GlobalSpeculation.com
Because it does not make sense not to

CNO:

I saw Steel Partners LP selling as well, you have to remember they were buying around $10 anyway. What do they know? Saw the guy stroll into the last CNO meeting first hand. I made sure not to talk to him. He got a round of applause, and welcomed to the board of directors.

Looks to me like insiders are mostly buying http://www.pinksheets.com/pink/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=cno#getInsiderTrans

http://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=cno

Steel partners, as I recall, is still sitting on 10M shares. So, they cut down maybe 20% of their holdings. As an investor, I do that all the time if it’s my largest position. And, if I was them, looking at a lot of red and pressure from my investors because I bought at $10, and my investors just took huge losses last year and had the (GET ME THE *** OUT OF HERE) mentality… I just can’t really see much into it. I am fairly positive the company is going to put down positive EPS numbers 90% confident here.

AHR:

I am less confident in. They have a lot more CMBS risk outstanding, and their share price is whooped. That said, I’ve been accumulating as well. They were making money all but the 4th quarter of last year when they took ABSOLUTELY GINORMOUS writedowns. Then, they were profitable Q1, and I expect profitability Q2. After all, the market is settling since then.

As far as blackrock and anthracite go, Blackrock manages Anthracite. I didn’t really know they were buying or selling AHR.

I personally think AHR will be catching a break here in the next 3 months. Blackrock, it’s boss-man, is the “All American Quarterback”.

It’s caught headlines like:

BlackRock Inc., started 21 years ago in a one-room office by former mortgage-bond trader Laurence Fink, agreed to buy Barclays Plc’s investment unit for $13.5 billion to become the world’s largest money manager.

U.S. names 9 firms to manage program to sell banks’ toxic assets. Group includes BlackRock, Wellington Management and Invesco.

Blackrock is into: high yield commercial real estate loans. This is pretty much the Junk that everyone is freaking out about going down the pooper as far as I’m concerned.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/ShQKBEyAORI/AAAAAAAAFTM/03RNGrH9sEA/s1600-h/CreditSuisseResetMarch09.jpg

I sat down and thought about the whole situation. Interest rates in the united states are going to stay low, because if they don’t… this whole market will come tumbling down, and we’ll leg into depression. As far as looking forward go, things are getting better, now. Yes, they actually are. I’m not talking about things not getting worse. I’m talking about them getting better. Employment is a lagging indicator, and so are all the other things that wall street is covering. Oil prices and energy prices should come down and carry us into the winter. Natural gas is oversupplied, so is oil. Commodities are priced something along the lines of marginal utility. Oversupply means lower prices. Lower costs of operating for most businesses = larger profits, lower interest rates is good for banks. Inflation is not here. So, get out of my TBT play that I called in January. Inflation has never happened without home prices increasing in value — and that’s not going to happen anytime soon. All things considered, I’m sticking with AHR. I think that people are going to be hating on it until earnings come out along with blackrock giving them their own “stimulus package”. 60% confident here

But, good news! run the probabilities.

(10% confidence) * $8 + 0*90%= $0.80

Even with 10% probability, this thing is a money maker from this price level.

But, I don’t know anything. I’m just really lucky and I focus on not screwing up.

Hope this helps,

Glen

From: Scott Stefani
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 8:33 PM
To: Bradford, Glen Richard
Subject: Re: Glen Belated Independence Day Update

Glen:

I hope you had a Happy 4th. Your Toys ‘R Us write-up was awesome. I now own a sizeable position in just about all of your China stock recommendations (I really like MYST and CHID from your most recent article). I’m also biting my nails in hopes that AHR has a nice bounce soon, it’s definitely one of my more sizeable positions that I’ve continued to buy on the way down. You mentioned Blackrock buying back stock in AHR, but on Yahoo Finance, it shows them acquiring 38,834 shares, but then also dispositioning 107,291 shares. Can you elaborate on this at all?

