Description
Book SynopsisBuild a bulletproof portfolio with advice from a top market expert Doug Kass on the Market: A Life on TheStreet provides investment advice and guidance from one of the most renowned traders in the world. Author Doug Kass distills his years of experience as a hedge fund manager and infamous short seller to share the theory, technique, and intuition that built his reputation and his portfolio. Anecdotes about interactions with Wall Street''s most famous names, including Buffett, Cramer, and Cooperman, highlight tricks of the trade, essential value investor insight, and the secrets to being a smart short.
Doug Kass''s reputation as a savvy investor is well-earned and widely recognized. His work on Wall Street gained him heavyweight status, and the friendship, the respect, and the ear of some of the biggest names in finance. As a CNBC regular and 2013 Buffet Bear, Kass is widely known as a trusted source of wisdom and profitable insight. In Doug Kass on the Mark
Table of Contents
Foreword xiii
James J. Cramer
Preface xvii
Where It Began 1
Introduction 1
The Contrarian 2
A Longtime Bear Turns Bull 5
What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been 9
Short-Selling 13
Introduction 13
The Case for Short-Selling 14
Short-Sellers under Fire 18
How to Short 21
Lehman Can’t Blame Shorts 23
Stop Pointing Fingers at Short-Sellers 25
Blame Game Is Dishonest 27
11 Ways to Fix the Short Ban 29
Leave the Short-Sellers Alone 32
In Defense of Short-Selling 39
Lessons Learned 43
Introduction 43
Sniffing Out Bad Stocks 44
Laugh at Your Own Expense 45
When the Bond Market Talks, Listen 46
Poker Is Flush with Insight for Traders 48
My Tenets of Investing 50
12 Investment Principles for the Abyss 54
My Recession Checklist 55
Kill the Quants, Punish the ProBears 57
Chase Value, Not Price 60
Six Ways to Right Your Wrongs 62
Four Stages of Market Turning Points 63
Moving On 65
Adapting to Mr. Market 67
In Bernanke We Trust? 68
America’s Pastime Applies to Markets 72
Let the Trading Day Commence 76
A Delicate Balance 85
The Lion’s Share 86
What to Do When You’re Wrong 91
Beware the Stock Market Trading Jones 92
Addressing the Fiscal Cliff 97
One Shining Moment 102
Time Frames and Exposures 105
Such a Long Time to Be Gone and a Short Time to Be Here 108
10 Laws of Stock Market Bubbles 112
My Stock Market Super Bowl Indicator 116
The Great Decession: Subprime and Credit/Debt Crisis 119
Introduction 119
Trouble Looms for the Homebuilders 120
Stretched Consumer Nears Tipping Point 123
When the Walls Come Tumbling Down 127
When the Walls Come Tumbling Down (Part Deux) 129
Housing Headed to the Woodshed 132
Housing’s Softness Has Long Reach 134
Subpar Subprime a Growing Problem 136
Ratings Are Subprime’s Dirty Secret 138
Subprime Fungus Will Spread 139
Subprime’s Siren Call 141
Four to Blame for the Subprime Mess 147
Fed Is No Savior in Subprime Slide 151
The Simple Math of Subprime’s Slide 152
Housing Red Ink Could Spell Recession 155
Hedge Funds’ Dirty Little Debt Secret 157
Loaded Up on Leverage 159
Don’t Underestimate How Bad Things Are 162
No Quick and Easy Fix for This Market 164
Brokers’ Profits Riskier 167
Shaking Off the Credit Nightmare 169
Blinded by the Derivatives Boom 170
A Market on the Brink 176
Two Solutions to What Ails the Market 179
Ready for the Bear Stearns Challenge? 183
Investors Have Lost Their Innocence 189
Wall Street Has Sold Out America 191
Welcome to Dystopia 193
Harder than the Average Bear 198
Recovery 201
Introduction 201
The Parable of the Mustard Seed 202
On the Road to Recovery 204
Fear and Loathing on Wall Street 207
Bottoms Up, Mr. Market 215
Bottom Call (Part Deux) 217
Printing an Important Market Bottom 219
It Ain’t Heavy, It’s a Bottom 220
The Little Market that Could 223
Against the Grain 227
Introduction 227
Experts Agree, Recession Is Over 228
Market Has Likely Topped 229
Bearish Arguments Are Roaring 232
Top 20 Signs How Bad the Economy Is 238
More Nuance Is in Store 239
We Are the World 243
The Decade of the Temporary Worker 246
The Scale Tips to the Bullish Side 249
The Lost Decade Has Passed Us 253
Equities Edge toward a Top 255
More on Screwflation 259
A Contagion of Black Swans 261
Apocalypse Soon 263
10 Reasons to Buy American 269
The Case for Shorting U.S. Bonds 271
Residential Real Estate Is Ready to Recover 274
The Bear Case for Apple 276
A House Divided against Itself 280
Beware the Interest Rate Cliff 284
Housing Faces a Credit Event 286
QE’s Growing Impotence 290
Flawed Case for a Bull Market 292
Everybody in the Pool 296
Expect the Unexpected in 2014 298
Climbing a Wall of Complacency 301
Turn, Turn, Turn 305
Wall Street Personalities 309
Introduction 309
A Soros Story 310
The Bearded Prophet of the Apocalypse 312
On Being Jim Cramer 315
Defending Cramer 316
Defending Cramer (Part Deux) 319
Leon Cooperman and James Brown: The Godfathers of Hard Work 322
Ben Stein Whistles Past Mortgage Mess 324
Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ben Stein 326
Ben Stein Blames You 328
Eat My Shorts, Ben Stein 335
My Q&A with Nouriel Roubini 337
The Orchid Indicator 339
The Most Important Book 342
The Gospel According to Barton Biggs 347
Walt’s Wit 350
Alan Abelson and Me 354
An Open Letter to Sir Larry Kudlow 358
More Remarkable Tales of Boca Biff 360
Buffett Watch 373
Introduction 373
11 Reasons to Short Berkshire 374
Buffett Veers Off His Investment Path 379
Warren Buffett Has Lost His Groove 381
Buffett Brought Down to Earth 383
Is This the End of Warren Buffett? 384
One of the Worst Beatings Ever 386
Buy American? I’m Damned! 390
Burlington Bet Could Derail Berkshire 395
Omaha, Here I Come! 396
My Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha 398
Warren and Me 401
Little-Known Facts about Warren Buffett 404
Conversing with the Oracle 406
My Berkshire Q&A Recap 413
The Rabbi and the Oracle 421
Lessons Never Learned 424
Surprises 427
Introduction 427
25 Surprises for 2003 430
Surprises in Store for 2004 431
Some Surprises in Store for 2005 434
Surprises for 2006 438
25 Surprises for 2007 444
20 Surprises for 2008 450
20 Surprises for 2009 454
20 Surprises for 2010 461
15 Surprises for 2011 466
15 Surprises for 2012 479
Five More Surprises for 2012 488
15 Surprises for 2013 489
15 Surprises for 2014 505
Epilogue 517
