National Bank of Greece SA (NBG-N)

The number of shares is absolutely insane. The share count has grown dramatically. They’ve been in survival mode for quite a while, but thinks they will survive. It wouldn’t surprise him if they did a share consolidation. Share consolidations are virtually always bad for stocks. A speculative play, but it could be good. Doesn’t think you will lose all your money. He doesn’t see putting dollars on it at this time.

Thinks there will be a National Bank of Greece in a couple of years. The share count has gone to mega billions, a huge amount of dilution, which makes it difficult. The Greek economy will come back, but all the banks are in a very dangerous position. This is a crapshoot. You might want to look at Global X Greece ETF (GREK-N) instead.

When you do a valuation, and it looks cheap, you have to have the ability to take the risk profile. It appears like it is turning, but there are things that could go wrong.

For people who want to take on a lot of risks and who want to play he can see them going into this. It is on his radar screen. It is going to be very difficult for people to make money on this, unless they are traders, which he is not. Greece is going to exist in 5, 10, 25 years, but which companies might disappear and which ones will survive and possibly bloom?

(A Top Pick July 23/14. Down 59.80%.) This was his gamble on a turnaround in the Greek economy. It didn’t happen. The Socialists got in and people didn’t want to pay their debts back. They hired back all the bureaucrats that the previous regime got rid of. A very bad call.

The issue around Greece is that it effectively is a ton of political risks. As the political risks start to recede, then you are going to have the ability to assess the bank in its own right. There is so much political risk that he wouldn’t look at this bank.

He sold and lost money on this one. There is talk of Greece running out of money. The stock has been diluted tremendously. This is a dangerous, dangerous company. It is hard for them to go under and there may be a lot of upside.

The one year chart shows a long downtrend. It may be breaking out, but he would want to see a series of higher highs and higher lows to indicate a new uptrend. Way too early to enter this stock.

He would encourage people to really think about what kind of stocks they want to invest in. He always very deliberately look for lower volatility type of stocks, and ones that can still demonstrate growth in earnings and in dividends. This bank is almost the opposite of that. Its major business right now is keeping hold of its deposit base. If it doesn’t do that, there is no business. You are going to have very little growth and a tremendous amount of volatility, the worst of both worlds.

It is hard to know how this is going to play out. Don’t sell on a day it is down 20% because they go up and down that much on a daily basis.

This is going like crazy right now with the new government in Greece. The government may be coming to some realization that they have to come to some negotiation here. As an investment, this is high risk, but could be a risk worth taking. One of the biggest problems is their share count, which is over 3 billion shares. For the stock to go up a lot, that share, will impinge on the bank. If you want to take a flyer, this could be a good one to take.

(A Top Pick Dec 10/13. Down 82.90%.) This was a bet on a turnaround in the Greek economy. Instead they elected a party that could pull them out of the Euro entirely. He exited a while ago at a pretty stiff loss. He’s not going to make any more bets like this and will stick to his knitting.

Greece is technically finally out of recession. He continues to watch it. Their share count has gone up monstrously. There is a political question in Greece. There is some possibility of a reverse stock split. He cannot see this bank going under. It could go up two or three times, but it is fairly high risk.

This was on his Stock Watch list, but he eliminated it in the last couple of days. Often the reasons to Buy are less interesting than the reasons to Not Buy. The primary reason he decided against this was that the growth in the share count has just gone ballistic from about 200 million to about 200 billion. That is a huge increase and that is scary. There are better opportunities elsewhere.

This is on his Watchlist. He finds it is a very, very intriguing situation. This is a leader in Greece. They are still having a lot of problems in Greece. It would hurt their national pride if anything happened to this bank.