Vitaliy Katsenelson's blog

One of the problems with QE is that the Fed is forcing people to buy riskier investments than they otherwise would have. The immorality of their actions aside, they create a significant psychological mismatch between assets and their holders. Stocks are in weak hands, insuring one great stampede for the chairs when the music stops.

 I read that Rich Bernstein, former chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch, is very optimistic about US stocks; he believes we are at a point similar to where the market was in 1982 – at the beginning of the 1982-2000 secular bull.  After you’ve gone through my slides, you’ll understand why it is so hard for me to share Rich’s excitement.

The partisan politics of this country is simply insane.

Here are my thoughts from the VALUEx Vail conference. The idea for this conference came to me when I attended VALUEx Zurich, organized by Guy Spier and John Mihaljevic in February 2011 (you can register for VALUEx Zurich 2013, here). The thought of spending three days learning and sharing ideas with smart, like-minded value investors felt instantly right. Investing on some level is a never-ending pursuit to get better. Most of us are locked up in air-conditioned offices where we learn through reading SEC filings, magazines, blogs, etc.

 I am back from Buffett’s Omaha.  Every year I come back feeling supercharged for the year ahead.  This year was no different.  From morning till night I had the pleasure of sharing and debating ideas with investors from all over the world.  Though I did not plan it this way, the first day I had dinner with value investors/friends from the UK, on the second from Germany, and on the third from Spain.  I have at least a dozen stock ideas to research and new thoughts to process. 

Here is a thought for an eager Facebook investor: Google revenue - $40 billion; market capitalization $200 billion (plus $40 billion of cash).  Facebook revenue $4 billion; market capitalization $100 billion. So Facebook has to grow revenue 10x for you to double your money.  Good luck!

I have to confess, I am tired of writing "structured" articles, the ones where I have to limit my thoughts to 800 words.  So with this one I am taking a break.  This is an unstructured stream of thought, in no particular sequence.  

 Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn did a courageous and proper thing for shareholders by resigning.  He was not the right person to lead Best Buy into battle against online-only competitors that use Best Buy’s spacious and beautiful stores as the showroom for their products.  To make things even worse, smart cell phones make comparison shopping so much easier nowadays, and structurally, Best Buy cannot have lower prices than its online competitors.  Its stores also lack the breadth of selection of Amazon and they are at a permanent, competitive cost disadvantage.&nbs

Though the market keeps raging to the upside, I keep seeing bearish signs in market sentiment – the VIX is hitting multi-year lows, 

In this interview we had a chance to discuss Paul Krugman’s  latest bearish article on China, the linkage between the European crisis and Chinese and Japanese bubbles.  We revisited sideways markets, profit margins (I picked a bone with Apple’s high margins), and concluded with Microsoft.

I was going to write something smart and pithy about this recent market decline, but then I realized that I’ve written about this in the past (more than once).  So here is an excerpt from the #1e439a;">Little Book of Sideways Markets.  In addition, #1e439a;">here is a copy of the presentation about sideways markets.  – Enjoy. 

The following #1e439a;" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/64926903/c02" target="_blank">chapter 2 is excerpted from #1e439a;" href="The following chapter 2 is excerpted from The Little Book of Sideways Markets " target="_blank">The #1e439a;" href="The following chapter 2 is excerpted from The Little Book of Sideways Markets " target="_blank">Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley, 2010).  Enjoy