JEF, Unfrozen

Jefferies (JEF) has been spending a lot of time approaching its book value lately, so my sell orders have filled. This is a stock that traded at a massive discount to book not long ago, as I wrote about here. I think this is a relatively fair price for the shares, so I'm out.

I don't really have an opinion on where it goes from here. Maybe some of their of merchant banking investments are worth multiples of their values. On the other hand, maybe some of them are worth much less, especially as a result of the pandemic. Whether the company can earn good rates or not on its current book value is not really a game I want to play.

What made this an opportunity worth pursuing was the big discount to book, the fact that a lot of the book was liquid, and the determination from the company to buy back its own shares and close that gap. Now that the gap is mostly closed, buybacks are not as valuable in my view, so I've closed this position out.