Vitaliy Katsenelson's blog

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 Little Book of Sideways Markets.  In addition, here is a copy of the presentation about sideways markets.  – Enjoy. 

The following chapter 2 is excerpted from The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley, 2010).  Enjoy

I looked at Brown & Brown about a year ago (May 2010), here are my thoughts which are still relevant today:

China is slowly starting to face the consequences of its actions

Wherever you put your money, it’s important to stick to your investment discipline.

At the core of VALUEx is that there are no star speakers, and all the content (i.e. presentations) of the conference are participant-generated.

It is important to understand that even a much-followed stock like Cisco will suffer from inefficiency (which as a value investor I welcome), due to investors confusing the lousy stock with the company’s fundamental performance. That is how you find high-quality companies at bargain-basement prices.