Yes, slowdown in Europe is a significant drag on many multinationals - PG and F for example - and the threat of USD short squeeze (along w potential further euro weakness) is a headwind for risk assets in general Nor does China's potentially massive USD short position help http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/07/09/1075431/china-and-those-dollar-shorts/
CMI is down $10(-10%) even though it trades at 9x earnings, taking ES with it. Market possibly starting to price in a global recession
Does anyone else think Steve Ballmer is a complete fucking idiot? MSFT should be a cash-cow value stock with a comfortable, multi-decade sunset horizon. Ballmer seems intent on destroying value instead... http://mashable.com/2012/07/10/microsofts-ballmer-war-on-apple/
SAFM looks like a potentially legit oversold / overdone situation - chicken producers crushed by feed cost fears via drought, pile-ons via Wall St downgrades, etc etc http://articles.marketwatch.com/201...1_profit-estimate-sanderson-farms-corn-prices
Just curious, do you wait for price confirmation before stepping into a situation like this, or do you start nibbling into the falling knife?
Typically, price confirmation via directional trend break on 60 minute - see recent entry setup on SHOO (cashed out yesterday)
Returning to the office for a couple of days before I head back to the beach and golf course, and I've got a lot to say! Yes, I always noted with bemusement what a total clown Ballmer was. Now that I'm an owner of the stock, I take it much more seriously as the guy is seemingly intent on making the company even more of a joke. Seriously - tablets, smartphones? What's next? A Microsoft calculator? Somebody wake this imbecile up and tell him its 2012, not 2002. I would note that even a poorly run company bought at a good enough price and with a big enough moat can still make you money. Stock is up 9% with a divvie of 2.75% over the last year (about the time I bought). The day Ballmer steps down, the stock will pop 10%. Unfortunately, the shares might have to drop to the teens for that to happen.
J.C. Penney's stock price becomes a teenager. Ackman is furiously trying to get through to Eddie Lampert as JCP is dead as a retailer, but he may be able to engineer the shares higher as a real estate play (how funny will it be when Ron Johnson quits and the stock plunges only to triple over the following year as Ackman and the market figure it out).
I would argue there's no incongruity between being a global macro player and value investing (at least as I have done it). My buys of what some would call "value" stocks over the past year are global macro plays - a recognition that certain stocks had over time become cheap in relation to interest rates and my outlook for the economy - as top down as it gets. Once that came into view, then yes, there was some bottom-up work to pick individual issues as I see no edge in buying the "market" (and increasingly find such discussions not just a waste of time, but harmful to returns).