The hype over the GM IPO is energizing the stockmarket.
The hype should last a little longer. Corporate earnings are up. This chart from VectorVest:
Several readers begged, “Say something about the GM IPO.”
What’s the point? Most investors never got any. As with all hot IPOs, the underwriters doled it out to their favorite instutions — the ones who give them lots of business.
The favored institutions will “puke” their GM stock out as fast as their finger can hit the “Sell” button. No one plans to hold GM. It has too many problems and it’s more than fully priced.
A Wall Street friend called the GM IPO “the biggest market manipulation in history.”
OK. I’m annoyed that my tax monies bailed GM out and most investors didn’t get to make a quick buck puking it out. I scammed 250. Whoopee. I’ve never owned a GM car. Strange times.
Harry visits his Citigroup, now StepStone, private equity fund. I learn:
1. As of end-September, I’m only losing 14% of my investment. For a 2006 fund that performance is “in line”, i.e. relative performance is good. That means compared to other funds and stocks. Absolute performance, of course, sucks.
2. Despite the loss, StepStone (and before it Citigroup) is earning 2% each year on the money I committed. Not what I paid in or what it’s worth. But what I committed. That 2% turns out to be just under 3% of what it’s worth.
3. Citigroup and my financial advisor at Citigroup (whoever he is) benefit by part of that management fee. I don’t know (yet) how fees break down. It seems wrong that my financial advisor (i.e. the Citigroup salesman) should continue to benefit financially from the lousy financial advice he gave me.
4. Ultimately I’ll get my money back and maybe a little profit. But my 2006 fund will, by then, be a 2018 to 2021 fund. Maybe I’ll be alive then. Maybe.
Instead of holding for another 12 to 15 years, I could sell my investment. I’d get about 80% on the secondary market. But what better investment could I find to recoup my loss and do even better? There’s the rub?
Maybe gold? Maybe not. Since November 12, it’s been below its 200 day moving average. That’s not good.
Your health. Be obsessed. Please. A friend took his mole to an internist, who said it was OK. By the time he got to a dermatologist, a couple of years had passed and it was no longer a minor mole. It was melanoma, an especially aggressive cancer, now in his brain. Of all the health things you can safely mess with, your skin is not one of them. For more, read Wikipedia.
Smelling the roses. The clouds scampered across the sky as the sun set yesterday.
It was pretty over Manhattan — the windiest day I can remember.
Favorite recent New Yorker cartoons.
Harry Newton who wonders who is now officially decay-free, for now. At least his teeth.
I asked the nice man at the tennis court yestrday if he had any pills to make me run faster?
He answered, “We have Advil. Take enough of those and I’m sure something will happen.”
Most of my teeth are false, the only trouble is they break and have to be capped. No pain, however.
How do you like STEC now?
Harry,
Check your chart settings. That is the 200 MINUTE moving average .Big difference!
Keeping a viable auto industry in the US was a valuable thing to do in a macro sense. If the taxpayers make back most of the money (we are still in the hole $10 Bil I believe?), this bailout structure will have been a raging success. I haven't looked at the company's current structure, but pension liabilities and the jobs pool were the two big problems, not the value proposition in the market.
With all the bitching about your Mercedes, you just might want to check out a GM product. My friends who live in Aspen traded the Mercedes wagon for a Chevy Traverse and are quite happy with the choice.
Harry,
Please note, if you bought gold at the beginning of the year (2010) with the StepStone fund, you would have recouped most of the 20%. If you bought silver, you would probably do better. Also, if you bought the actual physical gold and silver, you would not have to care about management fees or financial managers doing any better.
If GOL etf was an actual company, most wall street would say it's a good time to buy from the price pull-back….
Just a thought.
Steven