Today, I am joined by Harris Kupperman, hedge fund manager and author of the newsletter “Adventures in Capitalism”.  And boy.... are they adventures. Tesla? Home builders? Sectors we both wish we’d never heard of and tankers.  Plus - what advice he’d give himself after graduating with a history degree. If you liked the Josh Young and Billy Bailey episodes, you aren’t going to want to miss this one. #hottakeoftheday podcast Episode 58 w/Harris Kupperman https://youtu.be/fK6Bhur9gBI   Audio Podcast   About Kuppy Harris Kupperman is the founder...

Every time I start writing this post, Tesla jumps to my mind. As does the year 2000, which coincided with the start of my career and my growing up. I knew I was grown up because at the convenience store I would reach for “The Economist” instead of “Playboy”. Big step. I also started to watch the stock market. I didn’t understand the nuances but it seemed if you bought anything, it went up. Pets.com was a concept website for...

Dear Equity Investors, Are you still here? Wow. I know, it doesn’t seem fair, right? Amazon trades at a FORWARD P/E of 126. WeWork literally has the worst business model in history, tried to convince us it was a SAAS business (space as a service... I promise... we are a tech company) and even they could raise money. And we produce the most essential product to power the economy of the world (remember when the economy mattered?) and yet, we have...

Dear Callon, Please, don't stop reading. I know our relationship didn't get off on the right foot and even though it's entirely your fault, I'm going to do the right thing and take the blame, because that's what you do when you are trying to make amends. Also, congratulations on your purchase of Carrizo, I didn't think you would get that done. I stand corrected. I do this thing called "Technical Tuesday" and... You know what, it doesn't matter...

The expression "to beat a dead horse" comes from a clever catch-phrase-ologist in the mid 19th century who identified that beating a dead horse would not make it go faster. The only thing more pointless is identifying "Hey, that horse is dead" and not offering an alternative transport solution. Today on Twitter, LinkedIn and the internet, SMOG is the name of that horse. As one industry veteran opined "I have worked as an investor for a decade and I've...

In our system of commerce-capitalism-the purpose of a company is to maximize profits to the owners (the shareholders) and broadly speaking, the purpose of investors (those who manage big pools of money) is to ensure capital allocation is done properly. Companies doing well get more capital and those that aren’t...don’t. Government revenues are generated from a cut of the profits to pay for infrastructure (how large this should be depends on your political persuasion) and employees are the cogs that make it all possible. This overly simplistic view...

Being an activist investor is hard. Just ask Carl Icahn who is reportedly seeking to take control of all 10 seats on Oxy’s board because he doesn’t like the direction the company is headed. I have written that I hold Ms.Hollub in high regard because of the steps she took to win a deal that she felt was worth betting the company on. You don’t have to agree with her (as Mr.Icahn doesn’t and put his money where his...

This is the hottest/coldest/wettest/driest summer/winter/fall of my life! We like to attach this “xyz ever” label to a narrative of events that often isn’t “the worst ever”. But what then, pray tell, do we make of the current down cycle in oil and gas? Is it actually the worst ever? It certainly feels like it. Any day the market is open is another day for energy stocks to fall. More directly, energy has underperformed the S&P in any duration of time you select. It’s so...

With Q2 reporting kicking off in earnest next week, I fear we are going to see “this” far too often. Please, someone, prove me wrong. Houston/Denver/Midland- We (xyz company) are pleased to report our Q2 earnings. Well, they weren’t really earnings because of one time non recurring (but recurring) charges, depreciation and S,G&A so can we will pivot to EBITDA please? Great. In the quarter, we came in 1% below capital guidance because we stopped fracing for the last 18 days of June but you...

In this week’s edition of “press releases that make me laugh” we have the two runners up - First - a company cut its annual budget by $2 mm (1.5%) while cutting its drilled wells from 50 to 32 (36%). Ummmm... walk me through that math? Second - an OFS company that apparently doesn’t read my hottakes: “Our expectation of seeing the bottom of the Company’s rig count during the quarter turned out to be premature...” and now isn’t forecasting a bottom. I am!! 700 Hz...