Top Takes From Real Money

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top five ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and how they played those ideas.

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Ira Sohn Conference

By Tim Melvin
2:30 p.m. EDT At this year's Ira Sohn conference in New York, fund manager David Einhorn laid out another short idea. It may well be worth listening to. In previous years he used the conference to outline the bear case for Allied Capital(ALD Quote) and, most notably, Lehman Brothers at last year's conference. Both calls were spectacular in the extreme.

This year he has Moody's(MCO Quote) in his sights. He says the company has ruined the value of its franchise by giving triple A ratings to companies like AIG(AIG Quote) and MBIA(MBI Quote).

The damage was compounded by assigning top ratings to mortgage-backed securities that turned out to be essentially worthless. Einhorn called on regulators to eliminate ratings agencies as they are destabilizing to financial markets. ...