Arnold Van Den Berg is the Co-Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager of Century Management and he recently gave a speech to the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems.  I don’t want to steal his thunder as the speech is wonderful and is well worth your time.  It’s pretty tough to argue against his...Read More

George Soros is an investor that I have a tough time following but that I respect a great deal due to his deep and thoughtful understanding of macroeconomics.  His notion of reflexivity and the impacts it can have on markets is fascinating yet difficult for my mind to totally grasp.  In this effort he makes...Read More

It doesn’t get much better than Lecuadia (LUK) when it comes to value investing.  These low profile investors have bought and sold a variety of different businesses in different industries and during the process have accumulated one of the best track records in the business.  Between 1979-2011 they have compounded book value by 19.1%.  This...Read More

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