Each month I create a Mike’s Thought Pad chat, which contains exclusively my thoughts, charts, and pulled quotes from elsewhere.

This morning’s Post.

That is exactly how the back half of 1999 was. And then it continued in 2000. Then I heard a short seller I knew in Texas’s announced he was closing. He told me others were too. Around that same time, February of 2000, Julian Robertson shut down his Tiger funds, giving up on value stocks. One month later the crash began.

In December of 2006, I laid off everyone in my Hong Kong office and cut the salaries of everyone still employed by me in Cupertino by half. I was forced to liquidate $4B of corporate CDS, under threat of lawsuits including from my business partner Gotham. Two months later by remaining CDS started printing 20% months for my fund that would not stop for over a year. This is how it is to be a bear, or in Julian’s case, the most successful value hedge fund ever. It is not pleasant or easy.