This guy is a clown but he backs it up. To me that is welcome change. I much prefer to see and read about arrogant and good than arrogant and no proof or arrogant and blowing up. This guys weight might end his career while he is still highly profitable.
Simon Cawkwell identifies the mortgage crisis in this interview dated November 7, 2002: http://www.fool.co.uk/specials/2002/specials021107.htm Evil Knievil's Five Christmas Shorts By Simon Cawkwell November 7, 2002 Simon Cawkwell, better known as Evil Knievil, looks at five shares that look ripe for a tumble. His new book, Evil's Book of Boasts is available now. I feel rather left out. Last week the Sunday Times published a list of the UK's 100 highest earners in the year to September 30th 2002. There at the top was the retailer Philip Green who made around £200 million to him. Good luck to the boy although he is not my sort of tailor. Then down at the bottom of the list was some chap called Mr Prune or something similar who made around £1.5 million. Well, and I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes but Mr Prune should not be on the list because in the year to September 30th I reckon that I made around £3.5 million from short selling. So I should have been on that list and Mr Prune should have been pipped at the post. Now you may say that being a shorter of shares in 2001/2 is not that tricky, it has been like shooting fish in a barrel. You would be wrong. Ask the spread-betters â most of their clients have been short for most of this year and most are down. The temporary bear squeezes, which we have periodically seen, have crushed those bears who have smaller brains, weaker resolve or shallower pockets than my own. And if you choose to short the wrong stocks this can be an expensive game. Hence in a sprit of seasonal generosity (Christmas has come early as I have a book to promote) I offer you my current five top shorts. Top of my list, if only because its shares were pumped up by the press last weekend is Spectris (LSE: SXS), the engineer formerly known as Fairey. It goes without saying that the hacks on the Sunday's don't understand balance sheets otherwise they would not have written the tosh they did. The bald facts are that Fairey (sorry Spectris) has net assets of £111 million but if one strips out intangibles its net assets plunge to just £34 million. And it has debts of £192 million. At 297p it is capitalised at £369 million. So it is a boring engineer with a very weak balance sheet and a ludicrously high market capitalisation. Moreover any company that changes its name for no good reason is at best profligate (these exercises are not cheap) and at worst trying to make investors forget something. Evil's Rule Number 19: Go short of companies that change their name. Second up is Sportingbet (LSE: SBT), a company that has spent most of this year whingeing that I am short of it and am saying beastly things about it. Keep on moaning I say, my short position is getting better every day. Sportingbet is an Internet bookmaker and it has been a one way bet for me. More than 100% of Sportingbet's (minimal) profits come from the USA where Internet bookmaking and gambling is â in nearly every state - illegal. The regulators cannot touch Sportingbet itself because its servers are offshore. But they are undertaking a draconian clampdown on those companies that process transactions for companies such as Sportingbet. Hence the credit card companies and online transaction houses are either quitting the business or jacking up their charges dramatically. If life was not bad enough, Sportingbet's balance sheet â if one strips out intangibles â shows massively negative net assets and due to deferred payments on some of its historic acquisitions it has some massive cash commitments over the next year. Sportingbet's chief executive was recently named AIM entrepreneur of the year, which encouraged me greatly as such awards are always a bad sign. Even though the stock has already crashed to just 30.5p it remains a compelling short. Third up is fund manager Man Group (LSE: EMG). This company says that its hedge funds outperform the market massively and hence while most fund managers are valued at (a maximum of) 5% of funds under management (FUM), even in takeover situations, Man trades at closer to 10% of its prospective FUM. Read up on your history. No manager outperforms the market forever so if you buy Man today you are betting that it will rewrite the financial history books. It won't. And so the shares are a strong sell at £10.22. Sticking with the theme of history it is perhaps worth gaining some exposure to the forthcoming slump in house prices. Bulls of this sector (who normally have very vested interests or limited intelligence or â in the case of Estate Agents â both) spout piffle along the lines of "it will be different this time, lower interest rates, blah, blah; blah." Believe that if you wish. Anyone who has read any history at all will know that ultimately the prices of all asset classes are linked. A situation where the price of one asset rockets in perpetuity while others (in this case equities) slump and most stay static is simply not sustainable ad infinitum. Interest rates are low in a desperate attempt to keep consumers spending. Ultimately the Central Bankers and meddling politicians will once again learn that they cannot beat the economic cycle and the consumer will stop spending. That will remove the confidence from the market while rising unemployment will reduce the ability of borrowers to support any mortgage however low base rates are. When that happens all those foolish buy-to-letters and those taking out mortgages on seven times salary will come a cropper. Momentum will turn negative and house prices will slump. Remember houses are by definition an illiquid asset so this is a market that rarely "corrects", it usually just slumps. My play on the looming crash is Kensington (LSE: KGN) a company providing mortgages to those whose credit rating is deemed too risky by normal banks. In a booming housing market this business works. When the housing market falters it will quickly become clear why Kensington's customers could not get loans elsewhere. At 215p Kensington may take several months to go my way but I am a patient man. My final short is Bloomsbury (LSE: BMY) the publisher of the ghastly Harry Potter books. At 655p this company trades on an historic PE of 19. Strip out the tedious Potter and this is no growth company. Fads always pass and there is growing evidence that JK Rowling is really struggling to produce the fifth book in the Potter series. As for a sixth? Don't hold your breath. So while I accept that Bloomsbury will hit its forecasts for this year and might even grow its earnings next year with Potter V after that I have grave doubts about the visibility of any future earnings and that rating is pretty high. It may pay to wait for Potter mania to grip the press and result in a spurious tip since you might get a chance to short the stock at an even more inflated price than 655p. I am not greedy (well maybe I am) and am content to be short at today's level. Evil Knievil has been Britain's most successful short seller for more than a decade. He recently published his manual of successful short-selling. Evil's Good Book of Boasts normally costs £20 but is available for just £17.
He is a good trader. I like his point of view on short selling/trading, but it is very difficult to like a guy who claim to like crisis and mentioned that people are stupid--especially in the current situation where a lot of peoples are suffering due to the financial crisis. BTW: Is this how a successful trader suppose to be? An insensitive, money-focused, egoistic person with no regard for his physical wellness? PA
no doubt about that. all i hear from ETers is how much their right hand hurt from too much mouse squeezing. ***disclaimer***: have been having problems with my right wrist myself.
There is no need for him to mention that, especially in public. As well, I wonder if it is fair to measure how smart someone is based on just their financial sense. PA