I can hear Kerkorian humming what must be his favorite song…

“Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go.
You have made my life complete and I love you so.”

My apologies to anyone offended by the image of Kirk as an Elvis impersonator. I guess I should be apologizing to anyone offended by the image of Kirk as a long term GM investor. As I wrote in October, I have been extremely skeptical about what was being represented as his motives. The last time he sold in December, it was explained as a tax strategy and he made good on that by repurchasing the shares later. Today the news is not so promising: he agreed to sell 14 million shares at $33 in a private transaction. I recognize that he will be left with 7.4% of the company, but the image of Kirk as a long term investor in GM just doesn’t look so certain anymore. By the way, he wasn’t the only big seller of GM recently and yet, that seemed to go unnoticed by many people. Last Monday it was disclosed that General Motors Corp.’s second-largest stockholder has sold 13.4 million of the company’s shares since the end of June and almost 34 million shares since the end of March.

This week I got lucky and gave GM a DOWN signal before this news hit. On top of the November 13th disclosure of Capital Research’s lowered position, there was a sector move that I saw which caused me to also go negative on HMC, TM, NSANY and VOLV. Daimler Chrysler was the only auto / truck manufacturer that escaped me (at least for one more week!)

As the song goes…Kerkorian seems to love tenders. He did it with Chrysler and that worked out just “ok.” In May of 2005, Tracinda put up a tender offer for 28 million shares of GM at $31, a 13% premium over the market value. Now a year and a half later, he sells for $33 and that’s not so impressive to me. But he must still love tenders, because he launched a new tender for another 15 million shares of MGM at $55/share, about 12% higher than yesterday’s close. The premium isn’t the only thing similar to his GM shenanigans. “This tender offer demonstrates our confidence in MGM Mirage and its management and our commitment to the company’s future,” a Tracinda representative said in a statement which was eerily similar to what they said about GM. HMMMM? I know things are going great in the gaming world, but don’t you wonder why he needs to increase his 56% position to over 60%? He gave himself a $800 million pop on his existing MGM stake. Love me tender….. He lost about $170 million on GM since Friday. Love me tender…..A net of about $600 million.  Love me tender.  Now if he can only find a private equity firm to take him out at even higher prices.