Can Turtles Fly?

I ran across the following presentation by Jim Chanos and thought you will find it insightful. Even if you aren't into short-selling—I am not—it is useful to see what sort of investments you may want to avoid. Value investors tend to ignore macro views but those who are more influenced by macro may want to pay attention to bearish views of any investments they are considering. Back in May, Chanos gave this brief interview to Bloomberg briefly mentioning the topics covered in the presentation. The presentation covers Chanos' bearish thoughts on what he feels are some characteristics of value traps. He goes on to list several investments that he views as value traps. Here are two summary slides from the presentation. I share most of Jim Chanos' views and think investors should be careful with the areas he identified. For instance, I do think traditional PC manufacturers could lose big—he is bearish on HP—as tablets and mobile computing replaces PCs. Even compan

The Exponential Growth in Photos Oldest Photo of a Person Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre, Paris, France (circa 1838) (source: Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997. Downloaded from Wikipedia Commons on June 24, 2012) Growth in Photos (source: " How many photos have ever been taken? " By Jonathan Good, 1000memories blog, September 15, 2011.) Largest Photo Libraries (source: " How many photos have ever been taken? " By Jonathan Good, 1000memories blog, September 15, 2011.)

A few days late but oh well... Great graphic by Asymco on the evolution of the computer industry... Evolution of the Computer Industry (source: " The evolution of the computing value chain ," by Horace Deidu, Asymco. June 19 2012)

Stock Buybacks & Dividends 1988 to 2010 Dividend payouts have not increased much over the 20+ years while buybacks have increased significantly. During the bubbly peak in 2007, more than $500 billion worth of shares were bought back—ironically at really high stock prices!!—whereas dividend payouts hit a little over $200 billion. Senior management and financial executives have no clue what they are doing when it comes to buying back shares (their buying is highly correlated with stock prices, which is not what you want). Note that the figures are in millions i.e. In 1988, dividends of $100 billion were paid out while $50 billion worth of shares were bought back. ( I wrote a post on dividend payouts back in 2009 and some of you may be interested in that post as well.) (click on image for larger one; quality isn't great) (source: " Value Investing: Investing for Grown Ups? " by Aswath Damodaran, Stern School of Business, New York University. April 2012

A Look at Unemployment in America by Sector You can get a feel for employment patterns in various industries in the following infographic. As always, keep in mind that some sectors, like manufacturing, are very large, so a 1% change has a bigger impact on GDP than, say, leisure and hospitality. Some key points that stick out for me include: Manufacturing was underperforming even before the recession (250,000+ job losses in 2004 and 2005, which were boom years. We are basically witnessing a secular decline in manufacturing in USA (and Canada too).) Construction got hit hard during the recession (obviously driven by the real estate bust) Government sector is starting to post job losses during the recovery over the last couple of years (this is likely due to government spending cuts) (click on image for larger pic) (source: " Rising UNemployment ," Glassman Infographic. Design by Elefint. Downloaded from Fast Company, post dated May 23 2012.)