Also, I was perusing the SEC website today, and happened to run across a filing from Conseco (CNO). It looks as if Steel Partners LP sold 2,737,300 shares of CNO … is this CNO buying back the shares or can you help explain what this means? Here’s a copy & paste from the website:
Transactions in the Shares During the Past 60 Days

Class of
Security Securities
(Sold)
Price ($) Date of
Sale

STEEL PARTNERS II, L.P.

Common Stock (504,518) 1.8322 06/25/09
Common Stock (325,000) 1.8738 06/25/09
Common Stock (1,464,100) 2.1691 06/26/09
Common Stock (16,493) 2.3500 06/29/09
Common Stock (427,192) 2.3857 06/30/09

I appreciate any insight you may be able to reveal. Thank you very much Glen and I wish you the best of luck with your Hedge Fund.

Scott

By

Glen Bradford

Alright, first, recognize that time that you spend weeding out companies is time that you can spend doing other things, like actually analyzing them. So, for this article, I’m going to break down how I would screen the Fortune Small Business 100 in less than half an hour to make a cut throat decision on which stocks to own. Remember, we are trying to figure out what to buy by figuring out what’s not worth owning at a quick glance.

Step 1: (1 minute, eliminated 75/100)

Sort by total return to investors. This is the total return that owning the company has returned to investors. Obviously, you want to focus on the fast growing companies that have not returned money to investors, because that’s where the money is probably going to be made.

So, scroll to the bottom and pull the bottom 15 companies. For reference purposes only, I’m only going to talk and reference the companies out of these 15 that are worth further investigation, but I’ll have gone through them all. I usually go through the entire list. I eat lists for breakfast. I sort through entire OTCBB symbol directory lists in a couple days and sweep away the cream from the milk. I expect that you are less crazy about reading reports and sorting information than I am. So, this is what I would recommend for your average person that hopefully can read English and understand basic math. There is no need to derive your own excel derivative equations to tabulate the geometric forecasted slope of a logarithmic model. In fact, there isn’t much value-add from doing that anyway.

Step 2: (10 minutes, eliminated 95/100)

Copy and paste the names of the bottom 15 into google finance and find the ticker. Drag the scrolling window back a couple years. Make sure that the current stock price is significantly (at least 200% upside in a crisis environment like this) lower than the latest stock price high. This isn’t always in the last 52-weeks. If it isn’t get rid of it. Also, make sure that the EPS number is a positive number. Make sure that all the net income figures are positive while you’re at it for the last quarter, the last year, and the year before. Make sure that the latest fully reported year has higher revenues than it did the year before. Make sure that the company isn’t a pink sheet. NASDAQ, NYSE, and AMEX are what you are looking for. Save the tickers that beat this test into a new notepad session.

Step 3: (5 minutes, eliminated 98/100)

Go to finance.yahoo.com and keep the ones where the forward P/E ratio is less than the TTM P/E ratio. Keep the ones where the forward P/E ratio is less than 8. Make sure the ttm operating cash flow is positive. And you’re done.

The two stocks that made it this far are CTI Industries (CTIB) and KMG Chemicals (KMGB), let’s see what there is to say about them.

And, I hate both of them. Screw it, Buy EBIX instead, also part of the list. Odds are they both outperform the stock market though. This is totally not worth publication anywhere but my blog.

By

Glen Bradford

Welcome to the 2^nd part of a 5 part series that I’d like to call the “companies of life in China.” We are now entering childhood. At this point, I’d like to point out that this and all of my writings are intended to only be read by investors out there that are interested in not losing money. Mostly, I talk about things worth owning — and own them myself.

Put on your ear muffs. 35 years ago, Warren Buffett mentioned that he felt like an oversexed guy in a whorehouse. Ear muffs off. 3.5 months ago, I felt like a Toys ‘R Us kid left alone in the store after dark. Granted, Warren’s track record over the last 35 years is greater than mine over the past 3.5 months, but triple digit gains are undeniably “above average.” In the heat of March, I was offering to pay people if they gave me money and I lost it. I guess that’s what market bottoming makes someone like me feel like doing.

