Mark Cuban

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L.G.: Was Rupert Murdoch smart to spend $5 billion on Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal?  Why or why not? How, for better or worse, will the Journal be transformed? If you were Murdoch, how would you integrate this acquisition into News Corp.’s journalistic enterprises, including the soon-to-launched Fox Business Channel, and what do you think of Murdoch’s stated plans to invest $200 million in the Journal’s online operations?

M.C.: He got a great bargain. The W.S.J., brand can be applied to all of his business operations. The Fox Business Channel can be the Wall Street Journal Channel and gain immediate credibility.

As far as how to integrate them, I have no idea, and Rupert doesn’t need my advice. There are things I know and things I don’t know. I don’t know the internals of Fox, so there is no reason to speculate.

L.G.: How much time do you spend day-trading?

M.C.: None, zero. I think only idiots day-trade. Over the last 10 years the business of trading stocks has been very specialized. There is more professional brainpower and money applied to picking stocks than ever before. Anyone who thinks they can beat the market day-trading over the long term is just waiting for their luck to run out.

L.G.: What percentage of your net worth do you have in the markets, versus C.D.’s and other risk-averse investments, and how do you decide where to put your money? What stocks do you like, dislike?

M.C.: I don’t know the percentages. I stay pretty conservative and try to stick to things that pay me rather than things I just pray go up because someone else decided to buy some shares.

I have some stock investments that I have made over the years but don’t look at them very often and haven’t traded them much if at all over the past few years.

L.G.: And most important, how have you done?

M.C.: I do fine. I bought things that paid dividends or interest, and they go up over time. I will take positions in strategic shorts, meaning I don’t go through and read all the S.E.C. filings. I look for companies that are out-and-out liars or are in a business that I don’t think has a future. (And no, I’m not going to name names. Companies that are shorted tend to put more effort into being litigious rather than spending time trying to actually run a profitable business.)

L.G.: Is the subprime-mortgage scare likely to have lasting impact on the Dow? Do you believe Bernanke and the Fed  have responded reasonably? Where do you think the markets are headed in the next few months? How should the average investor respond? Should any of this be of concern to a billionaire in the media, entertainment, or sports biz?

M.C.: I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. All I can say is to remember the months of July and August and how you felt every time you saw what the market was doing. Imprint the volatility and angst that most in the market felt in your brain. Then when one of these funds tries to come along and explain to you how wonderful buy-and-hold is and how it always works, think about these couple months. Then make a decision whether the upset stomach from watching the markets go up and down, plus the risk of losing some, or possibly all, your money, is worth the few percentage points you might make over the 5 percent or more a C.D. is paying.

L.G.: In July 2006, you launched Sharesleuth.com  with veteran business journalist Christopher Carey, with the stated goal of uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse in publicly traded companies. But business journalists quickly condemned you for your allegedly unethical plan to pay for the site with profits from shorting targeted companies in advance of publication. So far, Sharesleuth.com has investigated two public companies, Xethanol and UTEK, and their stock prices tumbled immediately after publication. This June, Sharesleuth.com attacked a private company, Orthopedic Development. A couple of weeks ago, on the occasion of Sharesleuth.com’s first anniversary, business blogger Gary Weiss  declared your venture “a flop in every way imaginable.” Anything you’d do differently with the benefit of hindsight? Has the site lived up to your expectations? You said you made around $90,000 by shorting Xethanol but were “underwater” on your UTEK trades. In the end, have you made or lost money, and beyond that, was your business model a P.R. mistake? Did you ever hear from the S.E.C. concerning your stock-shorting plan? Do you intend to continue with Sharesleuth.com, or will you pull the plug?

M.C.: Gary Weiss is a nice guy, and I actually like checking out and reading his blog. We agree on more than we disagree on, but Gary’s commenting on Sharesleuth is nothing more than trying to get his name in the paper or a magazine somewhere. Sharesleuth is doing everything it has set out to do. It is there to find companies that are not what they say they are. It is an approach that is not based on having to publish to a schedule or within a number of words. We can spend a year researching a company and write or not write, at our discretion. That freedom alone makes it a success. And as far as my profits on the site, I’ve more than covered my costs with trade ideas brought to me by Chris.

Our emphasis is not on the companies that will make me the most money; it’s on covering the companies that aren’t who they say they are.

Writing the truth about XNL and UTK was great. Making money made it a little nicer.

L.G.: You have said that you read four to five hours a day to keep up. Specifically what publications and websites do you read and visit regularly, and where else do you get your business information?

M.C.: Other than Portfolio? I can’t even begin to list them all. Technology, entertainment, sports, general business . . . Some that I read are Make; PC Magazine; CPU magazine; a Macintosh journal, I think; Adweek; Advertising Age; Film Journal [International]; the Producers Guild [newsletter]; HighDef; BusinessWeek; the Wall Street Journal; the New York Times; Good; Billboard; the Economist; Entertainment Weekly; TV Week; Multichannel News; Broadcasting & Cable; CableWorld; Variety; the Hollywood Reporter; MMA Worldwide; Tapout; Kagan reports; [Street & Smith’s] Sports Business Journal; Forbes; and Fortune—and that’s off the top of my head. Then I probably have RSS feeds from another 100 websites.

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