food business is a good one. Buyers are not too price-sensitive, margins are high, and unit-volume growth is pretty strong as busy lifestyles prompt people to eat things on the run.

· The second big driver of the business will be continued global expansion.

· On a forward basis, the Yacktmans are estimating $3.85 per share in normalized earnings. They should keep roughly 85% of that, so free cash flow would be around $3.40. That’s a 5.5% free-cash yield, on top of which they are expecting 3-4% annual volume growth, primarily from increased snack-food sales and overseas expansion. Add in some pricing, largely to keep up with inflation, and the expected annual return is 12-13%, 5% better than S&P 500’s expected rate of return.

4. Comcast Corp. (CMCSK)

· Comcast stock performed poorly in recent history because there was never any cash generated. All the earnings needed to be invested for expansion or equipment upgrades.

· Operationally, Comcast is uniquely positioned because it can offer a full complement of television, Internet, and phone services. They’ve been quite successful in rolling out these bundled services in their territories and skimming off profit from phone companies like AT&T and Verizon.

· What sets Comcast apart as an investment is the fact that a lot of the enormous capital spending necessary to build that network is going away. The company now has a platform to meet customer demands well into the future at modest incremental cost.

· That will have a dramatic impact on free cash flow generation.

· Free cash flow should exceed net income by $1-1.5 billion per year as capital expenditures are much lower than depreciation and amortization. On a normal basis, we estimate free cash flow at more than $1.50 per share, resulting in a 11% cash yield. On top of that one would add inflation plus 2% or so, as they continue to take phone and Internet share. That yields an expected mid-teens return for a company that on a fundamental basis continues to perform extremely well.

· The recently announced proposal to acquire NBC Universal, even assumed overpaid, has limited impact on the company’s value and do not change the view that the stock is undervalued.
Conclusion

Central to the Yacktmans’ investment methodology is the concept of Forward Rate of Return, which is current free cash flow yield plus inflation and plus annual growth in free cash flow. Macro economy and business cycle find their way in the calculation of rate of return;

• when minimum rate of return is hard to get, the Yacktmans build a large cash position;  
• when the rate of return become less attractive comparatively, they sell the individual stock.

Finally, it should be noted that the adjective word for the Forward Rate of Return is “Estimated”. As the examples given above show, the Yacktmans do not calculate the rate to the fifth decimal (not even to the second decimal, for that matter). In investing, they also would rather be approximately right than precisely wrong.

As of now, the compass of Rate of Return points toward high quality companies at attractive valuations, and that is where the Yacktman park their money.

http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=83444

Our Stock-Picking Track Record by Pat Dorsey, Morningstar

By Pat Dorsey, CFA| 1-26-2010 12:20 PM

Our Stock-Picking Track Record
Pat Dorsey takes a look back at the performance of our calls through the downturn and recovery, plus how our star ratings on wide-, narrow-, and no-moat stocks have played out.

Related Links
How Our Stock Calls Have Performed

Pat Dorsey: Hi, I'm Pat Dorsey, director of equity research at Morningstar. At Morningstar's Equity Research Department, we're sometimes accused of taking a bit of an academic focus towards equity research. We spend a lot of time on competitive analysis and cash flow projections, but at the end of the day, the purpose is to pick stocks that go up.

So, the question is, did we do this? How has our performance been in 2009 and over the past few years? We recently published an article looking at our performance in '09 and in the past several years. I wanted to recap some of the highlights for you.

One of the first ways we can look at our performance in general is basically comparing how cheap we thought stocks were in aggregate to how the market has done. On that score, we've done OK.

In '07 and '08, we thought stocks were mildly overvalued. In hindsight, they were more overvalued then we had projected them to be, but at least we weren't pounding the table and saying, "Go out and put all your money into the equity markets."

What we did get right was calling the market as significantly undervalued in late '08 and early '09 when the median price-to-fair value of all the stocks that we cover reached as low as about 0.6, meaning that we thought the median stock in our coverage universe was about 40% undervalued in late '08 and early '09. Of course, that turned out to be a pretty good call.

