racemize

revealing this one in the morning, so if you want to take any guesses, get it done!

Andrew is the younger guy right? He seemed like he might actually be decent--did he come from somewhere legit?

I was actually starting to think you were somewhat diversified--I kept seeing threads where you said you had a position for many threads, but perhaps I just know all your positions. :P

doesn't the dataroma neglect some of his other positions (leading to inflated indications of concentration)?

Good idea. However, it seems like some of the better VIC posters drop off that forum. Please post your short list of the better VIC posters. Thanks It seems like VIC's requirement of posting ideas regularly gets a lot of bad ones on there. To me, there seems to be too many ideas at a time...

That's really awesome. Please keep us updated on how it goes over the years.

+1 for this thread. Mostly looking at Pabrai, Buffett, Berkowitz recently. I tend to narrow down ideas by looking at large caps in the hopes for safer investments.

I just leave mine at 10 and adjust the margin of safety to the company.

They are on the hook, but there is a lot of hassle proving that you did not do anything to expose your personal information. It then also takes a week or two for them to return the funds to your account. Haven't experienced it myself, but a couple of people I know who had their cards fraudulently used said the experience was not fun...although they were both here in Canada. I would assume the protocol in the U.S. is not any different. Cheers! I've had it happen to me two or three times now. Honestly wasn't too big a deal, just called them up, and they resolved it. One of the times, BAC was so incompetent, they credited me twice!

Strikes me that one should discount the estimates to account for analyst enthusiasm. I forget the current average rate, but by about 10%? (They also seem to have a problem identifying big jumps.) I agree, I just mean that I pay attention to them if they expect it to grow less than it has in the past. In other words, take the worst of past growth and expected growth, to be conservative.

Ok, here's my thoughts: 1) Really looks like a Buffett type stock, solid earnings growth with only one drop over 16 years (even shrugging off the 2008 crisis), high return on equity and return on total capital, decreasing share count. All nice signs. 2) Low debt! no concerns there. 3) Low margins and lots of stores (that are still increasing), perhaps a Wal-Mart, Costco type of store? Assuming a low cost provider of some sort. 4) Typically I'll ignore estimates on growth future stats unless they are lower. In this case, they are not expected to be lower, so that's a plus (or I guess not a negative, to put it better). I'm not finding too many faults in the numbers, I imagine this one isn't terribly cheap. I'd say the upper end of my interest is around 45 dollars and I'd be increasingly interested as it gets below that. I'd guess market price in the 45-55 range.

Let's see, market cap and shares outstanding. How do I calculate market price again? Bad Norm ;) ha, I forgot it listed outstanding shares. But you'd have to actually think about it to get the share price from that, so don't! Edit: also, it's good to see if it is decreasing, I'm not sure we can remove either of those stats without losing a lot of information.

bleh, I guess the dividend yield gives it away. Stop thinking about that!

Here's the second one, again I don't know the answer yet. This time my wife took out the P/E so we really don't know the price. As I mentioned before, perhaps we should describe the company a bit as well. Let me know if you think we should or not. If consensus says yes, we will in the future. Space for spoilers. Blind_Eval_2.pdf

I like the idea of this, but I see the issue as making the interface much, much better for the new functionality. It is extremely hard to provide new functiaonlity in an intuitive manner. I don't see this as solving the issues that are being attempted...

This actually ended up being pretty great, as I finish reading it. Here's a link to "Great 10 Year Record = Great Future Right?" which is cited in the prior paper: http://www.legend-financial.com/files/Great%2010-Year%20Record%20Great%20Future,%20Right.pdf I'm looking forward to reading that one next.

I think I agree with most every post so far. On the one hand, I thought it was a neat idea so that you wouldn't be influenced by the current market price and would really dive down into the numbers first. Then, as Norm says, I would redo it qualitatively. I also think it is interesting to try to figure out what type of company it is based on its numbers and characteristics. On the other hand, qualitative aspects are so important that the exercise may be meaningless. Mostly, I just thought it was a neat puzzle to work on what the numbers were without having to worry about qualitative aspects. I could also add a brief description of what the company does, so that some qualitative aspects would come in. Buffett has talked about purchasing a company with numbers and a description before, so perhaps it would make it more meaningful? Additionally, I'll only be picking companies that are pretty well known and probably not ones that would be ruled out immediately (e.g., for profit education type companies).

Ok, the company was energizer, ENR. Here's the yahoo stock quote: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ENR%2C+&ql=1 It appears they had a disappointing earnings and the price is now down to ~66 dollars a share or 4.5 billion market cap. Certainly not a steal, but doesn't seem too horrible either, as they have some pretty good brands under their belt. I'll post another one tomorrow.

Oh just a guess on what the market price was as well.

I assume you mean 2.5 B for your price, any thoughts on market?

I'll be revealing the answer to this one tomorrow, so please finish your analysis (and post!) if you want to participate in this one. I'm planning on posting a new one on Friday. Also, please let me know if you like this even if you have not posted. If there's only a few of us enjoying it, then there's not much need for me to post it here.

I've been working through various tax implications on my portfolio and found this: http://www.watheeqa.com/App_Themes/watheeqa/pdf/Lessons%20from%20Warren%20Buffett%20l%20Tweedy%20Brown.pdf it is old and pretty basic, so probably no one needs it. Nonetheless, it may be useful to a few.

I'm not too worried about people looking up anything--they can if they want, the challenge is just for fun any way. Regarding full financials, I guess you mean out of the 10-Ks? I'm just doing it this way because I'm used to value line and it can be done fast.

Thanks for the link, this is something I've been considering as well. We should start an investment thread for this.

I hold a non-consensus view on target PE for the market, and would prefer not to instigate a Macro econ debate. *Ugggh* As for great companies at 8x ... I'm happy to wait. I guess I'm somewhat confused as to why PE for the market or macro matters for individual stocks. Regarding great companies, when do they ever really trade at 8x? Has coke gotten that evaluation in the last thirty years? Maybe in the midst of a crisis, like banks now...