Jim Cramer Sick And Down On LinkedIn, But $LNKD Is A Good Investment

There's a lot of negativity out there towards LNKD and its valuation.  But then, many of these same people were also negative on YHOO, EBAY, CMG, PCLN, GOOG, BIDU, MA, V when they came public, on valuation concerns.   Cramer didn't like BIDU until much later.  He wasn't promoting GOOG when it went ipo, until it was trading around $300 or so, if I remember correctly.  He certainly wasn't hot and heavy on Mastercard (MA) when it went ipo at $40.  The fine folks who are now pooping on LNKD are also likely the same people who didn't like the YHOO's and EBAY's and BIDU's of yesteryear, until most of the stock gains were made.

I think LNKD is a good investment worthy of a few of your dollars, once the frantic trading settles down a little bit (maybe within a week or two).  Likewise, Facebook, Groupon and Twitter will be good investments as well when they go ipo.

The key here is to put a little bit of money into the leaders.  LNKD certainly qualifies as a leader in their field.  Remember, all great stocks start with an ipo.  The leaders may look expensive on their first day of trading, but several years down the line most people will wonder why they didn't buy the 800lb gorrilla on ipo day.  How many people wish they had plunk some money into BIDU ('The Google Of China") on its first day of trading?  BIDU is now more than a 10-bagger.

Berkshire Hathaway Buys Stake In Mastercard

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) took a stake in MasterCard Inc. (MA) in the first quarter as a new investment manager took over a portion of the company's $115 billion portfolio.

Berkshire disclosed the holding of 216,000 MasterCard shares in a regulatory filing Monday that shows its U.S. stock holdings as of March 31. The holding is valued at about $60 million based on Monday's closing share price.

But Berkshire also said it had omitted some information on its holdings in the filing, an action some investment managers take when they're building a new position.

The addition of MasterCard to the portfolio could be the work of Todd Combs, the former hedge-fund manager who was tapped by Buffett to manage a portfolio of about $2 billion to $3 billion at Berkshire. Combs was selected as the company prepares for the day the 80-year-old Buffett will no longer run Berkshire.

Berkshire also disclosed a reduced stake in oil producer ConocoPhillips (COP), trimming the holding less than 1% to about 29 million shares.

All told, Berkshire bought $834 million of equity securities in the quarter, and sold just $9 million of equities, according to the company's quarterly earnings report filed earlier this month.

Combs's $400 million hedge fund, called Castle Point, favored investments in financial stocks.

Buffett's company, like other firms that control an investment portfolio of more than $100 million, is required to report its U.S. stock holdings 45 days after the end of a given quarter.

News about Berkshire's stock picks has the power to move the shares of the newly disclosed companies as money managers look to mimic the investment success of the "Oracle of Omaha." MasterCard rose 1% to $281.99 in after-hours trading on Monday.

But Buffett had long warned that some of the moves in the portfolio are the result of decisions made by Lou Simpson, the investment manager at Berkshire-owned car insurer Geico Corp.

Simpson retired last year, and Berkshire exited from many of its smaller stock positions in the second half of 2010. Castle Point also spent the last few months of last year selling off its positions as Combs prepared to start his job at Berkshire.

The value of the stocks listed in Monday's filing--which includes only U.S. holdings--was $53.6 billion as of March 31, up slightly from the $52.6 billion Berkshire listed as of Dec. 31.

WSJ

Silver Goes Higher

Jim Rogers: Here's The Most Important Thing On What Investors Should Do

I would say one lesson we all need to learn is that after you’ve had a great success, you really should be very worried. Let’s say you sell and say you’ve made 10 times on your money. You should be extremely worried. You should close the curtains, not read, look at the TV, or anything because that’s when you’re full of hubris, arrogance, confidence. You think, “God, this is something easy,” and you’re desperate to jump around to something new. You should do your very best to avoid making another play until you’ve calmed down a lot. Just wait. It’s a very dangerous time for any investor.