Close Full Transcript

We can also look at our valuation of popular indexes like the S&P 500 because, since we cover every stock in the S&P 500, we can basically take all of our fair values and roll them up into an aggregate value for the index. Well, before things really rolled over, we had a fair value of the S&P of about 1,500-1,600. That was certainly, in hindsight, too high. (Food for thought:  even the expert got it wrong!)

We quickly adjusted that downward in late '08 to a level of about 1,200-1,250, and I'm very proud of the fact that we actually held our ground. Throughout most of '09, we held our fair value for the S&P at about 1, 200 even as the market was cratering down towards 800, 700 and down to the intra-day number of the beast low on March nine of 666.

We held our ground that whole time that the fair value for the S&P of 1,200. I'm fairly glad that we didn't succumb to the temptation to hide under the covers and not call anything a buy. In fact, we called quite a few things buys at that point in time.

Those are two big ways to look at the overall performance of our stock calls. Another way is basically have our 5-stars, our buy-rated stocks, outperformed our 1-stars, sell-rated stocks? One way we do this is sort of look at it by moat. Look at it by

• wide-moat, 
• narrow-moat and 
• no-moat stocks.

And here again, the story is pretty good. If you look at our wide-moat stocks over pretty much all time periods--trailing three years, five years and last year--our 5-star, buy-rated, wide-moat stocks have beaten our entire coverage universe of wide-moat stocks and, of course have done much better than our 1-star, sell-rated, wide-moat stocks.

Same story on the narrow-moat side. Of course, narrow-moat companies are the kinds of companies that don't have quite as strong an advantage as wide-moat businesses, and they are still good businesses. And those are businesses where, again, our 5-stars have out-performed narrow moats in general, as well as our sell-rated, 1-star, narrow-moat stocks.

Now, on the no-moat side of things, the story's a little bit more mixed, frankly. We cover about 900 no-moat stocks. These are typically sometimes smaller, less well competitively advantaged businesses. Businesses that we think are very prone to the vicissitudes of the economy and don't really have strong economic moats. And our performance here has been a bit more skewed, basically. We have not really done a very good job of sorting out the buy-rated ones from the 1-star, no-moat stocks. I think there's a couple reasons for this.

One is, well, frankly these are harder companies to value at the end of the day. They tend to be more volatile. They tend to be less predictable. They tend to be more easily buffeted by macroeconomic events, so they're just harder to value. They've also more volatile. They tend to be a little bit more levered and smaller, on average. They're just tougher companies to get you arms around. And our 1-star, no-moat stocks actually did incredibly well in 2009.

So, if you had owned this portfolio of beaten-down retailers, auto parts companies and media firms, you would have made a ton of money in 2009. You would have also needed a titanium-lined stomach to have held them from the beginning of the year through the March lows, and I'm not quite sure how many people would have had the fortitude to do this. If you did, more power to you. But I think the perhaps better risk-adjusted way is to think about the 5-star, narrow-moat and wide-moat stocks.

Finally, our strategies have done fairly well over time. These are kind of real money portfolios. Again, you're seeing more conservative strategies, like our Morningstar StockInvestor Tortoise Portfolio, didn't do quite as well in 2009, but it also didn't lose nearly as much money as the market in 2008, where as our more aggressive portfolios, like the Morningstar StockInvestor Hare, did quite well in 2009, as taking risk was rewarded by the market .

And our Wide Moat Focus Index, which basically takes the 20 cheapest of our wide-moat stocks, basically has been knocking the cover off the ball. It was up about 46% in 2009 and is beating the market by about 500 basis points annualized over the past five years. Again, it's a very simple, mechanical strategy. It's simply looking at our wide-moat universe of about 160 companies and looking for the 20 cheapest and then rebalancing quarterly.

I think what that really shows is the value of a disciplined approach and having a watch-list sorting out a group of companies you think that have the economic sticking power to be around for the long haul and waiting and buying them when they're cheap. That's essentially all this strategy does.

So, that's a pretty comprehensive look at our performance in 2009 and over the past several years. Overall, pretty good. We could have done a better job with the no-moat stocks but again, these are just frankly harder companies to get your arms around. They tend to be a little bit riskier and those were some missed opportunities, but overall, I'm pretty pleased with the performance.

