The Awakening

Discussion in 'Trading' started by stonedinvestor, Nov 18, 2008.

  1. Sometimes people got to just wake up. Our beloved Hedge Fund community has so over raised cash for redemptions that are not really there it's ridiculous. If I hear about one more hedge fund manager crying into his beer because he is down 20% HEY WE ARE ALL DOWN 40%!

    geez. lets talk about power from the ocean. Because this is an source of power we all need to wake up to. I was tipped about this company a ways back and i ran across this nice write up today on SeekingAlpha-

    Ocean Power Technologies Inc. (NSDQ: OPTT) said Wednesday that it has launched a buoy that can generate electricity from the motion of the ocean off the Hawaiian coast.

    The PowerBuoy – which captures the motion of waves as mechanical motion, before converting them into electricity through a power take-off system and transmitting the energy to shore through underwater cables – was dunked off the coast of the island of Oahu as part of a program the Pennington, N.J.-based company has with the U.S. Navy.

    Ocean Power has signed two contracts with the Navy worth a total of $4.7 million to test the PowerBuoy's ability to power the Navy's Deep Water Active Detection Systems (DWADS), which track the movement of ocean-going vessels.

    But since it launched its first 40-kilowatt PowerBuoy off the coast of New Jersey in 2005, Ocean Power has also landed larger-scale wave power development deals with utilities in the United States, Spain and Australia.

    In October, the company announced it had landed a $2 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the launch of a PowerBuoy off the Oregon coast, part of a project with utility Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative meant to grow to 50 megawatts eventually.

    Ocean Power also has a deal with Spanish utility Iberdrola to deploy a PowerBuoy off the coast of Spain. And in May, Ocean Power announced an agreement with Griffin Wave Power Ltd, a subsidiary of Australian energy developer Griffin Energy Pty Ltd., to develop a wave power station off the cost of western Australia aimed at producing up to 10 megawatts initially and with the potential to grow to 100 megawatts eventually.

    The ocean power business now makes up a tiny portion of the renewable energy market, with less than 10 megawatts of installed capacity. But it could grow to a $500 million market in the next six years, according to a report from Greentech Media and the Prometheus Institute

    The industry's 35 most active companies have received just over $500 million in investments since 2001 from a variety of sources, including venture capital, loans and certain types of government funding, the report says.

    But the next six years will likely see more than $2 billion invested to build commercial ocean wave power farms and another $2 billion spent on research and development, the report said.

    The ocean power industry includes companies seeking to harness the motion of waves to generate power, such as AWS Ocean Energy, Wave Dragon, Oceanlinx, Pelamis Wave Power and Finavera Renewables, as well as those seeking to capture tidal forces to make electricity, such as SMD Hydrovision, Marine Current Turbines, Open Hydro and Ocean Renewable Power.

    A March 2007 study led by researchers from the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. found that 10 percent of U.S. energy demand could be "credibly harnessed" from wave and current energy.

    But the industry still has technical hurdles to overcome, said Greentech Media analyst Daniel Englander.

    "As the industry evolves, I think there's going to be a convergence" of technologies, with the best-performing winning out over less successful competitors, he said.

    In October, the California Public Utilities Commission rejected a proposal from utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to buy power from a 2-megawatt ocean power project being developed by Canada-based Finavera Renewables ((TSX-V: FVR)), saying the project wasn't feasible and would cost too much

    Finavera had poor luck with one of its buoys off the Oregon coast last year, when the buoy sank one day before the end of the six-week test run. The buoys convert the vertical motion of waves into pressurized seawater, which in turn drives a piston and forces seawater through a turbine.

    Ocean Power, on the other hand, "hasn't had any major malfunctions or problems," Englander said. "The issue is getting to full-scale deployment."

    So far, Ocean Power – which was founded in 1997 and went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2003 and on Nasdaq in 2007 – is among a handful of companies in its industry that have achieved significant installations, Englander said.

    Others include Pelamis Wave Power, which recently opened a wave power project off the coast of Portugal and raised £5 million ($7.5 million) from investors, and Marine Current Turbines, which installed a tidal power turbine off the coast of Northern Ireland this fall, he said.

    Carolyn Elefant, general counsel for legislative and regulatory affairs for the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition trade group, said that large-scale ocean power projects are just the beginning for the industry.

