Ed Lampert loses his shirt on Citigroup

I was contemplating the same thoughts Doug. Some good points made here and all of us have gotten sucked into some poor moves at one time or another.

Another great investor over the last 30 years that has been on the Citi bandwagon for two years is John Neff, a former fund manager at Vanguard with a very solid track record. I was thinking also about Ken Fisher who recommended Pulte Homes at $34, and myself at $22 and now it's around $12.60. Always hard to catch that falling knife.

Final point: Ed Lampert is not Warren Buffett.

Lampert is a dope !!! Name five funds that did not experience great growth/returns in 2007 through late August. I think he would make a great CEO for Citi. Isn't nice to play with other people's money.

Am I getting this right? From my reading of these blogs and comments, it seems to me that you are not expecting Citi to rebound from this low? Are you serious? This institution has seen lows before, I'm positive it will not only bounce back.. but will go from strength to strength.
P.s. I'd like to see John Reed back as sole CEO, he should never have been pushed out by Weill.

Fellow investors....WAKE UP !!
If C were to fully disclose it's total/absolute and accurate positions in CDO's & SIV's, etc.....stockholders would "run"...
Market to model is a joke played on the investing public...I'll BUY C at 28.

it is not a good time to sell your stock in sears holdings, but it may be the right time to buy more. he its high this year is about $175 so guess what buy some as it goes down.

so lampert lost a few hundred million. i be he has more money than most people still. and i ve nture to say that he is still the majority stockholder of shld.

so as cramer says buy buy buy. not sell sell sell
and by the way warren buffett has made investing mistakes. remember he bougt a huge share of an airline serveral years ago and took a majore drubbing . i think the airline was us air but i do know he took a hit .

Gentlemen:

I'm willing to call a bottom here. I think both Amazon and Citi are compelling bargains at this point.
If Citi can't be saved in the coming twelve months the average investor is going to have little chance of
making money. Citi started the SIV biz back in the late 80's. From what I've been told they manage seven of these
these puppies. And let's look at the bright side, they have about +$100 billion in equity, they pull down
abt. $80b in revenue and much of the earnings come from some place other than here. The real issue is
what type of liquidity liability does Citi possess? And, Citi went from abt. 100,000 shares a minute to abt.
1 million shares a minute this afternoon. Who bought. The Fed? The Chinese? The Saudis?
Beltway Greg? What we have here is a situation that was brought abt. by illiquid conditions in
regard to short-term funding. Some folks could get pushed and some hair may be pulled but I'll bet
Citi is at $45 this time next year. Check my record, I was the only one in the universe to call for Apple to
substantially beat earnings. I figured $1.05 and all of a sudden people start discovering the new metric.
Feel bad for Prince though, would you hire an investment banker to run a law firm? Duh.

Beltway Greg
Apple closes at $203.15 on Jan. 1 2008
and Citi at $45.10 Oct. 1, 2008.

Yea, Eddie has made millions, and even billions and can afford to lose alot. When are you people who have your heads stuck in the market going to look and see what people like Eddie have done to the REAL economy of the US? His destruction of these retailing companies to turn a cash profit for his investors have put people out of work, caused them to lose homes and will result in the long run a huge drain on the econmony. COWS GET FED, PIGS GET FAT AND HOGS GET SLAUGHTERED. EDDIE IS A HOG!

Lampert may have lost money on Citi. I wouldn't know.

But as long as I don't sell my shares of Citi at a loss, I haven't lost money, no? And as long as the dividend keeps coming, I'm nearly content with my investment in Citi, regardless I paid much more per share than $34. for it. If the dividend is cut, then I'll start crying. But until that happens, so what with the stock's roller coaster ride? Or I don't drop dead leaving my heirs with a big loss. on it

#4. Jim Hart,
You are smart and must have been reading about Satyajit Das. He and Mark S. Watson are warnig us about the coming financial Armageddon.
The gestation period for this derivative bubble will take a little while.
But it appears that it will come
Tai Hong

k-mart has layaway and wal mart doesnt...my daughter said she has used this layayway for christmas.... she says k-mart has 90 day layway.
could help shld stock

Mr. Lampert was involved with K-Mart first, then bought Sears. I know because I owned both. He then renamed KMRT to the current SHLD. Hope the rest of your facts are correct.

I thought it was a generally-understood concept in the investment community that the fact that an investment loses money in the short term has nothing to do with it being a wise/unwise investment in hindsight - they are completely separate things. Capital allocators like Buffet and Lampert LOVE when a company is beaten down further than actual performance warrants - whether they own it or not - because it improves the risk/reward profile and allows them to buy more. If Lampert bought C at $55 and he sells it in five years for $100, the current price around $30 will be completely irrelevant to those shares' appreciation, except that it will have allowed him to purchase more shares at an even more attractive price point in the meantime, further enhancing his overall return. If you look at Lampert or Buffet's past, it should be obvious that the prudence of an investment can't be judged in the short term.