I'm Pat Dorsey and thanks for watching.
Video:
http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=323559

Can you be brave, or Will you cave?

Many people stop investing precisely because the stock market goes down.  

Psychologists have shown that most of us do a very poor job of predicting today how we will feel about an emotionally charged event in the future.

Because so few investors have the guts to cling to stocks in a falling market, Benjamin Graham insists that everyone should keep a minimum of 25% in bonds.  That cushion, he argues, will give you the courage to keep the rest of your money in stocks even when the stocks stink.

One advice given is that you should not place 100% of your security portfolio money in stocks unless you....

1.  have set aside enough cash to support your family for at least one year.

2.  will be investing steadily for at least 20 years to come.

3.  survived the bear market that began in 2007.

4.  did not sell stocks during the bear market that began in 2007.

5.  bought more stocks during the bear market that began in 2007.

6.  have read chapter 8 of Graham's Intelligent Investor (human psychology emphasis).

Pluto as never seen before

 

NASA scientists have taken the most detailed pictures ever of the planet. 

MD proposes to buy KNM business for RM3.6bil

Friday February 5, 2010
MD proposes to buy KNM business for RM3.6bil
By LEE KIAN SEONG


lks@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: KNM Group Bhd’s founder and group managing director Lee Swee Eng has proposed to acquire the entire business and undertakings of KNM in a deal worth RM3.6bil.

In a filing to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, KNM said BlueFire Capital Group Ltd, an entity controlled by Lee, had proposed an equivalent price of 90 sen for each issued ordinary share of KNM.
Lee Swee Eng – the founder and group MD of KNM

The company’s current market capitalisation is about RM3bil as stated by Bloomberg.

According to Bursa, Lee is currently the major shareholder of KNM with 23.74% direct and indirect shareholding in the company as at June 8, 2009.

“The proposal is subject to the satisfactory completion of due diligence, receipt of firm financing commitments, and negotiation and execution of definitive documentation relating to the proposed transaction,” said KNM.

It said BlueFire was acting in collaboration with GS Capital Partners VI Fund L.P and Mettiz Capital Ltd in the acquisition and that its international adviser was Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte.

“Pursuant to the above, the board has granted BlueFire a limited exclusivity period up to March 22, 2010 in which to complete due diligence and satisfy the other conditions of the proposal, subject to confidentiality undertakings,” it said.

KNM will also promptly engage its legal and financial advisors to assist KNM and its board in evaluating and negotiating the definitive terms of any transaction.

The funding structure and the reason of acquisition were not stated in the statement to Bursa. Efforts to contact Lee proved fruitless.

Lee was quoted by StarBiz on March last year as saying that a management buyout would be considered for KNM Group but it would be very difficult to raise funds in the current environment.

TA Securities analyst Kaladher Govindan said the offer price was about 13 times the company’s price earnings and it was a fair value for the offer.

“Lee’s intention to acquire the company might be due to the improvement in the oil and gas (O&G) industry and the lower entry price for the acquisition,” he told StarBiz.

For the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2009, KNM registered a net profit of RM31.9mil with revenue of RM458.3mil. Its net profit for the first nine months was RM201.8mil with revenue of RM1.4bil.

KNM’s all-time high was at RM2.44 on Jan 8, 2008. It closed at 75 sen yesterday.

KNM, which was established in 1990, is involved in the manufacture of process equipment and processing units for O&G, petrochemicals, minerals processing, desalination, renewable energy, chemicals, steam generation, power and environment industries.

The group currently operates 19 manufacturing facilities and engineering centres in 12 countries, offering a diversified range of products and services to its clients in more than 60 countries.

Over 90% of its revenues are realised from the export markets and international business.

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/2/5/business/5618633&sec=business

Three life-long valuable lessons from Ben Graham

In his pivotal book, The Intelligent Investor, Ben Graham never promises that he can help the reader / investor to "beat the market", but rather promises to teach three valuable lessons:

1. how to minimize the odds of suffering irreversible losses;
2. how to maximize the odds of achieving sustainable gains; and 
3. how to control self-defeating behaviour that keeps most from reaching their full potential.