In

Well I am back from NYC.

Was truly a great conference. I could listen to those guys for hours.

It was interesting the truly diverse opinion on the overall market. Of course the emphasis was on individual securities but overall market bias generally comes out with the type of picks. You had Leon Cooperman make a very strong argument on why currently we have a great buying opportunity in the stock market. You had David Einhorn pitch a short Lehman idea with Bill Ackmen pitch a short Ambac and MBIA suggesting that both equities are zero's. Then you had Thomas Brown pitch First Marblehead as a long idea and make a strong argument that despite billions of dollars in coming write downs that we are at a bottom for financial stocks and suggesting we are at November 1990 which started a 10 year bull market in financial stocks. After his formal presentation he suggested that Einhorn's pitch was another sign of a bottom and that he had a differing opinion on MBIA and "looking" at potentially purchasing some of the equity. He cited talking to the a board member from MBIA who was a former CFO of US Bancorp, was like a partner at Carlyle, he had another credential I don't remember who was not concerned at all. Tom said he was so optimistic it almost concerned him.

Anyway you had a wide swath of views. The crazy thing was that six of my positions were pitched. I had no idea on two of them that anybody else was even looking at them. Crazy how that works out.

I will probably post more thoughts in days to come as I process them. All in all though I am in my element listening to those guys and talking to friends about stock ideas. It was incredible.