Leon Cooperman Quotes
103 Leon Cooperman Quotes
1 2 3
[In July 2008.] We are buying plenty of attractively valued securities, but this is not an environment to be complacent.
Leon Cooperman
[In July 2008.] We acknowledge that we were somewhat too optimistic about the year. And we basically pressed that optimism in March during the selloff when we largely took off all our hedges. We based that on an old tried-and-true-and tested-approach.
Leon Cooperman
[In July 2008.] To some degree, I feel like a kid in a candy store. We find a tremendous number of values in the stock market.
Leon Cooperman
[In July 2008.] The financial economy is in disarray and that is really a result… of imprudent financial activity by the commercial banks and investment banks. They levered themselves up. They did things that were foolish. They should be ashamed of the way they conducted themselves, and now they have to right that, so they are de-leveraging.
Leon Cooperman
[In July 2008.] We're very confident in the companies we own because they incorporate a margin for error.
Leon Cooperman
[In July 2008.] Historically, when the S&P drops 20%, when the Fed and Congress are stimulating [the economy], you are in an election year [and] stocks are undervalued versus bonds...you are supposed to buy.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] I started as an analyst at Goldman [Sachs]… I then spent close to 25 glorious years with the firm.
Leon Cooperman
I had been telling Goldman management that we were making a mistake not being in the asset management business. The firm, being a brokerage house, was strongly opposed to what they considered competing with their client base. Every brokerage firm at the time was largely in this business…
Leon Cooperman
I realized after a short time I didn’t want to be on the road every week, introducing a new product and sourcing new funds. I wanted to spend my time visiting companies and finding new mispriced stocks.
Leon Cooperman
I wanted to manage money in such a way that my interests and the clients’ interests were 100% aligned.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] I would say… Warren Buffett influenced me tremendously. I’m an expert in his writings and his views.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] Graham and Dodd influenced me… Their book Security Analysis is sitting right there on my shelf.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] I would sell a security for one of four reasons. The first reason is the highest quality reason. That is when you buy something with a price objective. When it appreciates to that price objective, and you think it‘s fully valued, you sell it. The second reason is when, based on calls to our companies, their competitors and their suppliers, things are not moving along the originally anticipated lines so you get out before you get murdered. It is very hard in this market, which is choppy and not really going anywhere, to make up for big losses so you have to sell before you get creamed.
A third reason we sell is when we find an idea that‘s more attractive than the idea we‘re acting on already. So we‘ll sell something to buy something that we think
has a better risk/reward ratio. Finally, the fourth reason we sell something is when our market outlook changes. Since I don‘t tend to buy and sell market futures to an appreciable degree, to effect this macro-driven repositioning, I have to sell specific securities.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] There are those times when you‘ve made a fundamental mistake – you‘ve misjudged the company‘s competitive position, you‘ve misjudged the economy, you‘ve misjudged the stock market. I think you just can‘t afford to say, - I know more than the market. Of course, it depends on the company.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] There are certain things you can be stubborn on such as when you have a big dividend yield, a big discount to book value, an extremely low valuation.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] As a value investor, I‘m looking for more but for less. I‘m looking for more growth at a lower multiple. I‘m looking for more yield versus what I can get from the S&P. Or, I‘m looking for more asset value.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] About 95% of publicly traded companies have two values. One is the auction market value, which is the price you and I would pay for one hundred shares of a company. The other is the so called private market value, which is the price a strategic or financial investor would pay for the entire business.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] One of the approaches I take is to look for a stock in the public market that is selling at a significant discount to private market value where I can identify catalysts for a potential change. In the last year we had four takeovers in the portfolio.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] If you want to be a broad-based investor you have to be willing to embrace different approaches.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on the most important characteristics of a business.] If you don‘t have the free cash flow, you don‘t have anything. Number two is a business that has a moat around it, where it‘s competitively insulated to some large degree.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] We look at management ownership to see whether their interests are aligned with the shareholders‘ interests…
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] Hedge fund guys are overpaid but the good news about that is, you don‘t make the money unless you make the money for the investor.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] I just want to make sure management is channeling their cash into the right opportunities.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on share buy-backs.] Analysts tend to be cheerleaders for corporate repurchase programs. In my view, these programs only make sense under one condition – the company is buying back shares that are significantly undervalued. Most management teams have demonstrated the total inability to understand what their businesses are worth. They‘re buying back shares when the stock is up, and have no courage to buy when the stock is down.
Leon Cooperman
In 1993, we made a great deal of money in non-dollar bonds because we made a play on interest rates that was very right. In 1995 through 1997, we made a great deal of money in the debt of Brazil, Turkey and other emerging markets. In 2002, we made a lot of money in high yield bonds, and the same is true for 2009 and 2010.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] Where I spend the bulk of my time, is looking for undervalued stocks on the long side. I have a very value - oriented approach.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011.] In my own opinion, the next big trended opportunity – though we haven‘t put the trade on just yet – is being short U.S. government bonds. They don‘t belong at 2%. They‘re just way too low.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on future US growth.] We‘re more optimistic than most. We don‘t believe that we‘re going into a recession but rather an environment of slow growth. We don‘t think we‘re another Japan.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on Barack Obama.] The largest country in the free world chose as its leader a
48-year-old man who was a community organizer and had never worked in the business world. His election was a clear result of the frustration of the populace.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011.] We made money in 2000 and 2001 because we stuck with value. You only
got creamed if you were buying these 100x revenues technology companies.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011.] It was really 2008 that was a rough patch for us and it was very simple. We misjudged the significance of Lehman.
Leon Cooperman
2008 was transformative for me because, at the time, I allowed my people to hold onto their positions when I should‘ve started kicking them out well before we got into the hole.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] You can‘t replace a guy like Steve Jobs.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on Apple and their $80 billion cash hoard.] I‘m told by people close to [Steve] Jobs that he wanted to do a content acquisition, such as Disney if it had not been in the theme park business. Regrettably, for the world and for him, he‘s not around to execute that ambition.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] I‘m sure one day, Apple will have issues but for the next few years it looks like clear sailing. Jobs left behind a financial powerhouse.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on comments that ‘Apple’ is not a true value stock.] I think their definition of ‘value’ has to be broadened. It‘s not just about trading below book value. To me, ‘value’ means the value proposition that is being offered.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] A lot of companies Warren Buffett owns would not be considered value in the classical sense. A company can be growing at an extremely high rate but happens to be trading at a very reasonable multiple. Or that same company can be giving you your return through a fat dividend.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011] What you want is some combination of financial statistics that yell, ‘Buy me.’ It could be an unusually high growth rate at a proper multiple or it could be a return upfront with modest growth.
Leon Cooperman
[In 2011 on a share he found compelling to buy.] I like KKR Financial (ticker: KFN), where the debt management arm has the ingredients that I look for. Right now their dividend yield is 9.75% in a world of zero interest rates and the dividend is covered twice by earnings. They earn about $1.50-1.60 per share and they‘re only paying $0.72, so they can grow the business over time. The real book value is somewhere around $10 and the stock is $7.75. [In January 2014 share price was $13.00.]
Leon Cooperman
[On Boston Scientific in 2011.] Due to the past issues, investors seem unwilling to look at the value of the business objectively.
Leon Cooperman
1 2 3
Return from Leon Cooperman Quotes to
Quoteswise.com