writser

Though frankly you could also describe Berkshire that way.

Idea: when the market goes down the earth will turn red, the graph will go downwards instead of upwards and the plane crashes into the first bar of the graph. Should be possible to automate.

What ratios do you look at to determine value? I mainly use P/E (price / earlier price) but more suggestions would be appreciated.

Depends on your style I guess, but for me personally I'd have to disagree. If you look at, for example, the ideas Nonamestocks is posting, liquidity is already problematic if you want to invest $10k+. Some of his ideas are super interesting but already too illiquid for me. This is maybe an extreme example but over the past few years I have invested a lot in attractive OTC / foreign illiquid situations where it is very hard to build up a decent position at decent prices even if you are working with <$1m. Also, in stocks like that there is the occasional 'odd trade' where somebody jams through the order book or when there is a relatively big seller on a given day. If you can pick up, for example, a few hundred shares of Webco industries or Conduril at or below the bid then that can significantly boost your results if you manage <$100k but it doesn't really affect the needle if you are worth >$1m. Another example where a small portfolio really is an advantage is the 'odd lot' provisions in certain tender offers / mergers. A few years ago there was the Norilsk Nickel trade where you could basically make ~50% "risk free" on a notional amount of up to $20k. That is a 10% return on a $100k portfolio. Even more thanks to those brave enough to post their 'less than inspirational' returns. Bragging about your results in a bull market is easy and this thread is close to becoming a giant circle-jerk :) .

Yeah, I corrected the poll.

Yeah, no currency in the poll makes results a bit arbitrary. Would be nice anyway if people give a small explanation besides just a percentage.

Both your suggestions have been incorporated. Now let the games commence!

What's this, no 2017 results thread yet? Did we all underperform? Still a hangover from Christmas? I'll kick off things. My result: up 23% in EUR (37% in USD). Currencies were a huge headwind, most notably EUR/USD but also the pound had a negative effect due to a large merger position. I don't really mind, currencies should even out over the long term. Destination Maternity was a trainwreck this year that ended up costing me close to 4%. Positive contributors were Retail Holdings, my Japan basket, Italian real estate and Conduril, but most notably my corporate actions basket. Sapec was an exceptional opportunity but lots of other deals added small gains over the year that really add up. STRP, FWP, ESSX, CAB, KZ, PERFQ, QUSA, SWC are a few that closed this year. I also participated in a boatload of microcap US bank deals. As always I'm lagging significantly behind my personal benchmark but I'm getting used to that. My stated results are probably too conservative. I generated a huge tax deductible with the Sapec deal this year that I value at last traded price but it is worth significantly more. I also have positions in non-traded warrants (PRMW) and CVR's valued at zero that should pay out next year (Safeway) or where at the very least fair value increased significantly (DYAX). I expect a significant cheque from the BINDQ liquidating trust soon (also valued at zero) and from Tejoori (marked at last price). All this stuff should add another 5%-7% over the next year or so. With all the exotic non-traded securities, CVR's, tax reclaims and tax deductibles I'm collecting determining performance becomes more and more an art rather than a science. I only manage my own money so I don't really care about super-exact performance numbers y/y. Long term CAGR is the most important to me - that's now ~22% for the six years I've been doing this more or less full-time. Probably even more important than the actual results: am I happy with my decision-making this year? As always, the answer is: meh. I'm happy with: + Most importantly, my 6-year CAGR is still over 22% and if I can sustain even one-third of that over the long run I'm pretty much set. + I'm generating my results with a somewhat conservative portfolio, I hardly ever have a >10% position and most of my holdings are either short-term corporate actions or have a conservative balance sheet. + For several reasons I'm funnelling more and more cash into corporate actions. This is a space with high turnover and where it is relatively easy to measure performance. Based on my results over the past few years I think I can assume I generate some alpha here. - I'm probably too cautious with position sizing sometimes: even when I'm convinced an idea is very good I almost shit my pants when I try to up it above a 5% allocation. - I'm too lazy: I generate / collect a lot of ideas but I often have a quick opinion about a stock without doing extended research as, for example, Picasso did on FELP the past few years. - I have a tendency to sell positions too fast, i.e. I buy a merger at a 4% spread, then sell it at 1% a week before the closing. - When I get bored I occasionally spew away some pocket change trying to flip a bitcoin stock or shorting some pump & dump. STOP DOING THAT! That's all. Ended up a bit longer than I expected. Happy new year!

