One of my favorite investor’s is Bill Ackman of Pershing Square.  He develops a detailed investment thesis, builds a large position, and is willing to be very public about recommending changes create more shareholder value.  His effort on General Growth Properties was one of the best investments that I had ever seen.  This video provides...Read More

Distressed investor Wilbur Ross is one of the truly great contrarian investors and in this interview he gives his insight in marine transport, shale gas, among other topics.  Ross also has large investments in the bond insurer Assured Guaranty (AGO) and Bank of Ireland (IRE).  He looks at investments from a much longer perspective than...Read More

EU lawmakers seem intent on turning a recession into a depression by imposing absurdly high capital requirements which would serve to stifle lending at the worst time possible.  This is one of the most obscene over reactions that I can imagine, and it is totally impractical for banks to raise that much capital when the...Read More

JP Morgan produced extremely strong earnings numbers today.  Net income was $5.38 billion and the earnings were balanced through the retail banks and the investment bank.  JP Morgan is really a behemoth with simply amazing earnings power and Jamie Dimon has done a great job navigating the rough financial waters over the last several years....Read More

Ron Peltier is leading Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A)’s real-estate brokerage believes that the recent $25 billion settlement between the big banks and state and federal authorities is likely to lead to a large increase in home sales.  Inventory is down and part of the reason why is that the turmoil over servicing has forced the...Read More

Wells Fargo (WFC) today released very encouraging earnings numbers today including increasing net interest margins, and strong profits led by mortgage refinancing.  The environment is getting better for these large banks and Wells Fargo certainly has the least volatile business structure due to their more vanilla and transparent business model.  It’s interesting to see bank...Read More

It is very difficult to forecast the future outlook for oil prices.  In relation to other forms of energy such as natural gas it is obscenely expensive.  Supply isn’t really constrained even with the difficulties in demand and production has been relatively solid.  Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent to develop new deepwater...Read More

Radical changes in the regulatory landscape in addition to enormously expensive costs pertaining to dealing with problem mortgages, have elevated banks’ cost structures over the last several years.  Revenues have been flat due to lackluster economic growth particularly in the banks’ bread and butter areas of real estate and commercial lending.  To confront these issues...Read More