Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
-Kurt Vonnegut
Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing
HT to PairofSox.
Joe Francis, impresario at large, is releasing Girls Gone Wild branded restaurants which will compete against Hooters in the BSR market. On the surface the idea seems great, but Francis’ comments belie the fact that these BSR facilities will be a departure from the Girls Gone Wild core competencies:
A restaurant chain under the “Girls Gone Wild” brand name is being planned by Joe Francis, whose Mantra Films Inc.’s has built a $100 million business videotaping and selling the DVDs featuring young women exposing their breasts.
“This is going to be about fun, lifestyle, youth, sun. It’s about everything ‘Girls Gone Wild,'” Francis said. “It’s going to be sexy without being sexual.”
The first two restaurants are expected to open by mid-summer in Mexican beach towns Cabo San Lucas and Cancun. Francis sees franchises popping up mainly in college towns in the United States and around the world.
…
There will be no stripping, topless waitresses or filming in the restaurants, Francis said.
Recommendation: Girls Gone Wild was built on filming women stripping and/or going topless. Girls Gone Wild restaurants will not feature stripping, toplessness or filming. This is a textbook example of deviating from your core competencies. Despite our negative sentiments on the Girls Gone Wild BSR concept, we we are still bullish on the tasteless food service industry and recommend going long Pink Taco.
The CFA Institute releases an annual report each year documenting their results and accomplishments.
You would think that an organization whose sole raison d’etre is to certify industry standards both in analysis and presentation would be especially attuned to how they present their annual report and the relevance of the content inside. But then, thinking is not the basis for attaining your CFA (rote memorization is).
Every single one of the CFA Institute’s charts starts on the left with the most recent financial year and ends with the earliest financial year, the opposite of what any reader would expect.
We read left to right. So do most human beings. Almost every chart in the history of mankind goes left to right, starting with the earliest date on the left ending with the latest date on the right. Then why is it that most companies persist in the illogical layout of putting their most recent financial year on the far left? And why does the CFA use that standard when they exist only to improve financial standards? What exactly are they paying their president $900,000 to do?
Why does the annual report show pictures of charterholders describing what their CFA means to them while doing something entirely unrelated to finance, like playing a guitar or gripping their Nikon camera? Is this a Lifetime channel brochure or some shit? I thought the whole point of becoming a CFA charterholder was to make more bank? Why not show CFA charterholders making it rain at Scores? Isn’t that why we fight?
If a professional financial analyst was reading through the annual report of a company, and were treated to a picture of the CEO playing the drums and the CFO wearing a captain’s hat on on his schooner, what conclusion should they draw from that about the quality of the company’s management? Is that a firm in which to invest? I’m sure there is some LoS which covered that.
Recommendation: Don’t worry candidates and charterholders, you are spending your time wisely, trust us. Once you get your CFA, you will be strumming your guitar and taking pictures all day long.
The Rolling Stones sang about the non-truism “you can’t always get what you want” but Switzerland has found that if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need. Reacting to a dearth of professionals due to strict immigration and labor laws, “Switzerland entered a treaty with the European Union to import workers, seeking more bankers, managers and academics“. Instead, it received “an influx of prostitutes.”
The decision to open the labor market to workers from the EU, adopted in 2000, is part of a series of covenants Switzerland agreed to in exchange for reduced trade barriers with the economic and political union.
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The number of people offering sex for money has risen by a third in Zurich and 80 percent in Geneva since Switzerland opened its borders to workers from the 15 EU-member states at the start of 2004, police estimate. Some lawmakers predict prostitution will grow even more after the government last year removed work restrictions for residents from 10 newer EU countries as well.
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The influx of sex workers has cut prices for “quickie” sexual intercourse to a range of 30 to 80 francs ($24 to $65) from 150 to 250 francs ($122 to $203), said Adrian Klaus, a social worker with Basta, a support group for prostitutes.
While the Swissies may be chafing at the increase in professionals, the valuable services provided by these workers are exactly what their populace needs and at a cheaper price. Any serious business owner or senior executive knows from experience the ways in which prostitutes keep a workforce running smoothly and increase efficiency.
Recommendation: Never look gift whores in the mouth.
You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.
Leon Trotsky
Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing
No really. Cantarell is soaring, like the Hindenberg. Perma-downers like Matthew Simmons chirp “peak oil” like a kookaburra spotting a snake or whatever it is a kookaburra chirps about up in the eucalyptus, but our “infinity oil” thesis posits that not only we will never hit so-called peak oil, we will never ever run out of oil. Never ever.
