Occupy Yahoo

Readers,

Cove Street Capital's latest strategy letter is now available on the firm's website. I highly recommend checking out the new piece to see portfolio manager Jeff Bronchick's comments on the corporate governance debacle that is Yahoo (YHOO). In addition, included with the posting is what has to be one of the most poignant and perfectly fitting pieces of artwork (also shown on the right had side of this page) you are going to see this year. I believe our in-house artist Kelli Manthei has captured the management acumen of Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang (note the incredible irony embedded in that title) and HP's former CEO Leo Apotheker amazingly well by portraying Yang as Beavis and Apotheker as Butt-Head. For those of you who might not be familiar with the famous characters created by Mike Judge, spending 5 minutes on YouTube should be enough to explain why no corporate CEO would ever want to be compared to these two cultural icons.

I hope you enjoy the piece and will continue to follow Cove Street's blog.

Sincerely,

The Inoculated Investor

Earnings Per Share Myopia

My newest piece, entitled Earnings Per Share Myopia, is now exclusively available on Cove Street Capital's blog site. You can access the posting by clicking this link. After listening to a number of company conferences calls during the Q3 earnings season, I was struck by how many of the questions posed to the executives hosting the call had nothing to do with trying to ascertain the intrinsic value of the company. Instead, the focus was inevitably (and unfortunately) on gathering data that will help the sell-side analysts forecast the next quarter's earnings per share number. While this practice is frustrating for the listener, I firmly believe that patient value investors can find a way to benefit from such myopia. Please use the above link to access the piece if you want to know more of my thoughts. (Don't forget to see the disclosure statement located at the bottom as well.)

As a reminder, all new content generated by me will be posted on Cove Street's site from now on. We are in the process of migrating people who have sign up for the RSS feed to this site. If for some reason you do not want to be signed up to receive emails updating you when new material is posted on Cove Street's site, please send us an email at Questions@CoveStreetCapital.com. If you are new to this site or are not a subscriber and want to have access to Cove Street's blog, just click this link and sign up in the box located in the top right corner of the page.

I hope you will take the time to explore the new site and read my latest piece.