Leon Cooperman's Top Ideas

Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors is speaking at the Value Investing Congress.Mr. Cooperman assumes the U.S. will remain in a slow growth environment, and will not go back into a recession. Cooperman cited Warren Buffett and Jeff Immelt of GE (NYSE: GE), who said the same thing, that the U.S. economy will not go back into a recession. He noted that one out of every five employees in the country is either unemployed or underemployed, and we have to watch for situations such as the Arab Spring. Cooperman believes that 2011 is not going to be like 2008, as he believes the next crisis to hit us will be in public finance. He believes that crises do not repeat, that the next crisis is often very different from the prior one.He thinks that real growth is starting to accelerate, and that third quarter GDP could approach 2.5%. He also does expect sane policies to prevail in Europe, and that Europe will be able to ring fence the debt problems in Greece. He mentioned names like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), KKR Financial (NYSE: KFN), Transocean (NYSE: RIG) and E-Trade Financial (NASDAQ: ETFC), Sallie Mae (NYSE: SLM) and Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) as some of his top long ideas. He likes Apple because demand for the iPhone 4S is still incredibly strong. He mentioned Transocean because of the demand for deep water drilling. He believes that E-Trade is a solid investment as the company winds down its mortgage portfolio. Ken Griffin of Citadel Investments was on the board of E-Trade, and it has been mentioned as a potential takeover play by one of the other discount brokers.Cooperman, formerly of Goldman Sachs, believes that Sallie Mae could be worth $19 per share, and he likes Boston Scientific because the company has 20% free cash flow.