Every firm has an alias that represents everyone of the firm — you send an intra-office email to this address and everyone in the firm gets it. Every office also has an amazing amount of people who think it’s a good idea EVER to send a non-work related email to the entire firm:
Hey all:
I’m registering for the Save Hot Boobs from Cancer Strip-off for Charity and anyone sponsoring me would be greatly appreciated! I get paid for every hot boob I am able to hit with a nerf gun and I have been training hard for months. I think I can raise a lot of money for charity if you can only spare some money. Especially you, Bill, I saw your bonus and it was enough to buy a vacation home in northern Spain, so I think you can spare a few bucks for hot boobs.
Signed,
Herman Resourcier[ed note: this signature would be in size 15 of Scripty Font San-Serif and probably in light blue hue]
Found a cubic zirconium earring on floor 48, if yours please contact:
Irina Techzocova ext 10007If not please ignore this email I sent to everyone including the managing partner.
This has astounded me since the very first day of my professional life. In firms ranging from 50 to 1000+ employees, I have received hundreds of firm-wide emails containing attempts to sell tickets to a Christina Aguilera concert, messages about lost $5-10 value items, assorted solicitations for ineffectual charities, accidental pornographic emails, and invitations to parties. This does not even count the incessant HR and IT notices that have been on minutiae so small that they had no need to be sent to the whole firm, yet were sent anyways so that those respective departments could maintain the theater that they are not cipher-ladens pools of mediocrity.
Recommendation: Short anyone who think it’s a good idea to send a non-work related firm-wide email in a 100+ person firm. They will never achieve above average returns because they have negative common sense.
Here is an easy to follow guide on when you should send a non-work related firm-wide email:
Here is an explanation of Johnny’s Satan’s Portfolio Investing Thesis.
Rick’s Cabaret (NASDAQ: RICK)
Rick’s Caberet is a $50mm market cap company which operates
strip jointsgentlemen’s clubs aimed at Wall Street and at executives at large. The firm’s online division owns/operates “adult entertainment Internet Web sites, including xxxPassword.com that features adult content; CouplesTouch.com, a personals site for those in the swinging lifestyle; and NaughtyBids.com, an online adult auction site that contains consumer-initiated auctions for items, such as adult videos, apparel, photo sets, adult paraphernalia, and other erotica”.Pulled directly from the last RICK conference call: “I would like to invite everyone out tonight to our New York City club for our Due Diligence Ball at 50 West 33rd in New York.” A publicly traded strip club and porn supplier which offers investors a “Due Diligence Ball”? Satan says “Giggity giggity…alright.”
PetroChina (NYSE: PTR)
Does your company ruthlessly seek out oil assets in the ickiest places in the world? Check. Did Harvard’s Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility recommend that the Harvard Management Company divest itself of PTR? Check. Does your company look the other way when it comes to genocide in Darfur? Check. Does your company have the explicit backing and support of the world’s 2nd most ruthless government? Check. Welcome to Satan’s portfolio.
Textron (NYSE: TXT)
Textron is an $11 billion market cap firm who “primarily manufactures general aviation aircraft worldwide” but the Bell segment supplies and makes “helicopters [and] weapons, airborne and ground-based surveillance systems, aircraft landing systems, hovercraft, search and rescue vessels, armored vehicles and turrets, reciprocating piston aircraft engines, aircraft and missile control actuators.” And for the kids, Clusterbombs!
Sometimes we don’t have to make the call, the public will do it for us. In this case, Brown students staging die-ins outside Textron’s offices let us know exactly what Textron is all about. One of the protesters signs leadingly asked “Are you in the business of killing?” The answer is yes, and the lucrative blood of innocents is what makes Satan’s Portfolio’s returns so juicy.
From 1976-79 in Cambodia, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot oversaw the genocide of 1.5 million Cambodians. Since 2004, the Janjaweed, a paramilitary group covertly supported by the Sudan government, has been genociding 500 Darfurians per day. Pol Pot. Janjaweed. Coincidence? Science says not.
As reported by the SF Chronicle, killer African frogs are leaving a wake of death and destruction not seen since my NHL 95 days on the Sega Genesis.
No one knows for sure when the African clawed frogs got into the pond or who put them there. But there they are, and the Toad Warriors have pretty much taken care of the native turtles, frogs and fish.
“They’ve eaten everything they can get their mouths around, and now they’re eating each other,” said Eric Mills of the animal rights group Action for Animals.
