writser

I think Richard Dawkins believes he is helping the world as well. He probably sincerely thinks that rooting out religion will help the world forward, preventing wars, promoting equal rights, etc. What's the difference? I think you're quite quickly judging the 'admirability' of the hearts of two people you've never met. Lol, is this really your line of defense? As I pointed out before: religion having an impact does not imply that gods exists. Though I appreciate how you skillfully ignore all my arguments and keep repeating what you said before, followed by the powerful "Come on now man!". What's next? You'll threaten to beheaden me if I still don't believe you? I think you'd have a very hard time coming up with a group of respected economists who all agree Buffett is just a lucky fluke. Even the 'inventor' of EMH, Eugene Fama, has been updating his models. That's the differenec between science and religion: you don't have to stick with your beliefs if evidence suggests otherwise. Well, if an allmighty being intervened in WWII he did, as I pointed out before, a ****ing terrible job. It's a pity that you fall back to your old line of defense: "well, you're an atheist so you have no right to judge anything". First of all, you said it was a terrible event in YOUR eyes. You don't know what God thinks about it. So that makes your opinion equally valid as mine. Second, as somebody in this thread pointed out (you said you'd come back on it but you have ignored it so far) even if God thinks something is immoral: why should we believe that? On what principles did he base his moral system and why should it be better than others? If you think my moral system is arbitrary, then why should God's one be any different? It's a pity that after ~20 pages we're back at page one, you just keep repeating the same arguments ad nauseam.

Good points. What about all people who are forced to say 'so help me God' by law? And while I am it: how about we start working on Christmas and Good Friday and take a day off on Darwin's birthday instead? Lots of posting since I last took a peek at this topic. In case of the market analogy, the nice thing is that sure, I could say that, but then you could present me the track record of Warren Buffett or you could point out certain inefficiencies in the market and I'd be forced to reconsider my opinion, due to the evidence you present. I'm still waiting for that. You give it a try but you make several errors while doing so. First of all, children all over the world have a relationship with Santa Claus that changed their lives. Your line of reasoning would imply Santa Claus exists as well. Logical mistake: Lots of people believe in A -> A is true. Second, you make no distinction between 'believing that Nessie exists' vs. 'Nessie exists'. Beliefs can have an effect on people, regardless of whether they are true or not. Your mistake: religion A influences people -> A's god exist. So again, I'm not really impressed by your arguments. Yeah, that's a classic. If we can't find God it is obviously because he doesn't want us to know that he exists. This is a sickening analogy because it implies that God let Hitler kill millions of jews just to find out whether Adolf was 'loyal with his heart'. Sure, he could simply have told Adolf not to do it but that wasn't a good enough test of faith .. **** free will, just save some lives if you are so powerful. With regards to your Quantum Mechanics theories: when you first brought it up you said QM 'suggests' all kinds of human interconnectedness. When pressed upon the issue, you weaken your statement and just say 'it may explain' stuff. That's something completely different. The first statement 'suggests' you have some mythical evidence. The second statement just says 'well, you can't rule it out'. Exactly! Quantum mechanics doesn't rule out the existence of supernatural beings and it doesn't prove they exist either. That's why you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. I hope we can finally agree on that.

And you do it again :( . Quantum mechanics suggests nothing about humans being 'spiritually connected' or about 'a sense of belonging'. Let me repeat that: absolutely nothing! QM is just a set of formulae describing the behavior of very small particles / waves. All the other stuff: you made that up. Arguments like these really make me cringe. In fact, I would not even call the above an argument. It's just gibberish. Please note again that I didn't state that QM invalidates your arguments. I just said that it doesn't validate them. Do you understand the difference? It's like we're talking about soft drinks and you try to prove that Coke is superior to Pepsi because of .... the Pythagorean theorem. A^2 + B^2 = C^2 ergo Coca Cola tastes better. You bring up a completely unrelated subject that serves no point in the discussion, except for trying to convince people (yourself?) by sounding very intellectual. Unfortunately that is a strategy successfully employed by priests and charlatans all over the world. And again, you totally avoid any mention of your research on theism. ;) Doesn't QM suggest that everything in the universe is interconnected? A simple yes or no will suffice. The problem with your question is that 'everything and 'interconnected' are very vague terms. Depending on their interpretation you can answer this question either way. I assume you are referring to quantum entanglement and similar effects. Do they exist? I think so. Does that mean that all humans are connected on a spiritual level (which I think is what you imply)? No, absolutely not. That's a very big 'leap of faith' you make (of course that was to be expected). In other words: just because A could in theory explain B does not mean that A implies B. The fact that Loch Ness is large enough to hide a monster does not imply that the monster exists ... Why would I look for something subtle? As far as I am concerned gods and yetis are uninteresting fairytales and I'll change my mind if somebody catches one. I don't see the point of wasting my time to try to find vague footprints in the snow. Others have been trying that for centuries without any tangible results. I'd rather do something more productive for society, like having this discussion.