    "What we would like to see ... is the development of technology that can be exported and integrated into other hybrid uses, like floating data centers, offshore aquaculture or uses like that," she said.

    Google, for one, has filed a patent application for a floating data center that could be powered by ocean currents
    >> Interesting stuff I think. The waves of the ocean are more reliable than the wind in most areas. No ugly towers, mostly submerged technology, out of sight.

    On the macro front I am continually drawn to the retail space now and I'm not exactly sure why. The press has really given us the dark pool view of the sector but I continue to find stocks there that are (a) attractively priced (b) beating their number (c) amazingly poised for future growth. Yet all we hear about is Wallmart and McDonalds. A nice strategy might be to short those two outperformers and take a stab at one or two of my picks. here they are:
    URBN

    TRLG

    GES

    BBBY

    LULU

    Fair warning on Guess & BBBY I do not think they have reported yet... GES is unbelievably low priced for it's European sales.

    In Food I'm considering DARDEN, they own RED LOBSTER and as discussed in the Flomax thread, lobster meat is way cheap now, which should provide excellent margins as Red Lob rolls out a promotional campaign.

    GMCR. The coffeee roasters.

    I would say in general I am tilting away from infrastructure plays... and pinning my hopes on retail now with a weary eye on GE which seems about to go bankrupt.~ stoney
     
  2. Here's another one for ya Stoney.

    http://aerotecture.com/

    IMHO, this guy's revolutionized wind power. I caught a Science Channel show on this man, and he had 4 of these machines on top of a bldg in Chicago, each hooked up to car alternators powering a battery array in the basement. Powering the whole bldg. I think it was 8 floors. Amazing.
     
  3. here are some of the lemmings on the run.

    Hedge-fund manager David Tepper entered the third quarter with $3.1 billion of U.S. stocks and exited with $648 million, selling most holdings to reduce risk and raise cash as carnage spread across the financial markets.

    `We moved a lot out early because we didn't want to lose money,'' said Tepper, 51, president of Appaloosa Management LP in Chatham, New Jersey. The firm, which switched some money to bonds, has between 30 percent and 40 percent of assets in cash.

    Regulatory filings last week by 38 hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets each show that selling and market declines cut the value of their reported holdings by about 30 percent to $273 billion.

    The $1.7 trillion industry, which accounts for about a third of U.S. equity trading, continued to retrench in the past two months, contributing to the 25 percent decline by the Standard & Poor's 500 Index since Sept. 30. At least 75 funds have liquidated or halted redemptions this year.

    Almost all the major hedge funds submit their reports within a few hours of the deadline, which was Nov. 14 for the third quarter.

    >Atticus Capital LP, based in New York, said its holdings declined to $510 million from $8.1 billion. The firm, run by Timothy Barakett, 43, sold out of 39 stocks while adding no new holdings. ConocoPhillips, MasterCard Inc. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. were the three largest positions he exited, with a combined market value of $2.68 billion as of Sept. 30.In an Oct. 1 letter to investors, David Slager, 36, who manages the Atticus European Fund, told investors that more than 50 percent of his fund was in cash or U.S. Treasuries after he lost 43.5 percent year-to-date.

    At Tudor Investment Corp., the Greenwich, Connecticut, hedge-fund group founded by Paul Tudor Jones, 13F holdings fell to $453 million from $5.7 billion. Jones said markets face more selling from managers.

    `Our concern now is less over year-end fund redemptions, as record cash balances have already been raised in anticipation, but with prospective fund closures,'' Jones, 54, said in an Oct. 31 report to his clients. This latter event represents a tipping point at which a fund's call on the market for liquidity goes non-linear.''

    >> That's probably the scariest comment but we should remember that any STRONG MOVE UP will lure all the boys back into the bath and that's exactly what's going to happen.

    SAC Capital Advisors LLC of Stamford, Connecticut, said its holdings were $7.7 billion as of Sept. 30, down from $14.4 billion at June 30. Founder Steven Cohen, 52, had about half the firm's assets in cash in mid-October, after his main fund fell 5 percent through September.

