I wrote at RealMoney.com today:

		David Merkel
		What Would Make More Sense to Me, Redux
		2/1/2008 10:14 AM EST

Nine months ago, I wrote this: Microsoft and Yahoo! are in several different businesses with modest synergies between them. Buried inside such a merger would be (at least):

Going back to our discussion of GE earlier this week, Microsoft does not need more businesses in its portfolio. It needs to focus its activities on what it does best. Same for Yahoo! but their problems are less severe unless they do this merger.

If I were Microsoft, I would accept defeat, and sell all web properties to Yahoo! If I were Yahoo!, I would spin off all content production in a new company to shareholders. You would end up with three focused companies that would be able to hit their markets with precision, in a business where scale matters inside your market, but not across markets. The ending configuration would be:

This to me would be rational, but corporate cash gets spent by self-aggrandizing folks with egos, so this is not likely to happen in the short run. But I think the eventual economic outcome will resemble something like this.

Microsoft has not shown a lot of competence in the areas that Yahoo! has focused on, and because of their long history of growth, I’m not sure they get how to run a company that is transisting into maturity. I would be bearish on the total concept.

The market has awarded an additional $3.7 billion to the combined valuations on Microsoft and Yahoo! off of this news. After some time, that premium should reverse, and it will come out of the valuation of Microsoft. But then, I only play in tech when it is trashed, so what do I know?

Position: none

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By the end of the day, that initial valuation premium of $3.7 billion turned into a deficit of $1.2 billion, and that was against a rising market. I’m not that kind of trader, but some deals make sense, and some don’t. When you find one that doesn’t make sense, and the market value of the package rises, one can short both the acquirer and the target, and wait for rationality to arrive.

That’s not to say that all deals are bad. Value can be added through synergies or improved management, or unlocked through expense savings and more leverage. Microsoft-Yahoo is unlikely to fit any of those descriptions in any major way.

There are some books that were important to forming the way I think about economic problems, but if I write about it, I feel that I can’t do justice to the quality of the book. The Volatility Machine, by Michael Pettis, is one of those books. Michael Pettis was a managing director at Bear Stearns, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University when he wrote it.

The book was written in 1999-2000, and published in 2001. It explains how economic activity in the developed world travels into the smaller markets of the developing world, amplifying booms and busts. Coming off the Asian/Russian crises of 1997-1998, it was a timely book. During boom periods, capital flows from the developed countries to the developing countries; during bust periods, capital gets withdrawn. There is a kind of “crack the whip” effect, where the tail feels the change in direction the most.

Borrowing short is a weak position to be in, as the Mexican crisis in 1994 showed us, as the Fed raised rates and the tightening spilled into Mexico, which was financing with short-term debt, cetes. The same is true of corporations that finance with short debt; they are ordinarily less stable than firms that finance long. The Volatility Machine explains why the same forces apply to both situations.

Buffett has said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” Rising volatility is that tide going out, and it reveals weak funding structures and bad business/government plans. Booms set up the overconfidence that leads some economic parties to presume on future prosperity, and choose financing terms that are less than secure if the market turns.

Countries that are small and reliant on continued capital inflows are vulnerable to volatility. In the 1970s-1990s, that was the developing countries. Today, the developing countries vary considerably. Some have funded themselves conservatively, some have not, and a number are net capital providers. The US is the one reliant on capital inflows. So what would Michael Pettis have to say in this situation?

You don’t have to look far. Today, Michael Pettis is a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. He is studying China from the inside, and writes about it at his blog (I read it every day, and will add it to my blogroll the next time I update it), China financial markets. Among his most interesting recent posts:

China’s latest batch of numbers aren’t good

Chinese pro-cyclicality makes predictions so difficult

More on why high share prices don’t mean Chinese banks are in good shape

The new China-Europe-US world order

Things have gotten grimmer in China

His views are complex and nuanced, and reflect the sometimes asymmetric incentives that politicians and policymakers face.  When I read his writings on China, I am simultaneously impressed with the rapid growth, and with the potential fragility of the situation.

So, enjoy his blog if that is your cup of tea.  If you want to learn how international finance affects developing economies, buy his book.

Full disclosure: if you buy the book through the link above, I will receive a pittance.

One month down, eleven to go?  Can we stick our heads out of the foxhole yet?

Personally, I was off just a little in January.  Comparing myself against a bunch of value indexes, which did better than growth indexes in January, I did better than all of them.  We’ll see what the future brings, though, these things can turn on a dime.

So what worked for me?  Arkansas Best, National Atlantic (not out of the woods yet), Charlotte Russe, Gehl, YRC Worldwide, Alliance Data Systems, Reinsurance Group of America, and Honda.

What hurt?  Nam Tai, Gruma, Valero, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Anadarko Petroleum.

Common factors:

• Financials with complexity got hurt
• Energy was lackluster at best
• Industrials, Retail, and Trucking did well
• Value took less pain
• What got whacked before went up

One final note here.  Look at this graph from Bespoke.  The “sea change” there mirrors my own turn in performance.  What does that tell me?  Perhaps it tells me that in late 2007 there were a lot of hedge funds liquidating positions that value managers liked to own.  After the end of the year, the selling pressure ebbed, and value seekers came in.  At RealMoney today, both Cramer and Marcin were commenting on they could find stuff to buy when the market was down in the morning.  I agreed; I haven’t seen this many good values since 2002.  I’m not counting on anything here, but I think my portfolio has attractive valuations and prospects.  Much as I am not crazy about the macro environment in many ways, I have some confidence that my portfolio should do better than the S&P 500 in 2008.

Full disclosure: long NTE GMK VLO DB APC RBS ABFS NAHC CHIC GEHL YRCW ADS RGA HMC