I gave up cynicism for Lent today but have already broken my vow.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is indeed a genius. The guy helped build the behemoth that became Citigroup, then got sacked by Sandy Weill before the comeuppance. Then the guy takes over at Bank One and then JPM and gets Bear Stearns handed to him at the expense of the United States while making a big deal out of not denying telling worker bees they couldn't take a car home if they worked late and kept the driver idling (see Fortune Magazine). What a guy. Oh, and then he rips the dividend to a nominal mount, garroting shareholders , and keeping the TARP dough the company took just to be a good citizen.
Why shouldn't he pay 5% on preferred stock owned by the U.S. when replacing it with private capital would cost who knows how much more? Gotta hand it him, a Teflon CEO on Wall Street.
OK. That's out of my system. What's fascinating to me about the market and everything else is that we must rely on history to forecast the future. What else do we have? Are we "boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past"? If so, then today's market will become part of that history and add a piece of data to the regression model. Unless one has inside information or gets lucky, the only way to make money in equities "in the long run," as Professor Siegel at Wharton touts with the diligent back-breaking work of graduate assistants at his beck and call, is to forecast the arc of economic activity.
It really is all about GDP and timing. How about this idea. If you believe GDP will recover in the second half of 2009 then you should be invested. If you don't, then you should not.
Sticking with PALM, F, AMD and AMR. As a hedge, still holding SLV.
No comments:
Post a Comment