Reggie Middleton's Boom Bust Blog

I have decided to keep pumping as much of my preliminary research as possible to the blog for free. Please read and accept the disclaimer below. In addition to the disclaimer, I want to add that this blog is not about investment advice, and I do not offer investment advice to the public. This blog is a digital diary of my thoughts, musings and opinions of boom-bust cycles and my own investment forays throughout these cycles. I have decided to offer some of my research to foster discussion, debate, and further analysis. Please do not request investment advice from me on the blog.

I have run into the same problem as most other investors (both individual and institutional) – the lack of credible, unbiased quality research. I have two teams of highly qualified analysts working for me full time, and they adhere to my outside of the box approach to fundamental analysis and research. Thus, the stuff that you see here will differ significantly from what you see from the usual suspects. My research is funded solely by me and my investment management vehicles, with no outside or third party interests, and is used to guide my investments and that of my private investment funds (as well as provide fodder for this blog), some of which may be open to qualified purchasers in the future. If you follow my blog, much of my research runs contrary to most of the sell side institutions and ratings agencies. I scream “danger!” in this “bust” way before they do, and will probably yell “opportunity” in the next boom cycle considerably before them as well. Consider it the contrarian wiki of buy side research. The research in this blog represents many man months of work PER MONTH. Any institutional players who are interested in a more formal, timely and complete version of my research and analyses should Email Me directly (examples: Ryland summary and Ambac loss tail and sensitivity analysis model). For the sake of comparison to sell side research from the big banks or newsletters, below is a description of the opinions expressed in this blog, displayed as if a short (or long, depending on boom or bust times, we are in a bust now so short is the order of the day) position was taken in a typical retail brokerage account the trading day after the article was posted. My style is that of the medium to long term horizon investor, alas, the blog has only been up and running for a few months.

Read more...