The Tasgall Group

From today’s Dealbook email:

REIT mergers and acquisitions have reached record levels this year. Some 22 transactions totaling $102.8 billion, including debt, have been announced according to the research company SNL Financial, compared with 11 deals valued at $28.8 billion for all of last year and a total of $92 billion in transactions for the last six years combined.

Go to Article from The New York Times

Also noteworthy, Dealbook has an entire section on the happenings in Real Estate M&A for those of you following the REIT story closely…

It seems like the vogue thing today to buy any steady-stream of cash producing asset like real estate (even skyscrapers), leverage to the hilt, package and sell the asset and debt, and in the process reap the rewards. The impact to publicly traded REITs is obvious from a liquidity analysis standpoint (a la TrimTabs) — everything keeps going up!

It seems that the financial news lately has been full of stories like this (via the FT):

Oil producers shun dollar – Oil producing countries have reduced their exposure to the dollar to the lowest level in two years and shifted oil income into euros, yen and sterling, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements.

The cover of The Economist last week even taunted a falling dollar: (more…)

After noticing that CUBA (the closed-end fund, not the country) is trading at a 70% premium to its underlying assets, I started to think about shorting the fund… Here is my thought process and the end result. (more…)

International stocks were one of the main investment options that many argued you need a top notch manager to effectively invest in. Au contrair! MarketWatch reported in September on a July Standard & Poor study comparing the 5 year returns on International Index managed funds and index funds and this report bears repeating here. Nearly 60-65% of Index Funds outpaced their Managed equivalents. Now the odds are better that you can find an actively managed international fund that outperforms the benchmark than you can find an actively managed US fund that does, but the odds are still not in your favor. An interesting Journal of Financial Planning article from 2002 had found that Small Cap and International Funds outperformed the benchmark index, but this is not reflected in the more recent S&P report.

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It’s obvious that the falling dollar has had a positive impact on International equities, but how much?? One way to compare the two is to see how much a Barclay’s International ETF has performed vs. the index upon which it’s based (trading in the local currency).? The Washington Post just ran an article analyzing this, and it found that, for example, “Year to date through Nov. 28, the EAFE index was up 17.4 percent in dollar terms but had gained only 7.9 percent in local currencies.”? When you’re thinking of rebalancing your portfolio, think about whether you want to continue making this dual bet:? that International equities will continue to flourish and that the dollar will continue to fall.? These two factors will greatly influence whether the excellent returns of 2006 will happen again in 2007.

I heard a piece on Market Place (with both audio and transcript) over the weekend about investing in Cuba via the Herzfeld fund. It’s a closed end fund, trading at a much higher premium to NAV than I’m comfortable with (nearly 40%), but it does have a tantalizing investment strategy, and the fund is up 50% so far this year. Herzfeld focuses on businesses in the US that are poised to profit when US/Cuba relations are restored. Here’s a great quote from the piece that highlights this principle: (more…)

As 2006 is rapidly coming to a close, it’s worth a reminder to check on all your year-end planning… Here’s a bullet list of things to think about…

• Are there any losses you have in taxable accounts that you’d want to realize for tax loss selling?
• Have you contributed your max to retirement accounts to minimize taxable income?
• Rebalance your portfolio if you do it once a year.
• Pray that you don’t qualify for AMT.
• Watch for the earnings distribution estimates from your mutual funds held in taxable accounts. (more…)

For the latest random news articles on hedge funds, Pfizer, REITs, and more… (more…)

Titled “Out-of-the-box Thoughts on the Yield Curve”, Steve Saville throws out some very good commentary on the current yield curve inversion. I have to admit that his commentary has defined my own understanding of what yield curve inversion really means and what (if anything) it forecasts. (more…)

After a fairly depressing week of news showing relatively little impact on the equity markets, there seems to be a large amount of optimism still left in the current bull market trend (it’s safe to call this rally a bull market, right?).? A quick glance at the bond market seems to suggest that this week woke some up to the fact that things might be bad enough soon that the Fed might have to actually start cutting rates before too long:? VBMFX is a good example of how prices are sharply up upon this week’s news.? While I’m not a major fan of bonds when there’s several options for money market rates at over 5% and 5.15% right now, it is nice to know that the bond market is aware that this equity uptrend isn’t going to last.? I’m of the opinion that we’re not going to get to finish this bowl of porridge before it gets too cold.? But this is just a gut feeling right now, since the trend still seems to be up (note that 100 point after 2:00 recovery in the DOW on Friday).