Below The Crowd

Halftime Notes on Cash, Financial Engineers and Suckers

I am probably one off the few who does not care about the Super Bowl one bit. I have it on in the background with the sound off only so I can know when it's time to get out to dinner and beat the rush. It's halftimee, some band is on and I've had some thoughts:

• Herb is on to something here. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past decade, companies have been forced into engaging in more and more unnecessary financial engineering by those who have proposed that:

  a) Cash is a bad thing to have
  b) If you're going to have cash, you should maximize the return, regardless of whether you truly understand the risks.

  I doubt that this is the first big company that should have known better that will have to come clean in the same way.

• Smaller companies already have had to come clean. Here's Kevin Depew's note about CKE Restaurants (NYSE:CKR) last earnings release:
  

  Increasingly, earnings for these companies are only tangentially related to their core business. For many of these companies, say, a restaurant operator, or a network equipment seller, how its "business" is going is only a sideshow. Many companies today are essentially hedge funds masquerading as businesses.

• Many of these companies, like the afformentioned CKE are just the suckers in the game. As the old poker adage notes, there's always a sucker, if you can't figure out who it is, it's you. When you're the CFO of a relatively small fast-food chain with $10-12m in earnings every quarter, which is borrowing money to buy up stock and is getting sold on complex derivative investments, then you are the sucker. Period. The investment bankers and consultants selling you on this crap are going to eat you alive.

Brief Notes - New Year's Edition

Looks like a quiet one this year, with many friends out of town and me planning on being away next week.

• One of the things that has annoyed me to no end about the endless rounds of attempts to bail out mortgage lenders is that for the most part they got themselves into this trouble and deserve to go down for it. The LA Times details how those banks did nothing to even attempt to identify even the most obvious fraud rings. While certainly those who perpetrated the fraud deserve jail, the banks that should have been smart enough to detect it certainly don't deserve a bailout from public funds, or for that matter the assistance of any branch of government. As Taleb's fictional character "Fat Tony" notes, the banks are usually the perfect marks.
• On the menu for New Year's Eve is some home baked chicken, a nice Rosenblum Zin, and a bottle of 1989 Veuve Cliquot Reserve that has been in storage for some time. After that, perhaps a couple of hours at my local bar, which will be open to us natives after dinner, at about 10:30. In the meantime, the Law and Order marathon is keeping me busy.

Brief Notes

Lots going on this week:

• Adding to my comments on retail a couple of days ago, I stopped by Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) yesterday to pick up a couple of essentials. It seemed quite slow for a pre-Christmas week evening. Their latest earnings report notwithstanding, I think this is a further sign of things being very slow. Still, I wouldn't short them. Might consider a paired trade against Circuit City (NYSE:CC). As Macke notes, you don't want to short the leader in a business, regardless of what you think of the macro picture.
• It's nice to have sorted things out so that I can go back to my regular bar again on weekends. And quite a weekend it was. Met somebody quite nice on Friday. Then discovered how really wonderful one of my neighbors is on Saturday. The only fly in the ointment was the woman I've been most interested in lately deciding to show up there on Saturday with her girlfriends just as I was making the new connection...

Brief Notes

It's been a busy few months. I've been dating, working and considering new career options. In between I've been writing very little. The Casey Saga came back and then went away again, as did fellow blogger Aspeth. I switched bars due to a minor fling with a regular at my previous regular bar. My neighborhood coffee place raised prices again, despite government assurances that there's no inflation.

In other news:

• Jeff Matthews has a take on the Google Guys that is spot on. I always thought that "Don't Be Evil" was an impossible goal for a company that was as large and influential as Google. Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. And Google is pretty powerful. A better goal might have been to set up the company in a manner that kept the evil in check. But when 2 guys control the bulk of the stock with super-voting rights, there is absolute and unchecked power over what the company does. Thus the squandering of company money on a 767, pet initiatives unrelated to their business focus, and other things that may eventually be the undoing of this great company. And yeah, I hate hypocrites, no matter how much I like their companies' products.
• Mish points out why the subprime bailout is a government sham, designed to make it look like they're doing something when they're not. As I pointed out to Mish in an email this afternoon, this proposal also ignores another fact. The people who might be helped by this are also the people least likely to want to stay in their homes for five years. In fact, they are the people most likely to have to move due to career, family or other considerations. When they need to move, sending in the keys to the bank will still be the best option.

