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writser

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  1. Very well done! I'm up ~7.5% in EUR, so around break-even in USD. Not the best year, as always I made some mistakes here and there. Nevertheless I am reasonably content to see my deep value / special situations grab bag holding up in a challenging year. As in 2020, special situations tend not to be completely market neutral in case the shit really hits the fan. This year, ADES was an example of something that might have worked out a year earlier. Management should have simply liquidated as there was absolutely no appetite for a cash box pursuing a speculative SPAC-like deal in 2022. I liked the setup but that was ugly. RBCN was an example of something that worked out very well - if you paid some attention you could make some very decent trades around the Janel tender offer. As in other years there's still quite a bit of fat left on the bones in terms of CVR's, liquidations and delisted instruments for which I simply use brokerage marks. That performance will show up when these instruments pay out (or don't). Noteworthy are a large position in the PDLI liquidation, a position in UDF IV that is potentially very undervalued, a large position in Genkyotex CVR's and a position in the BMY CVR lawsuit. Last year I also added quite a bit of Akouos CVR's to my grab bag last year. Also, a decent (and growing) chunk of my portfolio is in expert market stocks now. Some of these are ridiculously cheap and I am very happy to own them.
  2. @kab60 here you go. Also, congrats on an excellent year! You da man. I'm up either 25% or 40%, depending on where I mark my assets .. The difference is mostly explained by UDFI, which has a last traded price of $1.40 but trades in the secondary market at $6.26 after some good news this year. Same for BMY CVR's, marked at zero but the fully funded ones trade at $1.50 in the secondary market. I also acquired a couple of large tax assets / receivables that do not show up in my brokerage accounts but are definitely worth a few percent. So, whatever, pick the number you like. I'm going with 25%, the additional 15% will show up at some point in time in my CAGR. And on top of the above I own quite a few assets that are now listed in the OTC expert market. Prices there flip all over the place. It feels like this year determining my return is an art rather than a science. More important than the actual number is whether the underlying process was solid during the year and on that front I'm pretty happy. In 2020 I felt like what I was able to achieve was really impeded by lockdowns, having a little kid in the house, being worried, etc. It was a frustrating year. In 2021 we had a much better home setup (better secluded work spots, clearly defined work schedules), i.e. we were much better prepared for Corona / work from home. And I guess I also tempered my expectations a bit regarding what I would be able to do. Even though we had a second kid last year and contractors remodeled our house while we were working from home I felt much better about getting some time and effort into my portfolio. Though perhaps, ex ante, that is also explained by the better results .. In terms of my investing, my biggest strength but also my biggest weakness is that I'm probably too risk-averse. My portfolio is diversified, unlevered and I dabble a lot in special situations. I haven't had a down year since I started investing / trading and my average annual return is about 20% with a 10% standard deviation. So I expect to underperform in bull markets (i.e. you are never going to get 50% p.a. if you own a few merger arbs with an expected 20% IRR) and outperform in bear markets. Unfortunately there hasn't been a real bear market since I started investing .. So I'm pretty happy to keep up with all major indices in a great year. No super large losers this year and no super large winners either. I don't see the need to discuss particular names because I haven't been very active here during the year. Over the years I find myself posting less and less here. With two young kids in the house I don't have time to browse forums all day long and, well, there's just a lot being discussed here that doesn't really fit my style so I feel my time is better spent elsewhere. No hard feelings, I like this place! One last thing to mention, I don't know how you guys feel but I'm not particularly excited about my portfolio (nor the market) right now. No high conviction stuff positions, basically everything is up for sale.
  3. I also looked a bit into OCBC but that seems to be an inferior option to me. First of all, it seems that setting up an account requires a bit more documentation ( https://portal.iocbc.com/accounts/basic-securities-trading-account#apply-online-basic-trading ) which could be a hassle. Note that I haven't really tried to do so, so maybe requirement 3: [quote>Bank statement from a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) licensed bank Latest CPF statement Latest Notice of tax assessment from IRAS can be sidestepped, but it might be difficult to produce these documents. On top of that, far more annoying if I am correct, OCBC offers only trading by phone for Korea: https://portal.iocbc.com/platforms/global-market-access.page . I hate placing orders by phone. It's expensive, error-prone and I find it very annoying to talk English over the phone when both speakers are non-native speakers and have their own mangled accent. Phillip Capital / Securities: same thing: expensive, only over-the-phone trading. That seems like the least favorable option. According to this list: https://the-international-investor.com/comparison-tables#findstockbrokers Swissquote would also work, which could be a simple alternative. Haven't tried that one yet - if I remember correctly somebody here said it wasn't actually possible in practice.
