Ichan vs. Ackman

Icahn vs. Ackman.

On January 25, 2013 CNBC managed to facilitate a public feud between legendary billionaire "activist investors" Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman.

For CNBC, it was pure gold programming - getting two Wall Street heavyweights who hate each other on the phone at the same time to bash each other for half an hour.

I'm not going to go into all the details of the call here, or rehash the history between Icahn and Ackman - you can get all that from the video - but I do want to talk about what I think are the implications of "activist investors."

What Activist Investors Really Are

Ultimately, I couldn't care less about who was right or who won or which one has the bigger . . . ego.

I generally try to keep this site positive and respectful, although sometimes something gets under my skin and I get a little feisty (usually, I reserve most of my ire for the managed money industry, especially when it seeks to disempower self-directed investors).

But the truth is, in the great Icahn vs. Ackman Debate (or Debacle), I actually think both these guys are assholes.

They may have completely different demeanors, but both come across to me as gangsters - Icahn being the more traditional (stereotypical?) boorish mob boss while Ackman seems more like the sophisticated and calculating dandy lieutenant looking to take over operations.

Both are equally menacing - metaphorically speaking, Icahn hacks you up and feeds you to dogs, pigs, or sharks while Ackman blows up your house while you sleep.

The common denominator - they're both bullies, not investors.

Technically, some would argue, they're "activist investors."

I completely disagree. A true investor is an owner of a business with a long term outlook. A skilled investor takes an attractively priced position in a company he or she believes has strong long term prospects.

Activist Trading - Legal Stock Manipulation?

"Activist traders" (a better term for what guys like Icahn and Ackman do) seek out opportunities where they can legally manipulate a stock's share price by publicly advocating policies that would "unlock shareholder value" (at least in the short term at which point they cash out) or by publicly trashing a company in order to push its shares as low as possible before covering their short position.

Both Icahn and Ackman make money - and a lot of it - by throwing their weight around. To a large degree, they become the catalyst of their own trade, and end up being more important - in the short term - than the underlying operations of the actual business.

It's both ridiculous and contemptible.

No wonder most people have zero trust in the stock market. When powerful individuals can so blatantly manipulate the price of stocks, what chance does the individual investor stand?

So most individuals shun the stock market entirely, or are so demoralized that they end up doing the next worse thing - outsource their investing to recurring, fee-based third parties with abysmal track records.

And that produces a bleak future comprised of a delayed and scaled-back retirement.

The Power of the Courageous Individual

But it doesn't have to be that way.

I believe in the power of the courageous individual - the individual who's stubborn or idealistic or defiant enough to give the finger to the disingenuous forces claiming all the power and pretending to believe their own hypocrisy.

Leveraged Investing is not the only way for the self-directed individual to make money and build real and lasting wealth in the stock market.

But it is absolutely the best way that I know of for me to do that.

Whether Leveraged Investing is the best self-directed solution for you, or whether something else is, I would urge you to find, adopt, or develop a system or approach that aligns with your own personality and which enables you to remain unaffected by the ego-driven stock market manipulations of poorly behaved billionaires.



Tweet

Follow @LeveragedInvest

Download for Free