Instead of being boyishly optimistic and carefree, now I’m optimistically cautious. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong. There are multiple problems still floating in the air in Eastern Europe, not to mention the great potential for CMBS to crash the boards harder and longer than the Subprimes. That said, I still can’t control myself when I see opportunities that make me feel like I did when I opened my 12-year old Christmas present, a TYCO 6 wheeling remote control car that I proceeded to drive up and down the hotel hallways to my parents’ dismay and embarrassment.

1. 1. I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R Us kid. China Digital Communication Group (OTC:CHID) is unbearably cheap as it is, not to mention they just captured a Veteran Electronics CEO who founded a 3C electronic products manufacturing firm and grew it to hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues. China Digital, however, is trading at less than $10 Million dollars. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I just love electronics right now after the sector got crushed this last Christmas season. From me to you, I think you are crazy if you miss this opportunity.
2. 2. There’s a million toys at Toys ‘R Us that I can play with.  The second company I’ll advise taking a look at is the one that I think may have the most upside in the long run, but is more of a gamble. China Clean Energy (OTC:CCGY) is in the biodiesel and specialty chemical products business. Rumors are that this company is increasing capacity to bring on $14M of net income annually. Not bad for a company at $10M.It’s less of a rumor now, as they just put up new pictures of their expansion plant in construction. A word of warning, look into potential tax problems that I have seen in the Fujian Province with Gushan (NYSE: GU).
3. 3. From bikes to trains to video games at the biggest toy store there is. Somehow, we ended up in the electronics isle and it’s only suitable that I disclose my fully integrated information and entertainment service provider stock: MystarU.com (OTC: MYST). My estimate puts 2009E earnings at $10M plus or minus $5M. That said, my estimate could be hugely understated, as growth rates are in the triple digits. Did I mention their subsidiary Subaye.com is working with Google (NYSE: GOOG)? Nuff said.
4. 4. I don’t wanna grow up cause if I did, I couldn’t be a Toys ‘R Us kid. To stick with the theme of electronics, because I don’t want to grow up, I present to you a company that has been laughed by investors down 40% since their last conference call, China 3C Group (OTC: CHCG). They just acquired their logistics company to increase efficiencies. They’ve been trying to uplist for over a year, getting unfairly punished by investors; and for $38M you can catch this company that made $26.8M last year.

Lastly, I did look into Toys ‘R Us. It’s owned by Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), which according to google has a P/E of over 1000. It comes with a *yield* of 8.5% and their P/E is actually around 10. I say *yield* because their dividend is not all cash anymore but shares of Vornado stock as well. I’m not confident in valuing Vornado (VNO), and I’ll leave it at that.

It has been said that when it comes to markets, markets are never wrong, opinions often are. I disagree. Markets can persist to incorrectly value companies for an incredibly long time and value. Give them enough time, and they still may be wrong. My opinion is that if you have a company that makes $10M carrying a price tag of less than $50M and has the growth potential to grow income to $100M, there is a lot of money to be made.

Glen and his investors own China Digital Communication Group, China Clean Energy, MystarU.com, and China 3C group.

This guy at Invest Place has great ideas too. I just don’t like SPNG… and since I wouldn’t own it, it’s a sell.

http://investplace.wordpress.com/

My take: The new management team is providing a lot of good positive feedback to the lenders and the lenders have agreed to reduce the financial test and are willing to accept a much more simple. Cash in the bank kind of test.

SRZ management will continue to keep the lenders in confidence and will share their cash flow projections making the situation more manageable. The original cash in the bank policy was 50 million(with all the financial tests) now its 5 million (with no financial test!!) just additional cash projection sharing.. So a great big Thumbs up to the new management team.

There is additional 17 million asset sale which has been disclosed already.

SRZ will be sharing their plans with regards to Cash flows with the lenders by June 1,2009. (I dont think these projections will be made public as the company no longer needs to disclose all this as the agreement is stable till Dec 2,2009 and had been mentioned specifically in previous SEC filings.)

