Portfolio management: lessons learned from Lehman collapse

I have NOT added any new money to my brokrage account since Sept 15 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, so it’s easier to calculate the performance of my portfolio (+25%, from Sept 30 2009 to today Sept 14 2009), and compare to benchmark (S&P -16.75%, from Sept 15 2008 to Sept 14 2009). We can not predict catastropic events, if we really want to predict future or talk about any lessons for industry, I think one thing is clear:

one either becomes too big to fail (like AIG), or becomes the first to fail (like Bear Stearns), the last thing one wants to be is being No. 4 investment bank, leverage heavily and caught in the financial and political turmoil. We all know the day before Lehman fall, Merril Lynch (No. 3 investment bank) got bought by B of A, and shortly after that No. 1 Goldman and No. 2 Morgan Stanely converted into bank holding company.

For me personally, I can think of the following.

Emdeon: reading its IPO prospectus

(Update 16Sept09) Brean Murry is out with a selling rating with Emdeon (source: StreetInsider). Quote:

While investors may be focusing on the potential benefit from healthcare reform, we view the benefit as a potential one-time boost to the growth rate in claims that will revert back to the low-single digits after the anniversary of enrollment…We apply a 13x multiple to our 2010 cash EPS estimate, which we believe may prove overly generous, to arrive at a fair value of $13 per share.

(Original) First heard about Emdeon (NYSE:EM) from Cramer on Mad Money before its IPO. I watch Mad Money from time to time, mostly for entertainment (not for ideas or education). But this healthcare bill processor IPO sounds interesting especially at this time. And to make it more interesting, the stock did not get huge pop post IPO. Hm. So I went ahead and looked at its IPO Prospectus.