Minyanville meet up notes

One of the best sites to stay in touch with what's going on in the market is Minyanville.com . Last week they held their first "“Minyans in Manhattan" conference. Below you'll find some notes that one of my favorite market commentators published, Jeffry Saut.

• Almost 2% of the NYSE’s entire market capitalization has been taken private (read: LBO’ed) since the beginning of this year.
  
• So much money is sloshing around in private equity funds that we now have the Jessica Simpson model of investing – “I don’t know what it is, but I want it!”
  
• Private equity funds are looking to “lever” corporate America’s under-leveraged balance sheets and exploit them accordingly.
  
• There are now more hedge funds than there are stocks and 60% of those funds are less than 5 years old. This trend will end with mediocre performance by most hedge funds.
  
• Gold is going up against most assets. And, foreign energy stocks are making new all-time highs and “pulling” U.S. energy stocks higher.
  
• The U.S. has the highest “real” (inflation adjusted) interest rates in the developed world, implying capital should continue to flow here.
  
• If current profit margins, and free cash flows, are sustainable, then the equity markets can continue to levitate. However, a “mean reverting” world suggests we are long-of-tooth in this trend.
  
• Sam Zell is not stupid! Therefore, the recent sale of his flagship REIT (EOP/$48.30/Underperform) should be viewed as a watershed event.
  
• Bank indices are deteriorating against the S&P 500 Index (SPX). Since the Financials have roughly a 22% weighting in the SPX, this is troublesome.
  
• If the rumors about a Home Depot (HD/$38.97/Outperform) LBO were for real, the long-dated call-options on HD should have collapsed and that just didn’t happen.
  
• Volatility and Risk are currently being WAY under-priced by the markets.