    >Louis Bacon's Moore Capital Management LLC said the value of its 13F securities fell 69 percent to $1.4 billion,

    >At Jana Partners LLC, a firm overseen by Barry Rosenstein that makes activist investments, they fell to $2.1 billion from $5.9 billion. Both firms are based in New York.

    >Jeffrey Vinik, who once ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund, disclosed that his Boston-based Vinik Asset Management LP held $1.8 billion at Sept. 30, down from $11.8 billion at June 30.

    The largest funds, including those run by David Shaw, Kenneth Griffin and James Simons, reported smaller declines in their holdings.

    >At Griffin's Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group LLC, holdings listed on Citadel LP's 13F fell 11 percent to $50.4 billion.

    > Simons's Renaissance Technologies LLC of East Setauket, New York, reported a 17 percent decline to $37.8 billion.

    >At New York-based D.E. Shaw & Co., the filing showed a 20 percent decrease to $45.4 billion.

    This year has been the worst on record for hedge funds, with the average partnership losing 16 percent through October???? WTF! That's good! Market losses and withdrawals may cut hedge-fund industry assets to about $1 trillion by the middle of next year, down almost 50 percent from their peak in June, said Tobias Levkovich, a Citigroup Inc. analyst, in a report yesterday. And that I see as good. We needed a big shakeout.

    I guess the sad part is even managers who are outperforming have gotten redemption requests because their clients need cash to cover outside losses.

    Of course little if this selling is based on earnings of the market and that's what makes it so hard for you and me... these esoteric chumps simply had to a lot of exotic swaps and leverage and this cash raising is as much about covering losses such as loans that need to be repaid, or bets on real estate or other assets like energy futures that have lost a lot of value. In short this has become A SOURCE OF FUNDS MARKET... Which is what i was going to title this thread until I realized we all needed an " Awakening. "

    Golman Sachs is surly to blame here with their " Peak Oil Scenario " that got everyone goosed and put into these silly hedge fund managers mind that oil was never going to stop going up... that call was made in a reckless way that scared everyday investors and helped thrust us into this malaise. Think about it- if you went long oil at $140 as GOLDMAN told you too....
    And when all the facts come out, will we learn that secretly inside Goldman they were going the other way? Just like they told their investors to bet against California bonds they HELPED TO SELL... Why oh why can we not get some Perp Walks out of Goldman... oh yea Paulson is still around.

    Hopefully Hewlett Packard has AWOKEN us all today.... and what of RIMM? That $40 dollar level is awful important... it looked very dark there for a while before some analyst chatter... We could be redying for a quick run up there...

    Now daily fluctuations of the market should not result in STARS being taken away from a thread. It was with great pain that I realized my 5 STAR Flomax Market thread had been reduced to 4 or 3.... that simply is dirty pool. The ideas get no less brilliant here, it's just that the Market decides at times not to listen. Today the ear mufflers are off. And so are the Handcuffs, buy some damn stock. Lets panic these fund managers back into the game. starting right now. ~ stoney
     
  4. It should be another day.

    Good Morning. RIMM is up again! An argument is slowly going to be made today I hope that the selling from Hedge Funds has run it's course. When Apple and a few other fan faves join RIMM we will know for sure.

    As I sit here in my Underwear a lot of answers to the world's questions come to me. I will share a few of these today I hope, if they pop back into my memory bank.

    How do you do it? Investing. Daily? Well lets talk about this morning as one example... I wake up and I stock surf? What is Stock Surf? - I start drifting, starting with a basic idea... today it was Amazon that surly qulifies as the type of stock that will quickly rebound when Hedge Funds are done, it is carried in many accounts. And from there I go wherever the urge takes me. So in reading up on Amazon I got linked to another article that was instructive it was a SEC trawl of new buys by hedge funds! What some actually bought something in this carnage? I immediately felt a bit better about investing today. I'll link the piece and basically what I did was read it over and over until a pattern emerged, trying to disqualify an oil stk if oil is all the fund was buying and keeping an eye for any repetitions... That brought my eyes to two names that I will be further researching today- NAVISTAR & Barr Pharm! Both of these names showed up twice as new buys in some of the bigger most known and best managed Hedge Fund's accounts. Viewing current weakness in the market our price may be even better. And if the rangebound argument picks up speed and I think it should... there will be some nice plays here.~stoney