The Hyperion saga by Dan Simmons. Lord of the rings. Reminiscences of a stock operator. Fwiw I think most books about investing are not worth reading twice. Either you get the concepts or you probably never will. After that you are imho better off getting your hands dirty. You won’t learn differential calculus (cooking, sex, poker) either by re-reading Kreyszig ten times: you have to practice. Though periodically re-reading Kahneman or something similar about behavioral investing is probably not a bad idea to remind yourself how stupid you are.

I will teach them a lesson by posting terrible ideas that will lose them a shitload of money! Wait .. I'm already doing that.

heh.

I have used Excel a lot in the past but for what I'm doing now Google Sheets with Google Finance is just a better tool. - Easy to collaborate with other users. You can work on the same sheet (with live prices) at the same time. - Sheets work (with live prices) on my pc, phone, laptop and tablet without installing any software and/or plugins. - Built-in support for live web-scraping. - Completely free. Excel with Bloomberg / IB API can probably be used as a replacement but collaborating on documents and/or working with them on a variety of devices is not as easy AFAIK. I like the Excel Bloomberg plugin and have worked extensively with it but it costs a ridiculous amount of money if you have a small shop or are a retail investor. Also a side note: I am not offended at all but I disagree with your notion that Excel is the only "professional tool" to use - especially if you are a simple value investor. Since I started using Google Sheets I have never missed functionality from Excel. (apart from the fact that you can't build macro's in the sheet of your colleague playing porn soundtracks and threatening to erase all their work if they don't bring you coffee.)

Have you thought about using excel with the IB API? Yeah, something like that could work. Or (make somebody) write a simple program to export prices from the IB API to CSV format and import those in Google Docs. If I use XML queries to import all prices from FT / yahoo / BB websites my sheets will become unusable I'm afraid. For now my strategy is waiting and hoping Google doesn't shut down the Google Finance Sheet functionality. There is probably no free alternative that works just as well.

I really hope they don't shut it down. Would be a huge pain to find a replacement for the collection of Google Sheets (with Google Finance pricing) that I've built over the past few years.

Thanks for the list! Will look into it. Sold some Japanese stocks than ran up last year, could use a few new ones. If I remember correctly you own many more Japanese stocks, right?

Not saying I disagree but:

Because it went up the most.

Well, in terms of portfolio management it doesn’t really matter, right? You’d still rather own cash beforehand.

I think it would: in a crisis you'd be able to deploy that cash at very attractive valuations. People mention Berkshire as antifragile because it can make nice acquisitions during a downturn - if you hold cash you can do that yourself. If stocks go down 50% your cash is suddenly worth twice as much.

cash?

IMPORTRANGE is the command you need: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093340?hl=en IMPORTRANGE("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/abcd123abcd123", "sheet1!A1:C10")

FWIW the economist on cryptocurrencies: https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/11/greater-fool-theory-0

And what would smart miners do if chips suddenly get twice as efficient?

Yeah, should be possible but haven't tried myself.

Ok maybe Trump isn't the right comparison. Let's just say the guy is high-risk, high-reward. He almost blew up in the dot-com crisis and it wouldn't surprise me if he does it again. The Softbank balance sheet isn't exactly my cup of tea. But this is getting off-topic. I've been buying OCRX and a tiny bit of RCII. Lots of cash incoming next few weeks, no great ideas.