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Apreciado BASKI.
Mi estrategia, con 350 URA a un precio de 16 dólares es incrementar mi posición con la compra de otras 350 participaciones a un precio de 14 dólares. En caso de perforar ésos niveles, y con 700 URA a un precio medio de 15 dólares, sólo me plantearía incrementar posiciones a precios de derribo.
Saludos y suerte, que será la mía.
Buenas tardes.
El Gobierno de Taiwán ratificó ayer su opción por la energía nuclear en beneficio de las futuras generaciones, horas después de que la policía desalojó a cientos de manifestantes opuestos a la cuarta planta nuclear de la isla. De hecho, según el Primer Ministro Jiang Yi-Huah, la energía nuclear debe ser mantenida como una opción para las futuras generaciones.
Saludos.
Buenos días Ginés! Interesante noticia! Tu cómo ves esa situación? No crees que los dirigentes del país lo que quieren es conseguir el beneficio propio y no se preocupan por la población? O piensas que se debe abrir esta nueva central nuclear?
Saludos!
Buenos días ALEX.
En mi humilde opinión, no creo que haya que preocuparse: durante el pasado mes de Noviembre, la Unión Europea ya certificó que las centrales nucleares de Taiwán cuentan con estándares de seguridad elevados, en conformidad con las prácticas más avanzadas a nivel internacional.
Por otro lado, la central de Longmen, la cuarta de Taiwán, y que se encuentra en construcción desde 1.997, estará finalizada en a lo largo de éste Verano de 2.014, aunque no entrará en funcionamiento hasta 2.015.
Saudos.
Gracias Ginés! Esperemos que la apertura de esta central nuclear no conlleve a ningun problema.
Saludos!
Buenos días.
Uranium prices fell to long-term lows today with the front-month futures contract at the lowest since at least 2007. The FX market underestimates the importance of the planned restart of nuclear energy stations in Japan for the yen. The country is currently importing massive quantities of coal and fuel to power the national grid. Prices have risen more than 20% and will continue to rise until the government deems its reactors fit for service. The fall in uranium prices today comes after producer Cameco said they don’t expect price improvement in the near to medium term.
A switch back to nuclear would curb the Japanese trade deficit and boost the yen, it would also make domestic companies more competitive because of cheaper energy. What the market is saying, however, is that even though Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party government approved a new energy policy earlier this month, the process will be slow.
Saludos.
Buenos días.
Here is a new test to work out whether your latest stock pick is a good idea. Does it inspire a sharp intake of breath? Or a stifled guffaw? If so, you should probably buy it. That is the philosophy behind the mutual funds run by Joe Huber, a contrarian whose portfolios currently include names like Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Herbalife, and various uranium miners.
All are likely to produce a sharp intake of breath. Hear the word “Herbalife” and the chances are that you think of the campaign being waged against the company by the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. The names Hewlett-Packard and Bank of America will tend instantly to bring up memories of recent deals already written off as disastrous, involving Autonomy and Merrill Lynch. As for uranium mines, the chances are high that the word that comes to mind is “Fukushima”.
But this is their appeal. If instinctive reactions to these names are so negative, then the chances are that they are too negative, and will stay negative for too long. This borrows from the psychological insights of behavioural finance, where this effect has come to be known as the “availability heuristic”. We latch on to the most recent, most pressing piece of information available to us, even if it is not relevant for the future.
Aggressive contrarianism has deep roots. A form of value investing, it is perhaps most closely associated with the Canadian investor David Dreman, who has written several pioneering books on applying psychology and logged impressive performance with tightly concentrated portfolios. It also has its drawbacks. Performance during market panics can be painfully bad, and require more patience than investors can muster. In April 2009, at the very bottom of the sell-off that followed the implosion of Lehman Brothers, Mr Dreman was famously fired as the manager of a mutual fund he had managed for 20 years by Deutsche Asset Management. At the time the fund had lost 47 per cent over the previous year, and was loaded with fnancial stocks. Mr Dreman’s contrarianism flourishes in the longer term. Financial stocks rallied dramatically after early 2009. Over the last ten years, Dreman funds, still loaded with financials, are comfortably ahead of their benchmarks.
However, such contrarianism differs from other kinds of value investing. Warren Buffett, for example, looks for the rare companies that have a “wide economic moat” meaning that they can defend high profit margins. Companies like Coca-Cola, one of his favourites, have never been radically out of favour. What are the arguments for aggressive contrarianism? Mr Huber’s new insight is that the availability heuristic grows most useful when combined with a finding derived from a careful examination of company accounts over time. This showed that companies’ return on equity, or profitability, has an overwhelming tendency to revert to the mean over time. A company’s profitability today proves to be literally irrelevant when predicting its profitability in 16 years’ time.
Thanks to the availabilty heuristic, however, investors assume that today’s lousy profitability will continue into the indefinite future. That creates an opportunity for contrarians with long time horizons - and nerves of steel.
Rather than look for companies with a low price/earnings multiple, then, Mr Huber looks for companies whose performance is suffering - but who can be seen to have a good chance to bring their profitability back up to the norm ahead of schedule.
This leads to uranium miners. The Solura index, covering the world’s largest producers, is still down about 77 per cent from its level just before the Fukushima nuclear accident in early 2011. As a group, uranium miners are scarcely above their lows during the crisis year of 2008. Given the revulsion that followed Fukushima, that appears understandable.
But Mr Huber suggests that this is the availability heuristic at work. He believes uranium demand should rise by 50 per cent over the next decade, as developing countries like India, China and Vietnam adopt nuclear power. Military sources for filling the shortfall are limited, as the destocking of military uranium is largely over. Meanwhile, with uranium prices low, production is also low. This then turns into an argument to buy uranium producers. Another startling name is Herbalife, under attack from Mr Ackman, who alleges that it is involved in “pyramid selling”. Herbalife has turned into a battleground for different activist investors, rallying last year, and then falling this year after news of a civil probe into the company. Earlier this month, the FT reported that Herbalife was also the subject of a criminal investigation, which may not lead to any charges, forcing the stock down further.
Why is Mr Huber sticking with the stock? He has done due diligence, including sitting in on sales calls. He found that the meetings were geared towards targeting consumers, and not other distributors, as a pyramid scheme would do. He is also confident that the terrible publicity around the company will not affect its cash flows - customers see the branded products, not the name of the company itself, and in any case, its typical customers tend to be unaware of the stock market. Whether or not he is right, holding Herbalife requires an iron constitution. But that is the cost of contrarian investing. So far the Huber funds, in operation since 2007, are comfortably ahead of both general and value indices. This is not a style that many will want to copy - and that, in the long run, is the crucial advantage of contrarian investors.
Saludos.