    @http://seekingalpha.com/article/106765-what-are-some-of-the-best-hedge-fund-managers-doing
     
  5. As an addendum- the tricky part is not losing view of the original idea Amazon. Because ironically I got linked to that article because one of the funds is shorting it! That doesn't make them right or maybe it does but from where and when... Amazon still may be a great stock to buy here @ $38... and herein lays some of the confusion of stonedinvesting... if it were only a healthier market we could buy everything, that covers the bases... but funds are low and I must chose between Amazon, Navistar & Barr... And that's the tricky part for the real small investor. Not to mention Green Mtn Coffee~ si
     
  6. I HAVE AWAKENED!

    Folks I didn't know if the title of this thread meant the market was going to awaken to something or I was. Certainly I have never been more down. having those GM and Ford types talk scary to get money was a no luck set up for the market. The same day the Fed breaks our collective heart and pushes recovery out a year... boy what a kick in the pants. With markets that tend to turn up half a through a recession, we all were looking at mid year 09' to emerge now we are hearing 2011.... it's after a day like that one could very easily throw in the towel.

    Instead I am buying. I have noticed some stuff today the major averages do not reflect. Retail is getting a bid look at TRLG jeans. I noticed this yesterday it held and outperformed it has found a bottom. Their jeans are top end this is a contrarian play. Also look at GES.... these are going to be powerful moves up I hope.

    I don't own a home builder and why would you? Looking at Meritage today, MTH. I am. We could quickly double our money here in a few names.

    ADM is arching back up.
    RIMM we sold yesterday but is holding up well.

    FFIV looks the best to me in tech... This if we rip this afternoon will be bought.

    GMCR- looks very nice it dipped to $29 I bought some for a swing to north of $34.

    LULU up nice afraid here but believe in the co.
    OPTT was removed from the naked short list!
    If I were in I'd be up 8%!!! But it's nice to start a thread with such a fun story. More later.

    Visa. I want to buy don't know why of course you know they facilitate commerce through the transfer of value and information among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses, and government entities in approximately 170 countries and territories. The company has a $41 billion Market cap, 37.50% Operating Margin, negative 4.8% Profit Margin- eeesh! big problem, $7.15 billion in revenue, $6.24 billion in total cash, $110 million debt as of most recent quarter and a 1.78 Current Ratio.
    But that debt ratio does not lie.... $6 billion in cash, $110 million debt... and it's not like they are going to cash flow neg no matter how bad the economy. Could be a safe play here I know how CRAZY that sounds. watching closely.

    It's last stand time for me. I've let the market now spill over into my private life. In the last night and day i have been very unpleasant to be around. My wife has suggested I " get a job " things are not good. Things have never been worse. I'm amazed at my own ability to step to the plate today.

    I know I promised some big answers to the world's problems in this thread. For the US with oil so low, I'll throw the first one out. It's bound to be very unpopular- I think NOW we should put a big gas tax on! I know, I know but look we are never going to solve the problem and already folks are back to their gas guzzling ways. This would raise a ton of revenue while depleting the amount of miles driven by Americans... the price of oil would then stay moderately lower for a longer time. It would take some balls but what are you going to do make cigarettes $25 a carton?

