Fortune Covers Julian Robertson

Fortune gives us an update on Julian Robertson's current conquests and his knack for finding and breeding new investing talent.

Soros: Worst Market Crisis in 60 years

George Soros had a piece in the FT a few days ago that painted a bleak picture for the global economy.


"Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse."

Buzz: RiskMetrics IPO

RiskMetrics priced their IPO at $17.50 after the market closed, which I compute to be about 18x a run-rate of 2007 adjusted EBITDA. This may seem like a lofty valuation, but given the current buzz in the market related to the Company's business - risk management - this seems like an opportunistic time for management to pursue an IPO. This deal (ticker RMG) will be followed heavily as the markets open on Friday, I wouldn't be surprised if it opened in the mid-20s.

The RiskMetrics offering follows the IPO success of MSCI (Ticker MXB), which offers risk management through its Barra unit. MSCI's well-received IPO rose 45% on its first day of trading and currently trades at around $32, up over 75% from its $18 IPO price.

Here is some coverage of the IPO:
WSJ Article
AP Article

Interview with an anonymous money manager

N+1 interviews a money manager to get his perspective on the recent market volatility and the subprime issue.

NYTimes: Sovereign Wealth Money Can Buy Influence

The NYTimes, in a recent article, brings up an interesting question that Felix Rohatyn posed: “Why isn’t Warrent Buffett making an investment in Citigroup when Kuwait is?"

For sovereign wealth funds, the article states, buying influence can be just as important as searching for outsized returns in investment opportunities.

Latest ChiBus Column

Here is my latest Ear to the Street Column for the GSB student newspaper. The Chibus website was updated a little late so a lot of the articles mentioned are a little dated.

WSJ's Cover Story on Trader Who Made Billions Betting Against Subprime

Many of you have likely seen this article as it has been making its rounds through e-mail forwards, but in case you haven't seen it, the WSJ rehashes the past few years for John Paulson's hedge fund, which made astounding returns by betting on the fall of the housing market.

Update: Link to Barron's 2008 Roundtable (No Login Required)

For all of you who were unable to access the Barron's article (post from yesterday) because they didn't have a login, here is a link to a PDF of the article.

Financial Times Reporting that Wal-Mart Will Enter Small Supermarket Industry to Compete With Tesco

As Tesco aims to break into the U.S. supermarket industry with a "fresh and easy model," the Financial Times is reporting that Wal-Mart is likely to follow suit with its own chain called "Marketside."

Excerpt:

"The new pilot stores are about 20,000 sq ft, a 10th of the size of the Supercenters that have been driving Wal-Mart’s growth over the past two decades.

The retailer has secured leases on four properties south-east of Phoenix, some of them only a mile from locations where Tesco is setting up its 10,000 sq ft discount grocery stores.

The stores, likely to be open by the summer, are the first new concept launched by the retailer in the US for a decade, and are being developed as the company slows its planned growth of Supercenters."

Barron's 2008 Roundtable

Barron's has published its 2008 Roundtable. See it here.

NYTimes: Is a Recession Inevitable?

The NYTimes discusses the factors that have driven the market lower and entertains the idea that not only may a recession be inevitable, but that we already may be in one.

Economists Following Betting Patterns To Understand Behaviorial Tendencies

The WSJ had an article in today's Journal that discussed the affinity that many economists have toward dissecting data to understand rational decision making and behaviorial tendencies with regard to sports.

Progress in Mobile TV Efforts

LG claims to have made significant progress in developing technology to make viewing live streaming TV on mobile phones more feasible. Possible game changer in what has been talked about as an emerging technology? The WSJ and Bloomberg have provided coverage of the topic. LG will be presenting its findings at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Commentary on Understanding Earnings and Equity Returns

Guru Focus had a pretty interesting article on understanding earnings and equity returns.

26,000 Fans Manage a Soccer Team

The WSJ had an interesting article today discussing an innovative approach to managing soccer teams: let the fans do it. 26,000 people came together on myfootballclub.co.uk to takeover Ebbsfleet United by each pledging $70.50.

WSJ Covers the Prediction Market

The WSJ is going to start a regular column that follows the elections via the prediction market. In my opinion, it's columns like these that support the reliability of inTrade as the best predictor of the outcome of uncertain future events. As the WSJ columnist points out, it seems that way too many people hopelessly read between the lines of all the pundits to try to figure out how a future event might end up.

The results are compelling:
"More recently, in the 2004 primaries, prediction markets pointed to the disintegration of Howard Dean's candidacy in advance of the fateful Iowa caucuses. In the 2004 presidential election, the market favorite won the Electoral College in all fifty states; in 2006 the markets also picked every Senate race."

More Predictions for 2008

Doug Kass from theStreet.com makes his annual 20 predictions. Kass apparently was right on half of his predictions for 2007.

Byron Wien, former strategist at Morgan Stanley (now a strategist at Pequot), makes his list of 10 surprises for 2008.

BusinessWeek Makes Some Bold Predictions for 2008

BusinessWeek made some pretty bold predictions for 2008, including that Bloomberg will decide to run for president in 2008 and John McCain will subsequently win the presidency.

More on Heebner

More on Ken Heebner from IBD