Another lousy day. But that's no news flash. Jean-Marie Eveillard said in the CNBC interview linked to in my previous post that the next six months are baked in. And things will be bad. With that, here are five things you might wish to check out over the next couple of days.
- Mason Hawkins, Staley Cates and the folks at Southeastern Asset Management have boosted their stake in Sun Microsystems -- and appear to be taking a more active role with Sun management. I don't own Sun, but it's always worth noting when normally passive investors get active. Especially those with the long-term records of Hawkins and Cates.
- Tom Stevenson writes in the Daily Telegraph about the five things investors believed six months ago, but now don't. "Investors have changed their minds about so many things over the past six months that they will take certainty wherever they can find it. If the certainty on offer is the long hard slog of a good old-fashioned recession and a return to financial basics then bring it on. We've read that story before and we know the ending, if not when it will come."
- This Globe and Mail piece screens for bargains by focusing on low price-to-sales ratios. Among those making the grade is Fairfax Financial Holdings (FFH/NYSE), which regular readers know I own in the portfolio.
- Count Barton Biggs among those seeing US and European stocks as cheap. He says, "One of these days, even if the world is going to hell, we will have a tremendous run-up,'' said Biggs, 75 "There is an extreme level of pessimism and almost despair. As long as I have been in the business, those have always been good signs.''
- In his new Bloomberg column, Michael Sesit argues that returning to a Bretton Woods-type agreement wouldn't cure the ills in the global financial system. I agree with him on Bretton Woods, but I don't confuse that agreement with a gold standard. But I'm no currency expert.
And with that, have a great weekend.
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