    More later. ~ stoney
     
  7. I never believed for a moment that we would spike down again in the last hour. That has become the most hateful time on Earth. Why then? Why woulodn't you sell earlier in the day when prices are considerably higher? It makes no sense to me. Neither do the reasons... Ok BUYING INSURANCE TO PROTECT against retail, commercial deffault has skyrocketed - so what?
    You know what I am part of an income stream that hails from commercial real estate and we don't have any damn insurance. We have a lease signer (my family) and an tenant nothing is guaranteed, they have signed a long term deal and if they were to go belly up we would fight it out in court. When I ran my own retail store in NYC, it was the same thing, I signed a 5 year lease (twice) and there was really nothing to stop me from walking away if I couldn't turn a profit... and what happened, I did go through an extended period after 9/11 of not turning a profit.... did I " stick it to the landlord? " No I payed out of pocket and cut costs and overhead.... This near fanatical need to have no risk... to offlay everything against something else is at the heart of our problem and these silly ass insurance schemes who needs them.... WAKE UP PEOPLE THE REAL DEFAULT RATE FOR COMMERCIAL RE is 1%!!!!!!!
    ONE PERCENT got that IT COULD TRIPLE AND BE 3%.... a fart in the wind to major land owners... this is but another imagined panic. And it ties into everything else packaging mortgages and reselling them and buying insurance on those portfolios... why? have a rainy day fund, eliminate deadbeats and take your lumps in downtimes. In good times you will keep more to yourself, it's all so incredibly stupid and so American. So yesterday we had to all feel the pain extreme basically because commercial real estate is defaulting at 1%. Think about it, the bears had a better argument in the credit card arena but they failed to make their case. Do you know what would happen if Corporate America stopped using this esoteric insurance which reminds me of the " portfolio insurance " scam of the 80's??? That's right rates would drop. The insurance business is a farce and a scourge if that's a word on our planet... Always has been. In retail I was forced by contract to have $1 million in liability for a 750 square foot store, nothing ever happened all that money, near $2K a year just thrown away. What a waste. Fire insurance on a house that I can understand, if you are a mega million dollar lender jeez do your own due diligence and take the damn risk. Keep accounts in house and MANAGE them... all this spreading of risk around of course accomplishes just the opposite it creates more risk. And what is the ironic part? Well even with insurance we will hear about chargeoffs and late payments on the rise or jingle mail and have another sell off even though those institutions have in place the very insurance they have trouble getting today. It's a ponzi scheme of negativity and me and you cannot win.

    Well I'm at the point now where i feel like I can save the whole market if I just give up. If I sell out, the market will bottom. If I continue to look for new ideas every day, if i continue to do research from 6 in the morning, if I continue to find " value " in the market, if I continue to hope for better times, the market will never stop going down. It seems I must do something drastic just to save everyone else.

    Corrections end in V reversals, HUGE bear markets grind you out in a long despondent phase of no movement... rather than see the light in every blip up I should be preying for prolonged stagnation. And that was my original call don't forget, but silly me imagined we could do that towards the top of what used to be a range, in the high 9,000's.

    Now we are beneath the bust of the .com without any of the .com love. Sure we had a ridiculous run in commodities and oil fueled by the Hedge Funds and Goldman Sachs... and they will have to live with themselves for helping to create such a disjointed market.

    I remember when I first owned Goldman maybe ten years ago at $50 and sold at $70... I was so surprised to see it going up and up and up.... in reflection was that a financial.com sort of melt up? And now all the big banks are in the gutter and our very future as a civilization is in peril.
    And it's thanksgiving.

    Some answers- I could just sell out my risky trading account what's left of it, close out my Etrade and hope they send me a small check. That could be the giving up I have to do. Or I could contact the hedge fund and tell them to sell all the brilliant ideas I have put in there. So much work down the drain, so much money lost. The future is so bleak for someone like me.
    How will I make money if not off stocks?... it's worked for over 20 years even in bear markets and now it does not. Something is certainly different this time and it's not just me. ~ stoney
     
  8. Fundamental analysis and buy-n-hold has always been an illusion and an accident when it worked.

    The answer? Short term trading. 1-5 day holds and small profit targets. Set buy limits under and look for smallish profits.

    But it's not for everybody...

    Good trading to all.
     
  9. Wayne, the market is certainly moving in that direction. Although your 3 to 5 day time frame is ridiculous. The market is not filled with daytraders. I agree a couple qtrs is about all you can give a company these days. What you describe will probably become computer embedded given enough time but to the greater reality of pension funds and retired folk and the real world there has to be a better solution. ~ si
     
  10. It was bound to happen. All I had to do was give up and the market would turn... who was the guy calling for the Treasury appointee rally that never came? After being there for every blip up in the past, I was driving upstate blissfully unawares... no index monitoring positions on, free. No clue.Unburdened by research and hopes and dreams...and of course as soon as you give up- the market roars up... Now I'm in a pinch, the market will only bottom when I cease looking for new ideas. If I act interested I will be rewarded with a bucket of pain... now I'm in a tough spot. Lay back and only play the Barron's game and let you all make a lot of money... or step in... make a mortgage payment or two and then ruin it for everyone... what to do? ~ stoney
     
    #10     Nov 24, 2008