Peridot Capitalist

I took a few days off earlier this week and used the down time at the beach to read Michael Lewis’ latest book, The Big Short. Lewis has written some of my favorite books, not only about the financial markets (Liar’s Poker), but also baseball (Moneyball), and the inspiring story of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman [...]

When people ask me who was primarily responsible for the credit crisis, I give the typical “well, it was various groups acting together” answer but there is no doubt in my mind that the core of the problem was the emergence of poor home lending in this country. While I believe that both the bankers [...]

This week I have taken a closer look at the valuation metrics for a dozen large publicly traded home building companies with a goal of identifying attractive investment opportunities to play the likelihood of a rebound in new housing starts over the next few years. As a value investor, I looked mainly at valuation data [...]

After reading my housing starts post from yesterday, Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) CEO Ara Hovnanian was kind enough to have his investor relations department send over some additional information on trends and demand for U.S. housing starts. Of course, we need to keep in mind that Hovnanian is a home builder, so they have a dog [...]

Crazy headline, right? At first I thought the same thing. After all, with nearly 10% unemployment and a flood of foreclosed properties hitting the market, why would anybody need to dramatically boost new home construction anytime soon? Last week I saw a statistic from a former Goldman Sachs economist that estimated new home demand in [...]