Omnicare, Inc. (NYSE:OCR) have announced today that they have gone ahead and finalized the previously disclosed agreement for a voluntary civil settlement with the US Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts, the Department of Justice and ...

Fortunately my portfolio management methods don’t revolve around  frequent trading.  One of my kids came up to me recently and said, “What did you do today, Dad?”  I said, “I made one trade, and I did a bunch of research.”  He then asked, “How often do you trade?”  I answered, “That was my first trade in a week, and I haven’t traded much in the last two months, but that’s not normal.  There is no normal for me. When the market is really volatile, I trade a lot more, selling when stocks are rising, and buying when they are selling off.  When the market is relatively placid, I don’t do much.” He looked at me, kind of smiled, and moved on.  Information overload from Dad. Most people and investment managers trade too often.  They sell their winners too rapidly, and panic too soon on their losers.  Now, I’m not advocating “buy and forget,” or Buffett’s statement, “Our favorite holding period is forever.”[More...]

This is the 1st Quarter 2009 edition of our ongoing hedge fund portfolio tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the Hedge Fund 13F filings series preface. Next up, we have Tremblant Capital Group. Tremblant is a $3 billion hedge fund based in New York and is run by Bret Barakett, who is a former portfolio manager at Moore Capital Management (the hedge fund run by the great Louis Bacon, whom we also track). If the last name of 'Barakett' sounds familiar, its because his brother, Timothy Barakett, manages fellow hedge fund Atticus Capital, whose portfolio we recently covered. Taken from their site, Tremblant Capital Group's objective is "to achieve superior risk adjust returns[More...]

I used to, and will one day return, to posting the best performing stocks of the week - but the wicked volatility and "student body left" trading of the past 4 months has made it a moot point. Everything must either be bought or sold, as stocks are either deemed "good" or "bad" that hour, day, or month. The herd piles in, or piles out - regardless of sector, style, fundamentals. It's been a market of asset allocation not individual stocks much of the back half of the year. I like to look for relative strength and ride sector/company trends for the longer term - this market is not for that sort of investor. This has been for many months a run and gun daytrader environment; not a place for theme investors. With that said, I am always curious to see what stocks held up over the long run... folks, no matter what happens (short of 8%+ rally here in the next 3 days) we are projecting the worst year in the markets at least since the[More...]