  4. Regarding Boom, I enquired there a few weeks ago about opening an account as a foreigner. This is what they told me: [quote> Our individual account opening procedures is simple.  You need to fill in an application form (cash / margin) and submit the below documents to us: https://www.boom.com/en/open_account/ 1)  Passport copy (certified true copy) 2)  Home address proof (ie. credit card / electricity bills within 3 months that shows the client's name and address) (copy) You need to mail in the application and arrange a witness to certify your passport copy as well as the signature on your account application form. The witness can be Justice of Peace, or professional (Bank Manager, Certified Accountant, Solicitor or Notary Public).    Please note that U.S. citizens / residents will not be eligible for trading in the U.S. market.    Please mail the originally signed application and other documents to our office by post: Customer Services Dept. Monex Boom Securities (H.K.) Limited Room 2501, 25/F., AIA Tower 183 Electric Road North Point Hong Kong After your BOOM account is set up, you can transfer funds directly from your bank account in your personal name in overseas via telegraphic funds transfer to one of our bank accounts in Hong Kong (HSBC / Hang Seng Bank / Standard Chartered Bank / Bank of China (HK) Limited): https://www.boom.com/en/customer_service/funds_management/ That seems very doable. I live in Europe - not sure if the same applies to US residents who want to open an account.
  5. Many Dutchies here .. Lekker bezig!
  6. Yeah, this is not a conversion. Check out the ISIN of JARLF: BMG507361001 . BMG means country of domicile is Bermuda. That's not an ADR, an ADR is a US domiciled instrument and as such it's ticket always starts with USxxxxxx. Even more important, you can see that the ISIN of the Singapore listed stock is also BMG507361001 ( https://links.sgx.com/1.0.0/corporate-information/1327 ). ISIN's are unique so this means that you still own the same instrument. No wrapper, no anything, this is literally the stock that is traded in Singapore. Stocks can be traded on different exchanges and the resulting positions are held in different depots. E.g. BMG507361001 is tradable in Germany, Singapore and the US. Now, if you buy in Germany and you sell in Singapore on the same day you have a problem because these positions are held in different depots and as such will not cancel each other out. But your broker can usually facilitate this with a depot transfer, i.e. ask them to transfer the shares held in Germany (at Euroclear or whatever) to Singapore. So the one thing that could have gone wrong here is that your broker decided autonomously to transfer your SG shares to the US depot and if you want to sell them in Singapore you have to ask your broker to transfer them back. I think it is very unlikely that this happened because such a transfer actually costs money and this is definitely not something that happens arbitrarily / automatically. If I had to guess I'd say that you are just experiencing a software issue where your broker messes up the ticker and if you sell in Singapore everything will be fine. But I'd check that just to be sure. Or try to sell one share in Singapore, see what happens. If you would own JMHLY (check it out, it has a US ISIN) that would actually imply a conversion and that would be REALLY strange. Because suddenly you'd own a different instrument with potential different tax treatment, withholding taxes, ADR fees, etc. That is definitely not something a decent broker should be able to do without your consent.
  7. Hah, yes, looking forward to that one. All the angry IMDB reviews probably mean that I will enjoy it a lot. We've been watching Bosch. Season one is a bit cheeky but two and three are better, imho. Some actors from the Wire, has a bit of the same vibe too in its best scenes. Though of course it's not nearly as good. Still, nothing is, and Bosch is very enjoyable.
  8. Slightly off-topic, but people were shitting all over Bruce a few years ago, but he has actually been doing very well lately - of course that doesn't make the news. https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/fairx/performance Up 47% in 2020, top 2 percentile performance for the past 1,3, and 5 years. I like his approach. Really seems to be doing his own thing.
  9. I actually think the Kelly Criterion can be useful to play around with a bit if you have never done that - just to get a feel for the theory of position sizing and to compare relative position sizes (i.e. why do I have a 5% position in Google but only a 0.5% position in Microsoft even though my thought process about both names is about the same), but I agree that in practice in the stock market its application is limited and I hardly ever use it. l I think for me there are three prime drivers of position sizing: 1. Your personal situation (age, net worth, do you have a job, etc). If you are young and have a good job you can afford to take some risks. It doesn't work out? Write it off as a life lesson, worst case. But if you are a relatively poor retiree? You are fucked. 2. (downside) Risk. What happens if your thesis does not work out as expected? Are you buying a cash box or a growth story at 200x price / sales? E.g. "never lose money". I'd be extremely hesitant to put a large amount of money in a warrant or equity stub or something with an equal risk profile. 3. Level of confidence - the most tricky one. How sure are you that this is a good idea? Do you think you can correctly estimate all tail risks? What's the chance that you are missing an important piece of the puzzle? Can you point out what mistake others are making in their valuation? Why does this opportunity exist? What would you do if the stock cratered 50% today? The big problem with number 2 and especially number 3 is that they are very hard to quantify. A skeptical view of your own abilities is required. Often when I see people making huge bets / running concentrated portfolio's I feel like they are overestimating their own abilities. In that case Kelly isn't going to help you either because you will always overestimate your own edge and underestimate the risks. I guess for me it often comes down to: buy as much as you feel 'comfortable with' - and probably a bit less. I know, that's a vague concept, but if you are thinking all the time about a specific position or are anxious something will go wrong it's probably too big. And (at least in my case) very often plans and ideas turn out to be shit, no matter how confident you are initially. So even if you think: I would be totally comfortable with this being a 5% position, why not start with 3%? Often the exact moment of buying is not that time-critical anyway. So you can take it easy. Nibble a bit, take a break.
