American International Group (AIG)

(Top Pick Aug 10/12, Up 49.26%) Sold a few months ago. It has gotten a little more expensive. Not an entry point. If it pulled back to $40 he might look at it.

A massive insurance company based in the US, but really a global business. Had a fantastic run and really surprised a lot of people as to how strong the business has been coming out of the recession. This is fine. Feels that insurance companies, in general right now, are attractive to a lot of people because of rising interest rates.

Number one holdings of hedge funds, on the long side too. They are back on their feet and have paid back some of the money. Continue to hold it.

Thinks it is a much cleaner company, just a property/casualty company now. Government has been paid off and they just initiated a dividend. Good value. It should progress well. He initiated his position about a year ago or so.

Since its low last November, it has virtually doubled. Technically it is still in gear. Stick with it for now. Seasonal strength from late October until April.

Trading at a discount, went through significant restructuring, seeing improvement in underlying units. Largest P&C insurer in US. All businesses are showing improvement. Just initiated a dividend and thinks you will see a share buyback coming. Expects good dividend growth and they just beat the numbers. Less than 1% dividend.

It is recapitalized. New investors bought a solid, global insurance company with great franchises. They had a fantastic run. There is on-going growth in Asia. There will be weakness in the US. To get into it now does not make sense to him, but there should be some earnings appreciation over the last 12 months. He missed this one.

(Top Pick Aug 10/12, Up 38.16%) It was a good insurance company. They got rid of some of their derivatives and was trading well below tangible book value. It had fallen out of favour with investors. He took profits.

A recovering US financial that went through the wringer and like all US financials, the more it goes on without any problems, the more it slowly oozes upwards. He thinks that as long as the market keeps on moving, this will keep on moving too. Banks and this company are quite cheap but the ROE never recovered the highs of where they were before.

Over the last couple of years, the management that was put in has done a good job. Has a major exposure in emerging markets and has a lot of nice businesses. If you like the insurance industry, this is one you might want to enter.

Assets are mostly bonds, some stocks and cash. If you add it up and subtract the liabilities, you could sell everything today and give investors a very big return. Discount to book is roughly 45%. He is looking at a 35% return.

Relatively new one on his Watch list. Have had all kinds of problems. Expects there will be a certain gestation period for him to get to know it better.

Recently bought. Government reduced ownership down to 15%. He thought that was a very good entry point. It has dropped because of Sandy. Trades at a very attractive multiple and a good opportunity for investors.

Sees this as a completely new company. Has become a very much plain-vanilla, property and casualty company. U.S. Treasury had a big stake in it and what interested him is that in September they paid down a big piece of that so it is now only a 15% holder. Expect that in 2013 the government will be completely out of it. Trading at about 10X earnings. Have a very large deferred tax asset, which he thinks is very important. Once the government is out of it he expects to see renewed dividends and stock buybacks.

Big insurance company with a lot of bad assets through the financial crisis. Government had to bail them out but today it is wildly different. They've cleaned up their balance sheets so their assets are in much better shape. Because they have been raising a lot of cash, their core insurance businesses have been very profitable and have been able to gradually buy back the government's stake. Trades at only half of BV.