It's not an unreasonable scenario to believe that part of gold's decline is Paulson selling to raise funds for redemptions. Like Apple, gold has a bit of teflon to it, remaining at a pretty high level while things around it head towards zero.
âNot a dime of cash has left Berkshire for dividends or share repurchases during the past 40 years."
Whatever happened to his big announcement of 'betting very heavily against a double dip' from July. Looks like he pulled in his tail.
I've been reading some of what Buffett has said in the past as well as the timing of another share repurchase (bought after a 50% decline to $40 in 1974!!!). His main issue with buybacks has been management buying high to offset dilution of stock option grants. He has no problem with buybacks when stock is selling far below intrinsic value, and has said it's even the best way to benefit shareholders. I'll take him at his word: after a long horrid period for BRK.A, Buffett believes the shares are too cheap. I also will not argue with his opinion. I would also note that the news seems to have legs as opposed to most of these announcements which are clearly PR aimed at a quick pop in the stock. Stock remains up by 6%.
Ralph, you have been a vocal critic of global policies over these past few months... If I may ask you if not by PM's where do you go overweight to protect/profit from the mistakes policy makers make in your view? I believe you see stocks as quite undervalued and plan to build a position in them? Or do you just take it day by day and see where the biggest disruptions are to play them? Cheers.
The question to Buffett should be why he took so long to do this. His main excuse was that the announcement would bring the stock up canceling any value on the buyback. Sounds like nonsense to me. If he is correct this means BRK would never be undervalued again, cutting volatility from shareholders, a great benefit, if he was wrong it meant the buyback would add value to the shareholders He made the request to be valid forever as I understand the press release, so looks like he realized his mistake
FWIW... Hussy and WSJ are mentioning that the ECRI has gone on record calling a recession in the US a 'certainty and done deal' within the coming months. I understand some take whatever Achuthan and crew say with a grain of salt but I'll note that they correctly said 2010 won't turn into a recession while the bears were yelling fire regarding a double dip. In early spring 2011 they called for a global slowdown, a few weeks before markets topped while Wall St. analyst perma-bulls were dreaming of above-trend GDP figures. If they're right we ought to see some 450k+ claims numbers popping up with regularity during the coming weeks.
I agree with you. I'd just note that the reason they were right in 2010 didn't had much to do with their logic but with QE2 and the market reaction to it. And to my knowledge, they did not predict QE2
Short term tactical trade call: Long AUD at 0.985. Target 1.00/1.01/1.02. Stop: 0.97/0.96. Rationale: Downmove in AUD was sharp and is overdone and AUD is set for a bounce. Price action in AUD/ES/Metals is confirming this. I am not sure how far this bounce might go though, so will book profits between 1.00 and 1.02. I thought about going long audnzd as a safer bet or short euraud....but decided to go long aud against usd straight.