Candidate for Asset Management President

I, Ross W. Goldin would like to announce that I will be running for Asset Management President.

That is all.

USG

Those calls we were looking at doubled. (May 60's).

Walter Industries (WLT)

I picked up this name from CNBC this afternoon. The company looks pretty sound and well diversified. It may be too similar to USG in that it is somewhat of a housing play, but it has five different business lines at the present time.

Looking through some of the basics on Yahoo, it looks like it may be a little undervalued, but its hard to compare directly to other companies because of the multiple business lines. I'm going to go through the SEC filings to see what their large non-recurring expense was for the past year and to see if I can find anything else out about them.

Improvements for the Group

I mentioned this tonight at the meeting, but go ahead and comment on items you think we can improve on as a group to make this a better experience. Whether it be in meetings, on the blog, or something in general feel free to leave one. The two that were mentioned tonight I think are good ones: get a website up, and have a few social activities. Those were both goals that I had set out for the semester, but have yet to completely follow through on them.

I think one item that we need to work on, but will come with time, is having set agendas for meetings so that everyone can come prepared and know what to expect. I don't know if this would help or hurt with our attendance, but it would be nice to try to work something out so that we have better attendance at all our meetings. Once we begin working more with the university and an advisory board, this should be helped out a little bit.

What do you think? It's open to anything you have to say.

NMX

NMX trades friday. The pricing range was raised recently, and it will probably price above that range. It will trade higher on friday. If you or your family happens to have a good relationship (and by good relationship I mean $10 million) with JPMorgan/Chase or Merrill Lynch then you might give your broker a call to try to get some shares. Co-managers are Banc of America, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, and Sandler O'Neill.

Finally!

I've been checking almost weekly on the R.I.S.E Symposium's website waiting for them to announce the information regarind R.I.S.E VII. This past week they uploaded all the information including the speaker line-up and registration info. With the current speaker line-up, it looks to be another excellent year.

For those unfamiliar with how R.I.S.E, you should go. On Thursday they bring in almost all of the guest speakers to sit on panels of 3-4 people. Each speaker has roughly 5 minutes to talk about their background and position on the panel's topic. From there it is opened up to the students to ask questions for an hour. I have seven pages of notes from last year's keynote presentations.

Friday is broken up into small breakout sessions. They have 6-8 topics of which you can choose four to go to. Each session is usually focused on an investment field or an investment strategy and allow for some networking with the panelists. That evening they have a small networking reception where you are able to look at the student-run, university portfolios entered into the competition. It is a great way for you to see how other students view the investing landscape and learn some of their strategies.

Saturday is a short morning session that covers the various career opportunities in the finance industry. They bring in a lot of younger professionals, so it is a great way to interact with people around our age that are fresh in the field.

Either way, check out the site, and plan your schedules next semester around this event if you are at all interested. I've already scheduled to take those days off work, so I can come back down and attend.


Joel

Hedge Fund Going Public

Fortress Investment Group plans to be the first hedge fund in U.S. history to IPO when they offer up 10% of the company. Right now Fortress is valued at $7.5 billion while actively managing over $26 billion. They plan to use the money to help raise new funds and take care of daily operations.

Lately, much has been made of the fact that hedge funds are highly undregulated. It is interesting that Fortress is willing to go public and expose some of their information to the public. Will this affect hedge funds in the future now that the shell is beginning to crack or will things continue on as normal in the hedge fund industry?

Couple Headlines

For those of you that haven't been paying attention to Berkshire, they reported earnings last Friday. With little in the way of disasters affecting the insurance business, earnings for the past quarter were nearly quadruple last years. Geico alone reported earnings of nearly $5000 per share. It is a little more obvious now why Buffet is the man and why we are up almost 25% in their stock. Through the first nine months of the year, Berkshire's net operating income is nearly three times higher than it was last year, so it should be an interesting year and a great time at the annual convention.

Reading through a couple sites Monday morning I found this article that makes me a little bit more comfortable working the 80, 90, 100 hour work weeks. Granted, a lot of the compensation they are talking about is on Wall St. but there is still plenty of money to be made elsewhere in this industry. One day Miami grads will be as coveted as the Ivy Leaguers and be able to come in at the 6 figure straight out of school.


Check out NEW and let me know what you think at the meeting on Monday. I think they've been clipped pretty bad, but with the housing market, there's no telling where the bottom is.


Joel