Saturday Food and Wine

Had a few good wines this week, though nothing special in the food department. Next week I'll be in Utah for a few days over my birthday, where among other things I hope to finally meet Nigel, then on to New York for a week of helping mom get set for her move and to see an old Israeli friend who will be in town with his family. It's also been hot and I haven't had that much of an appetite. And the market has been rather painful, so I've had even less of an appetitie, but a definite desire to drink. More about that tomorrow.

So wines for the week are:

Saturday Food and Wine

I thought I'd start a new feature, to highlight what I've been eating or drinking the past week. I'll compile throughout the week and post on Saturdays, travel and personal life permitting.

With my brother's move to new quarters in full swing, there's been a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of quick meals on the go, so no elaborate discussions of mixing food and wine this week. Just a few nice ones on a couple of quiet afternoons, and evenings after the work is done.

Brief Notes

• Last week's action in the markets cannot be ignored, even after two days of basically doing nothing. The breakout in every major index other than the Russel 2000 has to be bought, though I'm respecting the action in the Russel enough to keep my risk defined. Playing big cap names and indexes including the SPX and SOX, mostly with August and September calls at or near the money. I would not be shocked if this rally fails, but believe that for now the path of least resistance is up.
• That said, today's "new record" in the Dow is pretty meaningless, seeing as it comes amid lousy breadth and non-participation by other indicies. Typical consolidation with little to no significance.
• I believe that there are still major problems beneath the surface, but also believe that all political will be mustered to keep things from blowing up before November of next year.
• Drinking a glass of Little Black Dress Pinot Grigio, which is not all that bad for a vanity marketing label. It bills itself as "the wine that is the perfect accessory to any “dressed up” or “dressed down” occasion. Offering a Merlot, Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio – all from California – Little Black Dress Wines are the “go-to” wine designed for the 34+ million female wine drinkers in the United States.". I'm sure that this sexist marketing ploy will leave Pinot Grigio fan Aspeth seething and seeking revenge, but it is actually pretty good wine despite the condescending attitude. Besides, I'm sure Aspeth looks great in a little black dress.
• With the wine tonight, lightly marinaded swordfish on the grill, accompanied by grilled summer squash.
• Got myself a cricopharyngeal spasm, also known as globus hystericus, which is a somewhat uncomfortable tightness of the throat. I've had one of these before and it does resolve, but in the meantime it's annoying. Some wine or other forms of relaxation do tend to help as it's basically a muscle problem, so expect more wine-related comments. This development will call for a change of pillows, among other things. My new ones have been stressing my neck a bit more than I expected and probably have something to do with the problem.
• The source of new pillows? Definitely Bed Bath and Beyond (NasdaqGS:BBBY)! These guys make a practice of sending me 20%-off coupons roughly every two weeks. I have always wondered how they expect to make money, but have recently noticed that every time I go in there for my one "20% off" item, I end up buying half a dozen things that I didn't realize I needed at full price. Fantastic merchandisers.

Summer Wines

I thought I'd comment on wines for a change, and maybe start doing so a bit more regularly.

A few things have prompted this. Recently, I've removed from storage about 20 cases of wine that has been mostly untouched for the past decade. A lot of these are sadly well past their prime. I'll probably end up tossing at least a third of these. Even good quality red zinfandels just don't last that long, and those comprised a good chunk of what was in storage. Still, there's hope for lots of it, and some of those 20 year old Cabs, Bordeaux and Burgundies are looking pretty good. Anybody for a tasting of '86 and '87 Beringer Reserves, Opus One and Caymus Special Selection? Anybody? You know who you are.

I also recently participated in a discussion about Aspeth's choices in summer wines and it got me thinking about what I really like this time of year. The honest truth is that I've been quite out of touch with wines in recently -- just too may other thing have been more important -- so this is a first for a while.

In the end, I did a bit of shopping at my local supermarket this evening and thought I'd contribute a few ideas of my own.