Long or Short Capital

According to USA Today:

Californians appear willing to pay $4,000 more for used gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that have state-issued carpool stickers than for hybrids that don’t.

We expect the markets for carpool-lane stickers to evolve, similar to the way the CDO market evolved for mortgages and other types of consumer debt. We see an opportunity for buying sticker-bearing hybrid cars, stripping off the stickers, and reselling both the sticker and the car separately. By selling the stickers to those who most want to avoid traffic — and the hybrid to those with the highest tree-hugging tendencies — one should be able to realize higher pricing versus the bundled buy that exists now.

The mortgage markets provide a clear path for success: hopefully, the collateralized sticker market will grow until it becomes completely out of control, encourages over-leveraged purchases of carpool lane stickers, and leading to a regulatory crackdown that starts an economic recession.

Recommendation: Short Prius cars, Long carpool lane stickers.

If you encounter nattily-dressed males shaking, shivering or otherwise acting erratically, do not be alarmed. There has been a disruption to Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ: RIMM) Blackberry service, preventing customers from being able to send and receive email reliably from last night through to today. If this continues, Blackberry users worldwide will be unable to:

• affect the veneer of importance in public
• take time off from vacation to stay addicted to work
• ignore unwanted conversations at work-related social functions
• pay complete inattention during investment meetings
• achieve new high scores in Brickbreaker [ed note: 24k, bitches!]
• ignore their girlfriends in the name of “last-minute requests from the PM”

Global markets could crash as this morning has given market participants a rude wake-up call from the sedated state induced by their Blackberry umbilical tethers to the hard reality of their empty existence and the abyss that is their communal soul.

The AP is reporting that the Motion Picture Association of America has trained two labradors to sniff out pirated DVD’s. The dogs are named Lucky and Flo and they have reportedly help uncover 1.2 million pirated DVDs. As a result of this dog-gone amazing success:

Malaysian movie pirates have placed bounties on Lucky and Flo who have so far helped uncover $3.5million in fake CDs and DVDs during raids on warehouses….Theblack Labradors will participate in more Malaysian raids, but they also could be deployed to other countries for anti-piracy operations from time to time, Gane said. He declined to identify which countries were being considered, citing security. Lucky and Flo are the world’s only dogs trained to detect a chemical used in making discs, the MPAA has said.

I call bullsh-t. Bullsh-t. Bullsh-t. Bullsh-t. They are not the only ones. I recently trained my dog to smell forged signatures – now he sits at the bank teller and barks whenever someone tries to endorse a check that’s not theirs. He is the only dog in the world trained to smell a chemical used in forged signatures. He has put an end to identity fraud in New York City and he may be deployed to other cities which shall remain nameless for security reasons. He has a bounty and a blue bow on his head. Also he can smell fake orgasms, which was why I got rid of him in the first place.

Recommendation: Short lies and bullsh-t.

Submitted by LoS reader Winston Wolfe

In our never ending search of good buy-side targets, we stumbled across Bessemer Venture Partners and their “Anti-Portfolio”. Said portfolio chronicles the venture opportunities that this all-knowing venture capital firm has passed on during the last 15 years. Opportunities include, but are not limited to, Apple, eBay, Federal Express (seven times), Google, Intel, and PayPal. Although publicly flaunting your failures might to most seem like a bad idea, we see this as an opportunity to explore a totally new growth area, what we call the “Anti-Space.” Accordingly, we are having our analysts flush out a plethora of new ideas including the:

Anti-Girls-I’ve-Slept-With Portfolio – Girls we had the chance with when they were ugly, and now won’t call us back (Links may not be SFW).

• RGX Body Spray Girl
• Kiele Sanchez
• Alessandra Ambrosio

Anti-Comments Portfolio – Those opportunities we had to lay someone out with a cutting remark, but didn’t pull the trigger.

• HR says: “I think we may need to spice up the office with some new plants.”

  Anti-Comment: “You moronic mouth breathing land-monster.”

• Managing Director says: “Did you finish that DCF?”

  Anti-Comment: “That’s what she said”

• IT says: “Maybe after I fix this printer we can grab a drink.”

  Anti-Comment: “Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.”

Recommendation: In line with our Anti-Investment Strategy, but we see significant hedging opportunities in investing in things you didn’t invest in and not investing in things you did invest in.

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.

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

So it goes.

It will be a while before we get another author like him. You need a f*cked up life to be as darkly and ingeniously satirical as he was. His mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day when he was 21. That same year he dropped out of college and enlisted in the army during World War II. He fought on the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge (one of the bloodiest in American history), ended up stranded alone behind enemy lines and wandered for days before being taken as a POW. He then arrived in Dresden shortly after the Dresden fire bombing, where somewhere between 35-100k people died in grotesque fashion. He spent three days dragging bodies into mass graves. After it became clear that there were too many bodies to bury he watched Nazi’s incinerate the dead with flame-throwers.

One would think all that would ruin your sense of humor but it instead created Vonnegut’s.

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.“

I gave money to my alma mater — against my better judgment since this money could have been spent at Marquee instead — and received an emailed thank you note a few days later.

The Annual Fund helped [an] assistant professor of mathematics host a program aimed at eliminating gender inequities in math and science. It helped the studio art department rent a downtown gallery space for student, faculty and visiting artist shows. It helped the women and gender studies department host an essay contest for undergraduate and graduate students. And it helped an associate professor of sociology, organize a conference on memory and trauma. It helped.

So apparently my money went towards helping girls who aren’t good at math, renting a studio in the most expensive part of town so that hippies can paint, and holding an essay contest in the women’s studies dept!?! Since when does it cost money to hold an essay contest!? Incredible. Reading that makes me wish there was a money-back guarantee. I thought the money would go towards scholarships for poor kids or research in the sciences.

Recommendation: Short my university’s fund-raising efforts. Judging by my sample (n=1), 0% of this year’s donors plan to donate again next year.

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.

…

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.

…

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

Taxes are due April 17th. It is April 7th. That gives you 10 days to create an elaborate tax shelter scheme involving Bermuda shell companies or a family of 740 phantom children you could claim as dependents to minimize your tax liability. This is a tight timetable even if you have top tier tax lawyers working around the clock billing you at $1100 a pop, so we recommend you start your taxes immediately.

Remember that if you don’t get your taxes done, you will die alone.

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.

Seen in my hotel elevator today:

In the event that doors do not open, do not be alarmed. Please press the button labeled ‘Alarm’ and speak to the operator