The two articles that convinced me to cover my HLF short: 23 December http://seekingalpha.com/article/1079421-but-mr-ackman-herbalife-is-a-sustainable-pyramid-scheme 28 December http://brontecapital.blogspot.ca/2012/12/bill-ackman-enters-city-of-stalingrad.html and also another article since then that lists all the things that need to happen before HLF goes to zero, including but not limited to, the FTC taking action against the company. Unfortunately I've forgotten the details of that article.
In my experience people will always find 'reasons' to buy the stock. When they get oversold a ton it's just a matter of time till the optimists jump in and the stock runs out of sellers. Then the stock is in 'strong hands' bad news stop mattering and its hard to get the stock down for a while, dips get bought, etc How long the rally lasts I haven't been able to determine through observations yet but it pays to use a trailing stop using the low of the previous day bar. I didn't do this on HLF and missed profits as a result, probably because I was still a bit scared of another drop, I should have used my emotions as a contrarian indicator
LPH seems to be still halted but the Level 2 shows some quoting going on, not sure what is up with that
It is back on the halt list now http://nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts despite the company issuing a PR at 9.08am "Longwei Petroleum Responds to Blog Post Allegations" http://finance.yahoo.com/news/longwei-petroleum-responds-blog-post-140800122.html
Hempton was on CNBC talking about HLF. He had similar points that I did in this journal, if the ponzi short case rests on FTC action its not a good short. He mentioned the cashflows of the company, I'm worried about that but even more so about its PEG ratio, this will just draw investors like moths to flames I have no interest in shorting this stock unless there is some kind of government disclosure rule. Even then the international diversification could mean they can scam globally and only get hosed in the US. There are easier plays than this
Bronte Capital blog post about the above CNBC interview with Herb Greenberg: http://brontecapital.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/ackmans-herbalife-thesis-someone-from.html and CNBC video: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000139284&play=1
Herb Greenberg link to Chapman presentation: http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnb...3/01/02/HLF by Chapman Capital 12-29-2012.pdf (a link from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100349790)
I found the third article: 31 December http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/12/31/whats-ackmans-herbalife-game/ which also links to Kid Dynamite from 21 December http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-bill-ackman-is-wrong-about-herbalife/
Covered AAMRQ. I believe that PR is misleading and the lawyer has incentives to talk nonsense but I don't have time to write about it right now