  10. There was an interesting article in the Economist recently touching on that subject: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/01/02/sars-cov-2-is-following-the-evolutionary-rule-book . I am unfortunately not an evolutionary biologist but that makes sense to me. There is no evolutionary advantage in a virus becoming more deadly. In fact it is probably a disadvantage, both because dead people cannot spread a virus effectively and because society would go in lockdown XXXXL if a new mutation is ten times as deadly. I guess that doesn't make it impossible in the short term though.
  11. Thanks for sharing that, Befimmo looks like a reasonable REIT indeed at first glance.
  12. I know I'm bumping a very old thread here, but does anyone have experience with Monex Boom? https://www.boom.com/en/why_boom/ . Based on what I can find it seems like one of the only ways to access the South Korean stock market. I'd vastly prefer Fidelity, as mentioned in this thread, but they don't allow European customers. Or are there any other alternatives I am missing?
  13. Do periods where value outperform correlate with rising interest rates and vice versa? Might be one of the reasons value is taking such a beating the past few years. This seems like such a logical fundamental underpinning of growth versus value investing but it’s a concept that I never really thought about. Thanks for sharing.
  14. A couple of you sent some nice messages after my last post, thanks for that. It felt good to write down some of my frustrations. But just to be clear: we're all healthy, the kid is awesome and I managed to eke out a small profit. All in all that's damn good for a terrible year like 2020 and I'm pretty much the last person you should feel sympathy for. John deserves that and the countless others who lost loved ones. Not to mention people who got fired, worked their ass off in the hospital, own a small business, etc. This was a terrible year for a lot of people and I was just whining from inside the stock market bubble. Something to keep in mind. Again, my condolences John.
  15. But even in that case you didn't outperform the MSCI World Mistake Adjusted index. It was up 743.4% last year, as determined on December, 31, after the close. The mistake adjustment committee determined that everybody who was not 100% long Tesla in 2020 made a one-time mistake.
  16. Here we are, the day of reckoning! First of all, I'm a bit surprised that currency is neglected in the topic again. Euro returns are quite a bit worse than dollar returns in 2020 due to all the money being printed by uncle Sam. When John (my condolences) says he is down 3% I assume that that is in EUR, which means a performance in dollar of about +6%. Quite a difference. Anyway. My after-tax net return is about ~5% in EUR or ~14% in USD. I don't really keep track of pre-tax / post-tax returns - I only manage my own money, I pay a flat wealth tax and my goal is to minimize after-tax returns so I include stuff like tax credits generated during the year in my portfolio performance. My ten year CAGR is now about 18.x% without a single down year. My style can best be described as 'garbage sifting'. That's not really a style I expect to outperform with in a raging bull-market. And it didn't :) . I'm reasonably happy with what happened in March: even though I was about fully invested (as I almost always am) and some special situations went bust my portfolio wasn't down a crazy amount and I could still sleep very well. Mostly I kept on doing what I always do. I'm not the guy who makes big calls, macro bets or bold 'recovery plays' or whatever. What was very frustrating this year though (investing-wise - overall it was actually very satisfying) was having a one year old kid. Before the kid I used to work in the living room. Well, guess how that worked out early 2020. The shit hits the fan, markets are down 5% a day, country goes in lockdown, daycare closes, and both me and my wife try to work in the living room while a one year old is eating and destroying everything in sight. Good luck trying to analyze a mortgage REIT when your kid is obsessed by the blue power button on your computer. Biggest crisis of the decade but for me it was basically impossible to get into the right frame of mind and find the time to do some serious work. We ended up making a small office upstairs where we split our time. Still, we are again in lockdown now and again it is very hard to get serious work done. I've looked into hiring some office space during the year and maybe that's something I have to reconsider this year - especially given that there's another kid on the way. This whole work-from-home situation led me to being frustrated and tired too often, which led to some unforced errors and sloppy due diligence. And I find that grating. I'm perfectly content with looking in the garbage can while others are up 500% with Tesla or whatever but at least I'd like to feel that I gave it my best effort and that wasn't always the case this year. So, overall I'm a bit salty. I need to find a better investing / life balance and if that doesn't happen during the next few years I will consider renting an office, outsourcing my investment work, putting it on hold or changing my style to be a bit more passive / low turnover. I like what I do and I'm confident that my approach to investing has its merits and a risk/return profile that I am content with so probably I will just go on but I'm keeping my options open. The end goal is to maximize