A former senior manager at CB Richard Ellis Group (NYSE: CBG) in Southern California, now a partner at a private real estate company where I am an investor said to me this week that the stock market was just "white collar gambling".

This is a relatively common thought from Main Street and when my colleague Ron, made the comment it was hard to argue that it is not.

It certainly looks like gambling when you consider how momentum day traders place their bets, or options traders, or commodities traders -- and the past few years -- CEO's of major corporations.

I certainly was playing this theme up when I posted The great leadership disconnect: I bet the farm and you lose in September.

Earlier in the week Ron had brought up the fact that CBG stock had dropped from over $40 per share to under $4 and it seemed like it was bound to get back sometime in the foreseeable future for a huge gain. The following is the three year chart.

Ron is a smart real estate guy but he is not a stock market aficionado. He believed the risk / reward opportunity seemed like a no brain-er (not that he was going to invest). The first problem is that idea of the foreseeable future. I think the market is not foreseeing much lately. Most things seem quite cloudy indeed.

Actually I could not help but ponder the matter because, coincidentally, I was at a business breakfast the following morning where the speaker was a manager with responsibility for CBG's Asian portfolio investments. When Ron brought up the subject originally I responded that I did not follow the stock, but that it did not have to return to it's previous glory to achieve a great return on investment. Suppose it took two years to go from $4 per share to $6 or $7. Most anyone would be delighted with a 25%+ annualized return.

As it turned out, I saw my associate later that day and he pointed out that CBG had jumped 40% from the day before. WOW, some of the day gamblers, I mean traders, must have made a killing. Of course that is only if they were on the right side of the deal, and sold in time.

CBG closed Friday at $4.84, down 10% and has been volatile lately as the chart and the stocks recent moves indicate. It has a beta of just under 2 which means that it moves at twice the rate of the broader market.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own any shares of CBG. I do not do any day trading.

Sunday Funnies: White collar gambling originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Much of the one-day panic about the market was driven by the fear that falling housing prices will hurt consumer confidence. One aspect of that is accurate. As variable rate mortgages reset, people may lose their homes. Unless, of course, the problem become so wide-spread that banks or the Fed decide that mortgage payments need to be underwritten so that homeowners keep their places and the market is not flooded with cheap real estate.

Another reason that investors are worried is the private equity debt is becoming more expensive. Some of the deals for companies like Chrysler or The Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB) could fall apart. The other side of that worry is that banks may pull out of the largest and most risky deals. That could cause lawsuits, but save financial institutions from billion dollar loses. It could also take the prices of some stocks that were in the takeover pool down. But, a stock that KKR wanted to buy at $100 may be attractive to investors at $80.

Shareholders who have stocks that have done as well as the S&P 500 over the last two years are up 20%. And that does not include dividends. Those stocks may be worth less than they were a week ago. But, if they have not been sold, that really isn't important.

The current market may be an ugly business for day traders, but it may give them a break from sitting in their basements in the dark all day.

They just might be scared out into the sunlight.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

The market: you can't lose what you don't sell originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 12:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.