Likewise, if you take a huge loss and there’s a big panic and things are dumped on your head because you’re overextended or wrong for whatever reason, calm down, don’t say, “I’m never gonna invest in stocks again or commodities or whatever.” That’s the time you really should be willing to invest again if you can gather together some capital money. The investments can be terribly emotional. You have to figure out a way to control your emotions and deal with your emotions if you’re going to survive in these markets.

My advice is that, most of the time, most investors should do nothing. They should look out the window or go to the beach. You should wait until you see money lying in the corner and all you have to do is go over and pick it up. That’s how most investors should invest. The problem is we all think we need to jump around all the time and be jumping in and out and that’s not good.

We think we have to have investments. No, we don’t. If I said you could only have 25 investments in your whole lifetime or if there was some way to limit you to 25, you would be extremely careful. You wouldn’t be jumping around doing all sorts of strange things. Patience is what most investors need to learn. You don’t have to be doing things all the time. Most of the time the best thing is to do nothing. You just sit with what you have as an investment and let it ride or sit and wait until you see someone sitting in the corner.

Most of the time – unless you’re a short-term trader and great at it. I’ve known some spectacular short-term traders. But for most investors, unless you’re one of those guys, then you should just do nothing. Do nothing. If you’re an investor, do nothing except re-examine what you have, and if you’re not investing, just continue to look until you find something.

Jim Rogers, via Stockhouse

Why Jim Rogers Stays In Gold And Commodities

Jim Rogers, veteran investor, talks to FT's head of Lex, John Authers, about the value of gold and silver, the strength of commodities, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury yields plus the housing bubble in China. He was interviewed at the CFA Institute Annual Conference in Edinburgh.  (10m 12sec)


Click to watch video.

The College Bubble

Jim Rogers: Getting An MBA Is A Total Waste Of Time, Money And Energy

I said before that one of the bubbles I see in the world is tertiary education in the United States. It’s bankrupt financially and probably other ways besides financially. Business school is basically a waste of time. Most of what you learn is inaccurate and incorrect. Learning things like efficient market theory and some of the other gibberish that they keep putting out and Black Scholes…

All that stuff is totally wrong.

Those poor kids who’ve spent a couple hundred thousand dollars going to business school – not only have they spent a lot of money, but the stuff they learned was wrong. It was inaccurate. Yes, it’s got to change. It’s got to change dramatically.

I certainly was telling students not to go to business school. If you want to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars, I would urge you to go down and short soybeans one day or start your own business. I tell you, you short soybeans a couple of times, you’ll learn more doing that than you could in 10 years at business school.

If you spend your time and money in the real world, you’re probably going to learn a whole lot more than what you would at business school, most of which is wrong.

To give you an idea, in 1958 America graduated 5,000 MBAs a year. In 1958, America was the richest, most powerful country in the world. There wasn’t a number two. Now we produce over 200,000 MBAs per year, and that doesn’t include all the MBAs in other countries. There are tens of thousands in other countries. Everybody else has jumped on this MBA bandwagon.

So MBAs are a dime a dozen at a time when finance is coming under more and more pressure from governments economically, financially and every other way. So MBAs are a terrible waste of time, energy and money. You should take your couple hundred grand and start a business. You’ll learn a whole lot more even if you go bankrupt and lose everything, then you will at business school.

Jim Rogers, via Stockhouse

Warren Buffett: The U.S. Will Not Have A Debt Crisis

“The United States is not going to have a debt crisis as long as we keep issuing our debts in our own currency. The only thing we have to worry about is the printing press and inflation.”

Warren Buffett


Is Buffett being disingenious?

VMW Could Lose $4-$6 Tomorrow

The tech-led selloff should continue tomorrow.  Hewlett Packard just warned afterhours.  This will undoubtedly cause a huge gap down at the open.

Short VMW, SPY, AMZN, or any tech right here right now if you get good entry.  

The Evolution Of Human Beings: What Will We Be Like In 2057?