There is a mention that anything more than 35 million of unrestricted cash flow by end of the year will be used to payback the lenders so we can expect net cash balances to be atleast 35 million by end of year (Dec 2008 quarter number is 29.5 million)

All said and done the tight restrictions leave no chance for the management to wiggle and hence the rights of the shareholders and the bond holders will be protected and enhanced.

A strong buy considering the fact that SRZ has a market cap of 94 million and BKD is about 1 billion while their sales figures are comparable (before the sale of Greystone). SRZ is no longer in default with its loan covenants.

http://www.whatsup-stockideas.blogspot.com/

csgh – prefer this to iclk
sutr – waiting on Q2 to come out… Q1 was down
cpsl – p/e of around 8 or so. steel in china is HOT … makes me want to look at GSI
GSI – $39M in cash. haha, still … too expensive for me with a p/e of 6,
ddr – still a buy in my book, especially since they paid a dividend of 20 cents in june. that puts a yield over 10%
ish – oh wow. looks like a great day-trade stock, swing this baby.
iclk – 2009 revenue over $40M, sounds reasonable, so let’s use that, growth rate of 30%, i’d put net income at around $4M as far as an estimate goes, and that’s optimistic. 40M shares outstanding $4/40 = EPS 0.10, puts the P/E at about 11 right now, too expensive for me, but the upside based on that analysis is around 200% in the next year, but the growth could easily be higher than 30% YOY for a couple years explains why it was around $6.
cvvt – appears expensive.. but it’s a play on nuclear china, i’ve got a better play though
rz – not profitable

Hi,

This blog is under serious construction, but hopefully I’ll get everything up and running soon.

Glen Bradford

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Yeah, I was actually strategizing if I was going to blog about my findings anymore since I’m running a hedge fund. bottom line, it’s something I like to do… and I also like to write for thestreet and seekingalpha and run around on ihub.

so, i’m going to keep doing what I like to do.

apwr- yuck
holi- yuck
cpst – yuck
ceua – 30% growth rate, p/e of 9, 2x book value
llfh – 25% growth rate, p/e of 8, 2.5x book value
anrgf – no clue
sutr – 30% growth clouded by recession, P/E of 5
wemu – 100% growth this year, 30% into the future prolly, P/E of 9
aemd – icky
ceua – p/e of 9, microcap for a couple years yet.
niv – growth of 20%, P/E of 10
bhrt – icky
qgp – yoink, yuck
blsw – icky
xsnx – nope
lege – nope
etak – nope
rxii – nope
npws – hype + potential? i don’t care… waiting on this one.
gsi – looking into this one
csgh news
cphi news
yhgg – big potential pinkie, better than SIAF in my opinion
ciwt – expensive for my taste
chio – expensive for my taste
sutr – dip in fundies and already on the nasdaq
ors – still a/r hurting
caei – lots of upside, but still not cheap
mbrx – not profitable
cheh – not a stock
cga – expensive
cdii – expensive
ceua – expensive
rino – will likely outperform the market and probably pull 200% in the next 2 years, not enough for me seeing other opportunities
jngw – hurting, check Q2 earnings
chbo – no revenues, i just threw up in my mouth
ddr- payed out preferred dividend
inmd – too expensive for this type of investing climate
UNG – not interested
SD – not interested
HGT – looks interesting, prolly an 8% yielder. Upside is $25, not enough for me
NGLPF – dont like it
CPTC – dont like it
domr – no track record
vlov – no volume, but looks to have a p/e of around 5
pmi – and risk-o was his name-o
spng – appears to be a $100M company, price says that too, and lots of potential growth. not cheap enough right now
octi – no revenues
cagc – not cheap enough, but growth of 33% NEG CASH FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES
jngw – revisit in Q2
zolt – too expensive
zagg – wayyyy expensive

