John Hempton: I am not bullish now

John Hempton: I am not bullish now. In relation to Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp, John Hempton says: I am an old-fashioned value investor. Maybe a growth-orientated one - but the valuation has to make sense on fairly modest assumptions before I get excited. I (once) owned Facebook and I could make the per-subscriber numbers work... I'm not averse to paying six times sales for businesses that are growing fast if the end-margins are likely to be good. However, yesterday Facebook did an acquisition that makes no sense to me. Obviously this makes sense to somebody... and indeed to people who are far cleverer than me. Hempton's conclusion: I used to be an unremitting bull on the market, (but) I am not bullish now - and have positioned far closer to neutral than any time in Bronte's history.(VIEW LINK)