“Fish Deeper, Fish Alone” — Paul Sonkin

Paul Sonkin is managing member of the Hummingbird Value Fund. He has worked at the SEC, Goldman Sachs, Royce Funds, and First Manhattan Company. He holds an MBA from Columbia, where he teaches courses on applied value investing. GD: What is your take on the market right now? There seems to be some divergence of opinion among investors currently about where we are in the cycle. PS: What’s going on now is that many of the people I am talking to, many smart, savvy investors, think that the second and third shoe is going to drop. For that reason, I think there is a tremendous amount of money sitting on the sidelines. And,because people expect it, I think it’s not going to happen. An example that I was talking about the other day is 9/11. I think that there are a lot of commonalities between Lehman and 9/11. Basically, what happened is that Lehman set off a chain reaction — sort of a negative feedback loop. I think it was a Thursday morning, October 11th when the Reserve Fund announced that

Paul Sonkin is managing member of the Hummingbird Value Fund. He has worked at the SEC, Goldman Sachs, Royce Funds, and First Manhattan Company. He holds an MBA from Columbia, where he teaches courses on applied value investing. GD: What is your take on the market right now? There seems to be some divergence of opinion among investors currently about where we are in the cycle. PS: What’s going on now is that many of the people I am talking to, many smart, savvy investors, think that the second and third shoe is going to drop. For that reason, I think there is a tremendous amount of money sitti