Of course the strategy underpinning the article is buy and hold, but big picture wise it is a good review of the numbers.

From the wires:

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — New York’s attorney general says government officials pressured Bank of America’s CEO Ken Lewis to complete the bank’s purchase of Merrill Lynch and threatened his job security. A letter from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office released Thursday said Lewis testified in February that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke threatened to oust Bank of America’s management if the bank tried to back out of buying the investment bank. The government helped orchestrate the acquisition of Merrill by Bank of America over the same weekend in September that another investment bank, Lehman Brothers, went under, setting off one of the most intense periods of the financial crisis. Bank of America acquired New York-based Merrill Jan. 1.

I feel like I just watched a scene from the Godfather:

DON CORLEONE Barzini will move against you first.

MICHAEL How?

DON CORLEONE He will get in touch with you through someone you absolutely trust. That person will arrange a meeting, guarantee your safety…and at that meeting you will be assassinated.

Thanks Mr. Government for continuing to create a massive Ponzi scheme!

Lenny Dykstra a mad genius with money? He says he’s chasing “cheddar” and making dudes rich with “large” cash. Lawsuits — and his family — paint a darker picture (article). An excerpt:

Dykstra’s own analysis of his success in the market goes [Jim] Cramer one better than “very good.” “You know about my stock picking, dude?” he asks. “I’m 92-0 [last year], worst market in history. Three thousand people signed up and pay $1,000 — I’m making people fortunes. I’m moving $3-5 billion a month.” Some who track the market are skeptical he could be that successful. Options trader and author Adam Warner, for example, suggests that Dykstra isn’t accurately accounting for losses. Warner says a Dykstra-recommended position lost more than $200,000 in January. “It is all nonsense,” says Warner, options editor for the financial Web site Minyanville.com. “He’ll buy a 10 lot of, say, IBM. And if it makes a dollar, he’ll sell it. If it loses, he’ll buy more and he’ll keep buying more and more. So he’ll never actually realize a loss. And he buys options that expire in as few as six months and sometimes as long as a year. He’ll book his wins and he’ll just let the losses run. So what happens is, he wins all his picks, but the losers may eat up 100 wins. The bottom line is how much money you make. It’s not how many picks you make or what your winning percentage is.”

My film will be available in May. Here (PDF) is a slightly more edgy version of the film poster.

From the wires:

General Motors Corp. could get as much as $5 billion more in federal loans, while Chrysler LLC could get $500 million as they race against government-imposed deadlines to restructure, according to a government report filed Tuesday. A person briefed on the plans said Tuesday that the exact amount of the loans have not been finalized and will be worked out with the companies. The person asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. GM already has received $13.4 billion in government loans, while Chrysler has received $4 billion. Both automakers employ thousands [OF VOTERS] in Ohio, the No. 2 auto-producing state after Michigan.

I added the [OF VOTERS] part.

Who is this “mysterious” person? Why are the negotiations confidential? It’s not like anyone in the competitive marketplace wants to buy these dogs of the auto world. The confidentiality is nonsense.

From FT.com:

Strong banks will be allowed to repay bail-out funds they received from the US government but only if such a move passes a test to determine whether it is in the national economic interest, a senior administration official has told the Financial Times. “Our general objective is going to be what is good for the system,” the senior official said. “We want the system to have enough capital.”

Well, Mr. Official would you mind answering the following questions?

1. What is the “test” exactly?
2. How is “national economic interest” defined? Who defines it?
3. What is the “system” exactly?
4. What is “good” defined as?
5. What is “enough capital”?

Sorry to ask such basic questions. Or did I step out of line? Was I supposed to just sit there and say, “Wow, I feel so cared for by Daddy Government!”

FT.com continues:

He said the government had three basic tests. It needed first to “make sure the system is stable”. Second, to not create “incentives for more deleveraging which would deepen the recession”. Third, to make sure the system had enough capital to “provide credit to support the recovery”.

Who needs the market? We have an anonymous “official” to take care of everything. Strap it on kids, there ain’t any way we are going back to Oz.

If you wanted to judge Bill Dunn or David Harding it makes much more sense to judge success or failure after looking at their month by month track records across decades over any randomly selected 3-month performance window. For example: “Computer-Trading Models Meet Match “.

If link doesn’t work article here too.

Watch CBS Videos Online

For those who still want to argue that the success of Richard Dennis and the success of some Turtles was “nature” over “nurture” you may want to take a read of “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.” The book’s conclusion is the exact same conclusion I wrote about in my last chapter of “The Complete TurtleTrader”: the dividing line for greatness is deliberate practice, not talent. The Turtles were absolutely an example of nurture trumping nature. And for the ones who have endured their long term success is all about their hard work.