writser

http://alphavulture.com/2015/01/17/diversification-is-underrated/ This forum member makes a case for diversification, I think his advice is much better for the majority of investors.

Well, trying to cap exchange rates was doomed to fail anyway at some point. My guess is that interest rate decreases are (viewed as) a positive thing and possibly QE is expected and priced in? Another reason could be that asset managers were restricted in investing in Swiss stocks due to the cap mechanism and that that restriction is gone now. Maybe a bit too far-fetched but I'm just trying to make sense of things. Almost all large Swiss names (Novartis, Nestle, Credit Suisse, ABB, Syngenta) outperform today in USD / gold / EUR / terms on huge volume. EWL up 4% over the day. I don't believe that the market is so inefficient that these moves are just arbitrary.

Congrats, extremely impressive. Would you mind sharing your strategy roughly? Microcap / large cap? US / international? 5 positions or 50 positions? Heavy turnover? Sorry for all the questions, just trying to get a general gist of what you are doing.

Unfortunately I have to agree. A (probably) very smart 20-something who runs a small, extremely concentrated portfolio with option protection that compounded for 65% CAGR in 7 years and you are aiming for 60% annually. You could be the next superstar but a random investor from that subset is extremely likely to blow up at some point imho.

May I ask how old you are and what amount you are roughly investing compared to your income?

First world problem: lifestyle inflation :) .

I get from mrholty's post that he was planning/hoping to retire at age 40 with $4M. If you are planing to live off of your investments for 30-50+ years, you need to think about inflation. I think 3 to 4% is a fairly conservative withdrawal rate that is taking into account inflation. Several sources 'out there on the internet' have been discussing this ad nauseum. Question is whether you can live on $160k annually. I could _easily_. But depends on whether you have a spouse, kids, lifestyle, where you live, etc.

Yeah, really appreciated. Usually people only post their success stories.

Charles Bradley is amazing. Love his music too.

2012: +22.0%. 2013: +24.1% 2014: +17.5%. I made a few stupid mistakes during the year. Most notably shorting CYNK which blew up completely in my face (position sizing ...). Nevertheless I am reasonably happy all things considered. Previous years I held lots of cash (>30%) and was very restricted in my investing due to my job. I quit my job in 2014 and during the year I have deployed almost all my excess cash and now I have a diversified portfolio of cheap (mostly small cap) stuff. I also learned a lot about investing during the year.

+1. This thread is about portfolio returns. Comparing apples with oranges is useless. (Even though 30% is nice!). I'll post mine when I get back from vacation.

I was trying to say that it is relatively easy (for me) to get sidetracked: I was working on updating price-targets for a few stocks I own but here I am again, posting stupid stuff in a stupid thread. All the time I wasted on the internet .. :P Hmm. I thought that was exactly what value investing is all about.

Biggest regret (investing-wise): spending too much time on stuff like this thread (and other distractions) and too little time on actually valuing obscure companies.

There are multiple ones but I like this one: http://www.changedetection.com/comparepages.html .

A week ago you predicted a market crash, now you're almost fully invested. Good for you. How on earth did this thread get so much attention ..

Couldn't agree more. If you think a company is hugely overvalued I think it is actually beneficial for the stock market as a whole to point this out - in theory it should dampens bubbles / crashes. Granted, there are some shady short sellers out there but also on the long side shady promotors exist. I think the ethics depend on how you present your case - not on whether you are long or short. Or at least, that's how it should be.

Have you even tried searching the forum first? http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/google-spreadsheet-tips-and-tricks/

What made you sell Fujimak? The primary reason is for a tax loss. I actually think I almost broken even in yen, but the yen has depreciated from 95 per USD to 116 today so I am down 20% or so. I used a bit of the proceeds to buy Riken Keiki (7734). But in 2weeks it will be 30 days since I sold so I can buy back in. I just might. Mind you this is after they revised their loss estimate from -39yen to -16yen. What do you think about Fujimak? As far as I can see it is still very cheap so I was surprised about you selling. I figured you had some new insights and was wondering what I had missed. I live in a country where we have a net worth tax as opposed to a capital gains tax so I always forget to consider the tax angle.

What made you sell Fujimak?

I was expecting real tractor beams.

Yes, afaik. Basically I always more or less ignore the company level.

Interview with Peterffy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/11/05/billionaire-thomas-peterffy-practically-invented-digital-trading-now-he-wants-to-be-your-broker/ . Decent read. p.s.: Parsad, maybe you could close / merge the threads below and move this one to the 'investment ideas' section? It's confusing to find the right IBKR thread everytime you want to post something http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/ibkr-interactive-brokers/msg51374/#msg51374 http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/ibkr-interactive-brokers-11675/msg194894/#msg194894

Does anybody else here have a Goodreads account to track what you have read / want to read? Mine: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/22378380-restirw . I recently enjoyed the latest Peter F. Hamilton book, "The abyss beyong dreams". "Ancillary justice" was also great. But I'm a bit of a SF nerd. Snowball and the Paulson / Geithner books were my latest non-fiction reads.

Congrats. You own 100% of the equity?

Today I stumbled upon a blog about investing in Japan I had never noticed before. It has some potentially interesting ideas and features a series of posts on shareholder activism in Japan. Nice read to get a feeling for the situation over there. http://undervaluedjapan.blogspot.de/2014/04/the-little-post-about-shareholder.html http://undervaluedjapan.blogspot.de/2014/05/the-little-post-about-shareholder.html http://undervaluedjapan.blogspot.nl/2014/06/the-little-post-about-shareholder.html Bit unrelated to net-nets but I didn't want to open a new topic for this.