We had a Haas Alum Reunion on Saturday. Few of us went and I must say it was a great event. It was refreshing to hear professors and other experts on various topics and their views on current economic crisis and how we can get out of this mess. Keynote speech by twitter co-founder Biz Stone was also great. Despite having such a high success, I was amazed by his down-to-earth personality.
During this event, I came to know about following book which I am planning to read. As I mentioned in my last week's blog, human psychology is playing a much bigger part in investing than fundamental analysis. Prof Leblanc had a lecture on similar topic. He was very funny - as always.
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
Last week's market action was expected. To my surprise, markets were much robust than I expected and glad that DOW could stay above 8000 even though it had first weekly loss in 7 weeks. Now that stress tests parameters are out, I am sure analysts must be pretty busy in analysing bank's books and finding out which banks would need capital and which ones would emerge stronger. Coming week should be pretty interesting with climax on Monday May 4 when Government releases results of stress tests of banks.
Let's come to "stock/EFT pick of week":
Symbol: URE
Company/ETF: Proshares Ultra Real Estate ETF
Buy price: $3.50
Recommended sell price in 12 months: $5.25 or more
Background:
ProShares Ultra Real Estate (the Fund) seeks daily investment results that correspond to twice (200%) the daily performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index. The Index measures the performance of the real estate sector of the United States equity market. Component companies include those that invest directly or indirectly through development, management or ownership of shopping malls, apartment buildings and housing developments, and real estate investment trusts (REITs) that invest in apartments, office and retail properties. The Fund takes positions in securities and/or financial instruments that, in combination, should have similar daily return characteristics as 200% of the daily return of the Index.
Reasoning for selection:
As you may have noticed, recently I have been researching and recommending companies in commercial real estate like DDR and PLD (by the way, both companies did excellent and almost reached by 12 month target price in first month itself). While BK threat is prevalent in this sector (GGP being one example), most of the companies in this sector are de-leveraging by raising equity (e.g. DDR, PLD, KIM, SPG and so on). With this de-leveraging efforts, most of these companies would address their debt load for next 2 years. Being REITs, they are required to distribute 90% of their incomes to their share-holders. At current prices, this is resulting in yields of over 10% for many companies. As real estate market and econony recovers, these companies would stabilize. Since there is still chance of some REITs not making (going BK), it is better to buy a ETF like URE to get exposure to the sector. URE provides a 2x leverage w/o buying on margin. If you are risk-averse, you may want to invest in real estate mutual funds like VGSIX.
Caution: Since this sector is very volatile, invest carefully
Disclosure: I have positions in URE
Good luck and have a good weekend !
/Shyam
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