ReverseSignals

(Pickens' Reverse Signals stock picks buy/sell signals)

T. Boone Pickens is an American financier and the chair of the hedge fund BP Capital Management; he used to be a famous corporate raider in the 1980s. In 1951 he graduated from Oklahoma State University where he majored in Geology and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. In 1956 he founded a company that would later become Mesa Petroleum. His corporate acquisitions in the 1980s made Pickens a celebrity. He briefly considered running for president in 1988. In 1997 Pickens founded BP Capital Management (the initials standing for Boone Pickens and not British Petroleum), then called BP Energy Fund. He holds 46% interest in the company which runs two hedge funds - Capital Commodity and Capital Equity.

In June 2010 T. Boone Pickens announced that he is working with congressman Sullivan to push for new legislation focusing on home grown natural gas instead of foreign oil. In an interview he remarks that “we do have more natural gas than any country in the world [and] that's good. […] 70% of all oil we transport every day is for transportation fuel.”

Pickens has given more than $700 million away to charity including nearly half a billion dollars to his alma mater Oklahoma State University. He’s among the billionaires who have made the Giving Pledge – a commitment to give half of their wealth for charitably purposes. He has also donated to the University of Texas, Happy Hill Farm/Academy Jubilee Park in Dallas, the University of Calgary, the Downtown Dallas YMCA. He has also been highly involved with alternative energy and wind power projects.

(Icahn's Reverse Signals stock picks buy/sell signals)

Carl Icahn is an American private equity investor, financier, and corporate raider. He attended Princeton University for a B.A. in Philophy (1957), and New York University School of Medicine which he left prior to graduation. Icahn started working on Wall street in 1961. In 1968 he founded Icahn & Co. - a securities firm focusing on risk arbitrage and options trading. In 1978 Icahn began taking control of positions in individual companies and since then has taken such positions at corporations such as RJR Nabisco, TWA, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Uniroyal, Dan River, Marshall Field, E-II (Culligan and Samsonite), American Can, USX, Marvel Comics, Revlon, Imclone, Federal-Mogul, Fairmont Hotels, Blockbuster, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner, and Motorola. Recently he’s shown interest in the takeover of Yahoo! and the ousting of Jerry Yang from his current CEO position to allow Microsoft to purchase the web company. In June 2008 he launched The Icahn Report which campaigns for shareholder rights. It hosts United Shareholders of America where individual investors can sign up and take part. In July 2010 Icahn acquired 14% of Mentor Graphics. Because of this the company signed a Poison Pill provision and as of September 2010 Icahn owns just less than 15% of Mentor Graphics.

Icahn’s hedge funds currently own 5.6% of the biotechnology company Biogen Idec. Starting 2007, Icahn has been steadily increasing his stake at Biogen and as of June 2009 he has been able to seat two of his allies on Biogen’s board. Also between September 2007 and January 2008 Icahn pushed his ownership of the business software company BEA Systems from 8.5% to 13.22% before Oracle Corporation announced it was purchasing BEA Systems.

In terms of philanthropy, Icahn has many establishments, where he donated substantial amounts of money, named after him: Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island in NYC, the Carl C. Icahn Center for Science and Icahn Scholar Program at Choate Rosemary Hall New England prep school, the Carl C. Icahn Laboratory at the Princeton University Institute for Integrated Genomics, the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. His foundation – Children’s Rescue Fund – built the Icahn House in The Bronx for housing homeless single pregnant women and single women with children.

(Soros' Reverse Signals stock picks buy/sell signals)

George Soros is a Hungarian-American financier, businessman and a notable philanthropist. He is the Cahirman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute, and former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. During the Black Wednesday UK currency crises Soros made $1 billion thus becoming known as “the man who broke the bank of England”. He provided Europe’s highest endowment in support of higher education to Central European University in Budapest between 1984 and 1989. In the United States he’s famous for donating large amounts of money in the attempt to defeat George W. Bush from re-election in 2004. Also, in 2010 he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19 which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California.

Soros immigrated to England in 1947 where in 1952 he graduated the London School of Economics with a B.S. in Philosophy. He moved to New York City in 1956 where from 1956 to 1959 he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer, and from 1959 to 1963 as an analyst with Wertheim & Co. During this time he developed the philosophy of reflexivity, according to which the action of beholding the valuation of any market by its participants affects said valuation of the market in a pro-cyclical virtuous or vicious circle. However, he soon realized that this concept won’t earn him any money unless he goes into investing on his own.

Some of Soros’ learnings and beliefs include starting with smaller amounts of money and then building a portfolio with increasing profits; trying to do what you are good at; keeping in mind that perceptions change events which in turn changes perceptions; realizing that stocks prices are determined on the basis of Fundamental analysis, and the problem lies in grasping the internal dynamics of the fundamentals of a company since they keep changing very often. Soros questions the foundation on which Technical analysis of stock was built and thus considers Technical analysis to be an utter waste. In fact the "fundamental analysts" from Wall Street lost 47% in 2002 and another 55% in 2008... of YOUR money.

On charity, Soros says that it is a very corrupting activity – corrupting to the receiver because he gets spoiled, and corrupting to the giver because others start sucking up to him. Soros’ most famous quote: “Short term volatility is greatest at turning points and diminishes as a trend becomes established […] By the time all the participants have adjusted the rules of the game will change again.”