market folly

Lee Cooperman of hedge fund firm Omega Advisors made an appearance on CNBC today to talk about what he's been buying and what his portfolio looks like.

Cooperman thinks the market is fairly valued right now and that the "Fed will have to remain friendly." He thinks the rest of the year will be determined by which valuation camp wins out.

He thinks a radical change in Fed policy or a recession would cause a drop in the market, but he's not terribly worried about either of those scenarios.

At the same time, he points out how many investors have de-risked drastically and are underinvested.  He says, "what the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end."


Stocks Cooperman Likes

Cooperman mentioned Thomas H Lee Credit (TCRD), a mezzanine lender that yields over 9% and he thinks the dividend goes higher.

We recently posted up excerpts from Omega's Q1 letter if you missed it where he talks about some of his other stock picks.

He likes to buy MLP's when they're trading below net asset value and especially if he can get a decent yield.  He thinks Linn Energy (LINE) has assets worth "in the area of 40."

Cooperman has also sued Tetragon Financial and he believes management should be barred from the industry due to 6 years of bad governance in his opinion and possibly unlawful acts.  He still thinks the stock is undervalued (he owns 14 million shares of it and he started buying in 2009 back during the financial crisis).  In sum, he feels it's solely a management problem.

The Omega Advisors man also talked about Sprint (S), saying he bought it at $2 and then again at $7 and likes that there were 2 interested parties in the company (Softbank and Dish Network), but it looks like.  He said he'll tender 80% of his position, but if it trades at the right price, he'll get back into that chunk of his position.

Cooperman has owned Dish (DISH) for six years and he said it's a mature business and he thinks it'd be worth more with Sprint than without it.  He likes management there.

The hedge fund manager noted that he's "very bottom-up" and some things Omega has been buying recently include Express Scripts (ESRX), Halliburton (HAL), Transocean (RIG), Qualcomm (QCOM), Motorola Solutions (MSI). Sandridge (SD), and Chimera (CIM).


Embedded below is the video of Cooperman's 18-minute interview:



For more on this manager, check out Lee Cooperman's thesis on Covidien (COV) and Sirius XM Radio (SIRI).