Chimpcontest: Alive.................. Floridabuilder Blogging: Dead
April 13, 2010
– Comments (34)
CHIMPCONTEST STILL ALIVE!!
Some may wonder what happened to all my old blog posts and I will address that below. However, more importantly the chimpcontest and its $500 payout is still alive. I expect to close a home in late August and as we get closer I will be able to state the contest end date.
I'm wondering whether the #1 speculative stock pick returns from the best minds on CAPs are outsized over a short time frame of 5-6 months. That in itself is worth $500.
I still plan on having other chimpcontests and might decide to deep dive the leading stock picks of the chimpcontest through the chimpcontest profile. Ok that was repetitive.. After all the key to CAPs is identifying great stocks, social networking, and bad mouthing our government.
Interestingly the contest leader to date is TDRH (an oil and gas man/worker) who picked an oil and gas related stock, WEL, that was just bought out by HAL. It shows how someone with industry knowledge can make a speculative play that pays quickly. TDRH is the #29 ranked player in CAPs
In 3rd place is the stock IKAN. This stock was selected by the #24 player in CAPS, Ultralong.
I'm going to be paying close attention to the top picks at the end of the contest and re-arranging who can enter in future contests. My goal is to have a bucket of speculative picks to choose from every 3-6 months. Paying out a winner to get people to play my stupid contests is fine with me. At some point I plan on putting money back to work in the stock market and I would rather pay people to provide me picks vs. doing my own research.
Lazy? Yes, but I think I made that personal trait clear in my posts the last 4 years. Research takes a lot of time and I have shown consistent ability to make marginal speculative picks
FLORIDABUILDER IS DEAD, LIVE FROM HELL!!
Announcer: Live from 3,200 miles beneath the Earth's surface, your host, Bobbbbbbbbbbb Crane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Audience: Rousing cheers
Announcer: Tonight's Guests.... Floridabuilder the dead blogger, cooking tips from Jeffrey Dahmer, and motivational expert Idi Amin.
Audience: Standing ovation
Bob Crane: Our first guest is Floridabuilder, a blogger from the CAPs community who recently had all his finest works deleted and ended his blogging life. Welcome to Hell Florida!
Floridabuilder: Thanks, it's great to be here
Bob Crane: I'm a little surprised you landed in Hell. You must have done some evil deeds.... murder, fornication?
Floridabuilder: Actually I volunteered to come down here. Heaven is getting really crowded with all those suicide bombers and virgins. Plus most of the metal bands I listen to will wind up down here, so that is another plus.
Bob Crane: What does Satan have you doing? Breaking rocks, driving a cab?
Floridabuilder: Well, they have me working for Beelzebub selling sub-prime mortgages to people who sold sub-prime mortgages for a living. I guess it is better than manual labor.
Bob Crane: That is the whole point of Hell, get used to it.
Bob Crane: On to serious topics. Why did you quit blogging and delete all your old posts?
Floridabuilder: I got a call, dots were being connected and my paper trail would have led certain people to identify me. It is as simple as that. I never had fear about what I wrote about builders because it was all true. How is a company going to come after me if I say they are overstating their land value substantially when their own people are telling me that?
Floridabuilder: The point of my blogging all along was to provide people information that the industry wasn't being truthful about or hiding. However, I also defended the industry when other bloggers who have no idea what their talking about made exaggerated claims. When people invest their money they expect that management is being honest and I have found honesty a lacking trait from homebuilding executives, which makes you wonder about any stock investment.
Bob Crane: Hershey's Kiss?
Floridabuilder: No thanks. There is no water in Hell and I'm always so thirsty
Audience: Welcome to Hell !!!!!!!!
Bob Crane: You were neutral last year on builders, didn't even blog about them, but now you are pretty negative.
Floridabuilder: Here are some key points that I have been saying this year. 1) I was hearing several months ago from the builders that sales were below expectations, 2) I have blogged several times about the impact of the tax credit expiring and the buying down of interest rates being bigger factors than people think in driving sales in 2009, 3) I have more recently blogged that no land has been developed in 4 years so the builders have been mainly monetizing their A and B finished lot assets, thus their balance sheet portfolios are outsized with raw land and C finished lots, and 4) a number of builders have not written down the value of the raw land and C finished lots and they are lying to Wall Street when they say they are done with write offs.
Bob Crane: On that last point, because it is new..... Why are they telling Wall Street that they are done writing down land if it isn't true?
Floridabuilder: A few builders are telling their division presidents they will lose their jobs if they write down dead assets. They feel that when the market turns up, revenues jump and they are earning money, that is when they will write down those assets, because Wall Street won't care about the balance sheet any more only the income statement and earnings growth.
Bob Crane: Why is that a problem?
Floridabuilder: Because if housing doesn't rebound as quickly as the executives think then these builders are in real trouble. 1) Their portfolio of bad land assets can't be monetized quickly if at all (future revenues), 2) Most of the A and B land assets on the market have been bought or have been bid up substantially and 3) Virtually no one is developing land in A and B submarkets. So these builders could see their revenue footprint shrink quickly generating less and less cashflow to pay for the large amount of debt they hold as well as fixed costs. A select few of these stocks are time bombs.
Bob Crane: So your saying that we could see a few homebuilding executives down here?
Floridabuilder: Yes and their auditors too....
Floridabuilder: Basically the best balance sheets are NVR, MDC and SPF in that order. At this point there is no reason to kick up more dirt and state who has the worst balance sheets. Instead, I would suggest anyone wanting to invest in this industry focus on cash first and community count growth second. Both are reported quarterly.
Bob Crane: Well Florida it was great having you on my show.... now go sell some mortgages!!!
FINAL THOUGHTS
I will continue changing my home building red and green thumbs over time based on long term risk, but future blogging will be done on chimpcontest and related only to the contest, payouts and talking about stocks.
Seacrest Out
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