market folly

In Las Vegas today at the SALT Conference, the talking stock panel focused on perspectives from value investing legends such as Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors, Barry Rosenstein of JANA Partners, and Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Capital.


Barry Rosenstein of JANA Partners talked about how he's been involved in activist investing since the 1980s and thinks today's environment for it is the best he's seen.  They've been an activist in McGraw-Hill (MHP).  And though not an activist stake, we've posted JANA's thesis on Barnes & Noble, one of their latest investments.

He also touched on his firm's lack of exposure to financials, noting that the sector is too hard to analyze.  Rosenstein will be presenting an investment idea at the NYC Value Investing Congress in October. Market Folly readers can receive a discount here with code N12MF3.


Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors reiterated his stance that US government bonds are fundamentally overvalued.  We've highlighted his case against bonds numerous times before.

In terms of stock picks, he has allocated capital to financials via AIG (AIG), E*Trade (ETFC), Capital One (COF) and Western Union (WU). On the political side of things, he deemed this upcoming election one of the most important in his lifetime.



Joel Greenblatt said he likes tech giants Microsoft (MSFT) and Hewlett Packard (HPQ).  He also mentioned Wellpoint (WLP) and CVS Caremark (CVS).  His book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, despite its somewhat cheesy title, is recommended by tons of top hedge fund managers.


Whitney Tilson, the moderator of the panel, said his hedge fund T2 Partners was buying more JPMorgan Chase (JPM) TARP warrants this morning.  We also recently posted T2's presentation on AIG.

For more notes from the SALT Conference, check out:

- Identifying opportunities in emerging markets with John Burbank

-  Notes from panel with Kyle Bass, Dmitry Balyasny & Steven Tananbaum

- Risk panel with Phil Falcone and Eric Sprott



The above was compiled from notes sent in along with help from live tweets from: @katyawachtel & @realrobcopeland