Kizziah Finney vibrates

Here at 10:45 Sunday night, a quiet time, my cellphone vibrated with a call from old friend and securties analyst Kizziah Finney.  What a surprise.  We have not talked in at least two years because all of our contacts seemed to be coincidental, somewhere in Soho, Tribeca, or on internet exchanges.  We have never before talked on the phone, so odd it seemed at first.

He seemed eager to talk.  He has left his lower East Side business address and lives out of a possibly, who knows, reasonably sized studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  Says he has everything he needs, Bloomberg, Iphone, Ipad, CNBC and Bloomberg television, plus plenty of analyst reports that he recieves through the dealers that he works with.  He claims to still have his major clients despite his indpendence and departure several years ago from Evermay Securities.

I listened and he talked.  While off the sauce in a major way now, he still lives next door to an Irish pub that pumps his beloved Guiness, but the meth and other drugs that may have fueled his enthusiasm seem to be part of the past - good thing.  But he still just talked, and I just listened.

His first major fascination was that with so much negative sentiment in the market, the impending "financial cliff', so little retail interest, such low volumes, and more breakdowns than breakouts of major stocks, an investor who held steady through the Great Recession and the many market financial and technology breakdowns is now up from March 2009.  That means all losses have been erased, and some gains have been achieved.  Those that were fearful essentially gave their money to those that had some long term confidence.

That's now, and Kizziah worries that the template of 2008 to 2012 will not last, and losers will be pervasive in every category.  That said, the U.S. as a reliably, to some extent, regulated financial capital market and as the largest world economy that buys consumer goods across a broad spectrum has once again made the dollar a haven for financial security.  How long that last is not known and the coming election is crucial to this, but for now Kizziah sees the U.S. in relatively good shape, especially in the large corporate dividend sector.  How crowded is this thought getting articulated is my question?

It was wonderful to hear from Kizziah again, and now that he has a phone, not sure he surrenders his, I may hear from him from more often.  He is definitely still on his game, looking for significantly oversold stocks with strong balance sheets and leadership positions in their industries.  That sounds too sane.  He also still hunts for outside of the box small stocks that could make or loose one a fortune.  I have no idea what has really happened to him, but he is certainly a joy to talk with.