Bill Miller: The Stock Picker's Defeat

William H. Miller spent nearly two decades building his reputation as the era's greatest mutual-fund manager. Then, over the past year, he destroyed it.

Fueled by winning bets on stocks other investors feared, Mr. Miller's Legg Mason Value Trust outperformed the broad market every year from 1991 to 2005. It's a streak no other fund manager has come close to matching.

Mr. Miller was in his element a year ago when troubles in the housing market began infecting financial markets. Working from his well-worn playbook, he snapped up American International Group Inc., Wachovia Corp., Bear Stearns Cos. and Freddie Mac. As the shares continued to fall, he argued that investors were overreacting. He kept buying.

What he saw as an opportunity turned into the biggest market crash since the Great Depression. Many Value Trust holdings were more or less wiped out. After 15 years of placing savvy bets against the herd, Mr. Miller had been trampled by it.

The financial crisis has created losers across the spectrum -- homeowners who can't afford their subprime mortgages, banks that loaned to them, investors who bought mortgage-backed securities and, as financial markets eventually crumbled, just about everyone who owned shares. But it has also brought low contrarians like Mr. Miller who had been lionized for staying a step ahead of the market. This meltdown has provided a lesson for Mr. Miller and other "value" investors: A stock may look tantalizingly cheap, but sometimes that's for good reason.

"The thing I didn't do, from Day One, was properly assess the severity of this liquidity crisis," Mr. Miller, 58 years old, said in an interview at Legg Mason Inc.'s Baltimore headquarters.

Mr. Miller has profited from investor panics before. But this time, he said, he failed to consider that the crisis would be so severe, and the fundamental problems so deep, that a whole group of once-stalwart companies would collapse. "I was naive," he said.

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David Dreman: It's Time to Buy

There's an endless choice of quality businesses trading at or near liquidation prices.

We have plunged into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The leadership of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chief Ben S. Bernanke in fighting it has been sluggish and inconsistent. Although we've just elected a new President and Congress, they will take time to develop policies to stimulate the economy and promote liquidity. What's an investor to do?

First, do not flee the market by selling your quality stocks. Yes, it's the worst bear market since 2000--02, and stocks are trading at valuations not seen in decades, but equities will come back. Second, because credit is subject to unpredictable crunches and it's impossible to guess when this bear will end, don't buy on margin. Third, don't hold shares of companies that will need cash to expand or refinance. There is a good chance they won't be able to borrow.

Fourth, keep your bond maturities very short. When governments face economic crisis, they print money. The magnitude of this crisis suggests that the printing presses will be running around the clock for some time. That means we'll see serious inflation when we emerge from the recession. Long-term bond prices could then drop even more than equities already have dropped. Stocks, by contrast, hold their own over long stretches of inflation.

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Robert Rodriguez: We began to commit capital beginning on October 8

In response to collapsing share prices, we began
to commit capital beginning on October 8 and since then
we have spent approximately 22.5% of the Fund’s
September 30 liquidity or 8.6% of assets. This is the
largest amount of capital we have deployed at any point in
the last five years. Why did we begin buying on
October 8? On October 7, Treasury Secretary Paulson for
the first time commented that the U.S. Treasury would
possibly have to deploy CAPITAL in the banking system.
In our minds, this showed that the Federal Reserve and the
U.S. Treasury were finally beginning to understand that
the core issue of this crisis is CAPITAL deficiency and
not LIQUIDITY—more on this later in the credit crisis
commentary section. We began buying because the stocks
we selected appeared to be discounting a very severe
economic and stock market outlook with their depressed
valuations. Initially, our purchases will likely show losses
since we are buying into stock price weakness.
Furthermore, our value screen of the nearly 10,000
companies in the Compustat database showed an
explosion in the number of qualifying companies that
rose to 447, the highest in over twenty years. In June of
2007, this number was 33—a record low number of
qualifiers. Our conviction was enhanced by this positive
outcome that this was an appropriate time to begin
spending some of the Fund’s long-held liquidity, plus the
moths were getting pretty grumpy and tired from being
cooped up in our coin purse for these past five years.
They were yearning to fly free.

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Emerging market guru Mark Mobius punts Brazil

Brazil's financial markets have fallen by 50pc since its all-time high in May. The local currency, the real BRBY, has shed a third of its value since touching a nine-year high in early August and this week a Brazilian trader shot himself on the trading floor at Sao Paulo's Bovespa stock exchange.

Mark Mobius, the emerging market specialist from Templeton Asset Management reckons that Brazil offers a great opportunity for investors with nerve. We asked him why.

What makes Latin America so attractive to investors?
The region's main attraction is its huge consumer market with pent-up demand for goods and services, as well as excellent companies that are at the same time under- leveraged and inexpensive. On top of all that, its natural resources are among the largest in the world.

How resilient can the region be in the context of a global slowdown and which markets are well-armed to resist a slowdown in the global economy?
During the boom in the past five years, Latin American countries have accumulated substantial reserves. Brazil, for example has over US$200 billion in foreign reserves and the government has no foreign net debt. Overall, our main markets, Brazil, Mexico,

Chile, Peru and Panama, have shown stable political environments, responsible fiscal discipline, commitment to a floating exchange rate and honour of contracts in place. All these support the region's strength in times of uncertainty.

In addition to natural resource and agriculture producers, what are the other key drivers of growth in Latin America?

Although the region is the world's largest (and lowest cost producer) of many commodities, the development of the local domestic consumer markets is another important driver. Take Brazil for example, with 190 million people and Mexico with 100 million. Bank loan penetration is still very low in both countries (38% in Brazil and 18% in Mexico) even in comparison to some emerging markets. Thus, this not only reduces the risk of bad debt, it is also a barometer of how under penetrated the countries are in terms of goods and services. Companies have thus been following conservative lending and leveraging policies.

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Bill Miller Third Quarter Commentary

Here is the link

The Year of Wall Street's Fallen Idols

Millions of Americans are reeling from investment losses this year.

For many, the financial cost of the red ink is only part of the misery. They're also kicking themselves for the losses.

Maybe you feel you invested too much. Maybe you feel you should have invested in different assets.

This may prove scant consolation, but it is worth noting: The best of the best have done no better. So go easy on yourself.

This has been Wall Street's year of the fallen idols.

Marty Whitman, the legendary septuagenarian who co-manages Third Avenue Value, has seen crises come and go. There are few you could trust more in a panic. But his fund has almost halved this year. Bill Miller, the famous manager at Legg Mason Value, has fallen by nearly 60%. And that's not even the worst of it. Miller's more flexible, go-anywhere fund, Legg Mason Opportunity Trust, is down by two-thirds since the start of the year.

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Bill Ackman on Charlie Rose