pulled the following from some crazy analytical guy that sells ideas that will in my opinion beat the market, but who cares about marginally beating the market? I don’t. Not now, not when I can make 200% in 4 months.
* Kirby Corporation (KEX): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* Diana Shipping (DSX): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* Overseas Shipping (OSG): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model; Some Interest (90%), Joseph Piotroski-based model
* TBS International (TBSI): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model
* International Shipholding (ISH): Strong Interest (93%), Peter Lynch-based model; Some Interest (83%), Motley Fool-based model
* SEACOR Holdings (CKH): Some Interest (86%), Benjamin Graham-based model; Some Interest (74%), Peter Lynch-based model

kex – not interested — too expensive + turnaround
dsx – dry bulk – interesting, but i think china is bidding these up in the short term and so i like FREE, SBLK, DAC more
osg – looks appealingly cheap with high growth, will look deeper
tbsi – not profitable last quarter, so more risky, but i picked outperform in CAPS (not real money)
ish – volatile stock price, buy below 18 and sell above 22 seems like a good gig … i might be doing it – did it with CAEI for a couple “20% in 3 day” pops
ckh – price looks a lot like the baltic drybulk index. too expensive. no way.

my thoughts on the following list, i’m only going to cover ones i havent covered.
ABAT, AKRK, BKYI, CAEI, CCTR, CHFI, CHGY, CNOA, CSGH, CYXN, ETFC, GHII, LTHU, LTUS, NWD, ORS, XING

abat – too expensive
byki – too expensive
cctr – well… scam, or deal of a life time? referenced nmkt too. looks interesting, see below
cctr – revisited immediately – 110,944,194 shares outstanding, P/E > 50. not a growth story, not interested
lthu – haha NO WAY
NMKT – revisited again, pink sheets, and they’ve got videos from this really clean cut guy in a suit with what he thinks are good mba presentation skills. i hate these people. empty suits, but maybe i’m wrong here, bottom line is i am risk averse., their lead people make $200,000+, and share dilution is out the butt, screw them
siaf – still a pink sheet, seeks quotation on the OTCBB. cool. but looks like 52M shares outstanding yields a market cap of 37M, which upts the p/E higher than 5 and P/S > 2. i’m not interested
mtxx – down huge, for a reason. not interested.. icky — but if you wanna dig deeper, let me know. prolly will go up above $5.70

aib – whoah nilly. why haven’t i looked into this sooner.
ire – whoah nilly. why haven’t i looked into this sooner.
txic – looks like a forward looking p/e of 3.58
hwd – wow – the motley fool keeps sucking less in their newsletter picks. but hell, they are getting better. this one will outperform and be a multi-bagger.

ACAS – If American Capital survives, let’s see here. They are paying out stock as a dividend. Looks like a $200M dividend ballpark. Just assume that none of this dividend is cash. So now they throw out another 50M shares. If they do this 3 times, that’s 350M shares outstanding and a current market cap of 1.361B
Still cheap in my book, but I’d take the price back in 2006 and say $35 is your high point, so with 50% dilution, $17.50 is your new high point. So, I’m saying banks are fairly valued down 50% from where they were, so I’d be out at $9 unless the market turns up big and they aren’t diluting.
Lazy analysis is better than anything an analyst can do for you.

chgi – Yeah it’s a pretty compelling story as they already have money making lines…and given the fact they’re the only company in China with the ability to produce “nuclear graphite”. The gov’t in China is currently building 40 nuclear reactors at 12 facilities throughout China by 2015. CHGI is the only publicly traded Chinese company with the technology to produce this type of graphite.
cpe
– looks cheap, but i can’t figure out

China Real Estate Opportunities SA
(Public, LON:CREO)

chump of the day
http://finance.yahoo.com/special-edition/active-investor/options-beyond-fear

philip guziec
http://www.moneyshow.com/directory/speaker.asp?speakerid=5E54BF2B5F7547959B039BA50831C736

Being the CFO for OPAI
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=208628&t=01000000000214846910