Mills worries that the fiendish amphibians — which grow to 5 inches in length and have claws on the toes of their oversize hind feet — may jump the pond and spread their reign of terror across other Bay Area waterways, although so far, none has popped up elsewhere.
Are they the real deal or just another hyped “killer African” mania like those bees that apparently aren’t that “killer” and won’t migrate north of Texas?
Recommendation: One look at this albino Grimace-looking killer gives an investor all the due diligence he or she needs to state unequivocally that these killer African frogs can produce killer returns. We recommend loading up on killer African frog LEAPS. A catalyst for hopping out of a a long position would be the moment “Killer Frogs” appear on the cover of Time Magazine.
Private equity firms KKR and TPG were able to acquire TXU (NYSE: TXU) at a discount by hiring goons masquerading as activists to stage die-ins and other protests outside mutual funds and public holders of TXU stock. Could the protests, die-ins and facsimile blood hand-prints on the wall by Brown students outside the offices of Textron (NYSE: TXT) in downtown Providence indicate that the firm is about to be snatched up by private equity firms? LoS thinks so.
It’s clear just from looking at the pictures that those are not Brown students, as they lack their trademark long hair and hippy attire. Knowing that they aren’t Brown students, the only other logical conclusion is that they are agents hired by private equity firms. How long until Carlyle and Cerberus take Textron private? Weeks? Days? Light dollars (the measurement of how long it takes light to travel a dollar)?
Recommendation: Textron makes weapon systems and military vehicles, so it’s already a pretty good investment per Satan’s Portfolio. Taken together with the near certainty that PE firms snatch TXT up amidst the public backlash is another clear buy signal. “Buy” times “buy” equals “buy squared”.
Addendum: Some choice bits from the Brown Daily Herald’s article.
During the protest – which about 20 students from Brown attended, in addition to 10 others – students pantomimed Textron executives throwing cluster bombs at civilians while other protesters pretended to die in the circle at the intersection of Westminster and Exchange streets….
The protesters, using jam as fake blood, imitated injured or dead civilians and held signs with slogans condemning Textron’s military contracts, including, “Dear Textron, our democracy is not for sale” and “Are you in the business of killing?”
Two comments. If you have ever killed a man and tasted his blood, you know that it is nowhere near as delicious as raspberry jam. Also cluster bombs are dropped out of planes, not thrown by soldiers. If you really wanted to kill and horribly maime a crowd of civilians from the ground, you would want to use a flamethrower. Silly Brown.
Fact: It’s that time of year again. The Ides of March has passed and tax season is engulfing the time space continuum.
Fact: Despite your well-founded reasoning which supports your stance that the federal income tax is unconstitutional, you need to face the facts. The government has more guns than you, so your cache of weapons on your ranch in that remote part of Manhattan will not allow you to avoid paying income taxes on your excessive compensation.
Fact: No woman has ever said “Oh you haven’t filed your taxes yet? I find that so sexy, and now that I know that about you, I would like to show you a special happy time.”
Recommendation: As your friend, and abstract financial advisor, we recommend you file your taxes immediately through this link or you risk dying alone, just like all of our readers who opted NOT to buy their GFs flowers. Things that will probably happen if you do not file your taxes through this link:
The WSJ had an article which referenced several “Pink Dollar” products aimed at woman drivers such as pleasingly scented lavender tires and no-slip brake pedals for driving in hooker heels. The list neglected several other “Pink Dollar” products which are at least in a preliminary stage of development and should come to market within 5 years.
Just months after the first live giant squid was captured on film, New Zealand fisherman caught the largest squid ever, a 990lb colossal squid which measures 46 feet long in length. The next largest squid ever was 660lbs. The increasing frequency of giant and colossal squid sightings continues to point to only one logical conclusion — squids are scouting out the surface world for conquest and real estate development for when global warming fully empowers them to master the human race.
Some background on the colossal squid:
This squid has one of the largest beaks known of any squid and also has unique swivelling hooks on the clubs at the ends of its tentacles.
This combination allows it to attack fish as large as the Patagonian toothfish and probably to also attempt to maul sperm whales.
“When this animal was alive, it really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there. It’s without parallel in the oceans,” said Dr. O’Shea.
Global warming ensures that the oceans will rise and cover more of the Earth, causing polar bears to drown left and right and man to be subject to dominance by squid. In a world filled with ocean, we recommend having a position in the being which is “without parallel in the oceans” and which is three times the size of a bus.
