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Bronte Capital: Poor Charlie's Counterattack
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/04/poor-charlies-counterattack.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Wednesday, April 1, 2015. Charlie Munger - at the last annual meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation - where Charlie is Chairman - said some pithy stuff about Valeant (and implicitly the CEO J Micheal Pearson). To quote:. Valeant is like ITT and Harold Geneen come back to life, only the guy is worse this time. Now ITT was not by any stretch the worst of the 1960-70s conglomerates. If Charlie had compared Valeant to (say) Ling-Temco-Vought. The Late Great A...
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Bronte Capital: April 2015
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The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Saturday, April 25, 2015. I have just returned from the Dawn Service marking the Centenary of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) at Gallipoli (in the then Ottoman Empire and now modern day Turkey). This is Australia and New Zealand's remembrance day for all war dead. ANZAC Day 2009 Post. The original ANZACs were the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. They landed on 25 April 1915 at Galipoli in the Dardenelles. As their nati...
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Bronte Capital: One more Bank of the Internet advertisement
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/04/one-more-bank-of-internet-advertisement.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Thursday, April 9, 2015. One more Bank of the Internet advertisement. This one needs no explanation at all:. It says: "New draft pick wants to buy a luxury home. BOFI Federal Bank can do that". All i can think about our these cheesy subway nyc ads. Https:/ www.google.com/search? April 10, 2015 at 12:05 AM. At least the secondary market for luxury homes is fairly stable. April 10, 2015 at 10:01 PM. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Get this blog by email.
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Bronte Capital: February 2015
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015_02_01_archive.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Saturday, February 28, 2015. An interpretation of the Herbalife result. The Herbalife result had three elements - two bad, one good. The bad elements are. A) That volume fell - and quite sharply - minus 6 percent, and. B) There was an inventory build in the face of the volume fall. The shorts have played these elements up - and combined they meant that the cash flow was sequentially far less good. The good element (which the company played up) was. Ii) Requi...
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Bronte Capital: August 2014
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_archive.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Thursday, August 28, 2014. Valeant Pharmaceuticals Part XII: the rolling solvency calculation. I am short Various parts of the Valeant capital structure and long a few thousand put contracts. This is a bet that is levered to terrible. Outcomes at Valeant. It is not quite a bet on insolvency - but it is a bet on financial stress. It is a very non-consensus bet. Valeant is considered extremely. Profitable. Bill Ackman gave a presentation. The problem with this...
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Bronte Capital: October 2014
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_archive.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Monday, October 20, 2014. Valeant Part XIII: channeling Jeff Skilling - or trying to reconstruct Valeant's balance sheet. There was a very famous conference call. Once where Highfields Capital analyst Richard Grubman asked for a balance sheet with Enron's earnings statement. Jeff Skilling's response is a key part of the Enron legend. You’re the only financial institution that can’t produce a balance sheet or cash flow statement with their earnings. Cash and ...
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Bronte Capital: September 2014
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014_09_01_archive.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Tuesday, September 23, 2014. Roddy Boyd has more patience than me in chasing down stock hucksters. Roddy Boyd has a story about the wondrous life of yet another stock huckster with a couple of fake PhDs. I maintain it is better to be a stock-promoter than a short-seller. Stock promoters tend to live very well. Right up there with the biggest hedge fund managers. Links to this post. Saturday, September 13, 2014. Nouvelle Vague live in Cologne. Not all of West...
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Bronte Capital: April is the cruellest month
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/03/april-is-cruellest-month.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Saturday, March 21, 2015. April is the cruellest month. Lew Burton (one of those mathematical finance professor types) just tweeted. Well I guess we might find out how much short gamma there is around the $44-5 in. On the surface it looks insane. Moar popcorn plz. Lew it seems is a good guess. Ackman has a big (off market) put position expiring in April in the middle of this range. This is a bit over 3 million shares. Johnare you implying market manipulation?
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Bronte Capital: December 2014
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Monday, December 15, 2014. I am reading the annual report from United Technologies. Which owns, amongst other things, a helicopter company. To quote:. On the commercial side, Sikorsky finished the year with a backlog of nearly $3 billion — its largest ever — driven by growing demand for offshore transportation in the oil and gas industry. I am not sure how good that backlog is. PS I have received at least half a dozen emails about the hostage drama in Sydney.
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Bronte Capital: McDonalds: property, ego and identity
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/05/mcdonalds-property-ego-and-identity.html
The sometimes eccentric views of John Hempton. Tuesday, May 19, 2015. McDonalds: property, ego and identity. I have just spent a few days in the modern Middle East cities of Doha and Abu Dhabi. This is the only place I have seen which matches China for just sheer excess of the property market. There are beautiful skyscrapers on what should be worthless land surrounded by barren streets and the odd drip-irrigated palm tree. Turn around 180 degrees and this is the view:. They would be better off closing th...
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