happiness in life, not performance on the stock exchange. So far these goals have always more or less aligned for me as I love doing this but in 2020 that wasn't always the case. Also, this is probably something for another topic but I didn't find this forum a particularly compelling / value-adding place to be in 2020. I find myself spending less and less time here and moved on to some other places. Maybe that's just me being a sore loser though in 2020! Thanks to thepupil for opening thousands of interesting real estate threads this year. Also, the GRIF thread was great, polite and worthwhile. You guys got me very close to buying but I never pulled the trigger. And a big shoutout to alwaysinvert for having lots of cool original Skandi ideas. Really happy with my Treasure ASA position this year and I think it has great prospects for 2021. Also a shoutout to Gregmal. Seems like he actually got more reasonable and nuanced here during a year in which a lot of people didn't. Didn't see that coming - that's probably me being fixed in my own ways. This just from the top of my head - please don't feel offended if you helped me in some way or another or posted cool stuff and I didn't mention you. And finally a shoutout to all the people working in daycare. I seriously think I would have a burn-out within a week. Onwards to 2021. Looking forward to it!
  17. I agree. What's the upside of managing their money? Surely you can envisage the downside.
  18. Good Twitter thread: . We shall see how this works out in practice.
  19. What's our edge here? How do we explain the current spread?
  20. It’s very good, but no way it beats Goldfinger! That one has the best theme song, best Oddjob, best gadgets, best car, best Bond actor and the most memorable quotes. My main issue with Casino Royale is that if you have played any poker those scenes are just a bit too cringeworthy. I’m currently watching “El Candidato” on Amazon. Was recommended by Hugh Laurie somewhere. It’s very good actually. Think “Narcos” or “Sicario” (which I also think is a great gritty movie, underrated). After that, “The boys” season 2. Bit afraid I will be disappointed, because season 1 was so good.
  21. Well, that's a good question. Frankly I think a ton of people don't give a shit about valuation. They either don't do it at all and just try to sell to the next fool or they do it in such a preconceived way that they might as well not have done it. Tesla is probably a case in point. But if you study and model the company carefully and you get to a valuation of $10k / share, sure, I guess you can call that value investing (though I personally think you should work on your business valuation skills). But others would probably not consider this value investing because they define it as: - taking care of the downside, like you suggested. - buying a bunch of companies in the lowest percentile with regards to a certain multiple. - buying stocks that everybody else hates. - buying a stock that's cheap according to a spreadsheet. - jerking off while spouting Benjamin Graham quotes. So, does it still work? Depends on who you ask and what their definition is. The self-proclaimed Tesla value investor with a price target of $10k certainly thinks value investing is working this year .. That's why I think the question is kind of pointless and the key to investing is to get the modelling right in specific situations. If Chou is losing money the interesting question is not: "is value investing still working" but: "why did Chou buy X, Y and Z, what did he think at the time and why didn't these ideas work out?" Of course those are hard questions that require actual work to answer so we don't do that and dabble around a bit here about whether Tesla is a value stock or not. As an aside, I think a lot of value investors are nerds and so they gravitate to the 'mathy' situations, i.e. low multiples, tangible book value. So do I. However, if you studied Amazon carefully in 2002 and came to the conclusion that it was a superb company with enormous growth prospects and that it was way too cheap, I'd consider that value investing too. I guess that requires more business acumen, risk tolerance and self-confidence and less math so it attracts a different crowd. I think there is not a lot of cross-over between these two groups. The business guys piss on the valuation spreadsheets, the math nerds piss on the 500x PE multiple. In both cases that's a weakness though, not a strength.
  22. I think that's why this discussion always gets confusing. What is 'value investing'? I think that is up for discussion. My definition (I'm not saying it is the correct definition): buying a company for less than intrinsic value. That can be Facebook at 200x earnings, if you have done your homework and think it is worth more. It can also mean: buy some crap at a low multiple, if you have done your homework and think it is worth more. In both cases, the key is: doing your homework. Thinking about the business, stakeholders, incentives and valuation.. The rest is mostly a philosophical discussion as far as I am concerned. If you buy stocks blindly because they trade at low multiples you have not done your homework. If you buy stocks blindly because of growth prospects you have not done your homework either. Maybe these strategies worked in the past, maybe they didn't. Maybe they work now, maybe they don't. Personally I don't care too much.
  23. That's also my approach to active investing.
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