And you do it again :( . Quantum mechanics suggests nothing about humans being 'spiritually connected' or about 'a sense of belonging'. Let me repeat that: absolutely nothing! QM is just a set of formulae describing the behavior of very small particles / waves. All the other stuff: you made that up. Arguments like these really make me cringe. In fact, I would not even call the above an argument. It's just gibberish. Please note again that I didn't state that QM invalidates your arguments. I just said that it doesn't validate them. Do you understand the difference? It's like we're talking about soft drinks and you try to prove that Coke is superior to Pepsi because of .... the Pythagorean theorem. A^2 + B^2 = C^2 ergo Coca Cola tastes better. You bring up a completely unrelated subject that serves no point in the discussion, except for trying to convince people (yourself?) by sounding very intellectual. Unfortunately that is a strategy successfully employed by priests and charlatans all over the world.

That's my style. But I'll admit that I'm a bit annoyed that you try to include quantum physics in your supernatural theories. You start by asserting that you feel prostitution is 'wrong'. To defend that you bring up religion. And to defend your religion you start talking about quantum physics. Your whole line of reasoning gets more and more convoluted as you get pushed into a corner. Quantum physics have nothing to do with the ethics of visiting a hooker. It's just math. And particles / waves / cats in boxes. And I think it's a pity that you have to mix that into the discussion to try to make a point. Why don't you just admit that you don't have a logical explanation for the things you believe in? That would be completely fine with me. Instead you are trying to rationalize your beliefs in (what I think is) a shaky way. Why? It's pointless. That's why they are called 'beliefs'. Please note that I try not to argue about the validity of your beliefs, just about the way you try to defend them. All arguments you brought up so far for 'your god' can equally be used by the ISIS crazies in Iraq to defend their beheadings of children yet you feel morally superior to us non-believers. What aspects of theism do you think I need to know more about? I hope you won't force me to read Quantum Faith :) .

I think you are already hooked up to that machine. It's called: 'religion'. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside & provides an answer to all difficult questions as long as you have it on. I prefer the real life. Frankly I am not that interested in discussing your imaginary constructs, I was just pointing out that quantum physics have nothing to do with religion. You are not even making a point here, it's just mumbo-jumbo and a disgrace to people who actually study in the field. For some reason believers in the Christian god have a tendency to turn to science to validate their beliefs. Why? Your arguments for the existence of one or more gods do not become extra convincing because you read something about quantum physics in reader's digest and incorporate that into your posts. Just keep science and faith separated. It's bad for both.

I've read on this forum that Buffett should've bought Amazon and Salesforce. We are at that point already.

Please don't pollute your arguments for religion with gibberish about quantum physics. Pseudo-science doesn't help explaining your case to rational people - it only makes it more convoluted, like creationists trying to explain how we lived together with dinosaurs. Again you demonstrate nicely why people tend to believe in arbitrary supernatural stuff. It's hard to accept that maybe the universe makes no 'sense' and there is no 'explanation' for everything. Back in the days we needed an explanation for lightning (Thor, Zeus) and the sun (Ra, Helios). In 2014 people still need an explanation for life itself and the morality of humans (God, Allah, Buddha).

Suicide coverage leads to more suicides but you can't expect a mental patient to act rational as several others pointed out. If anything you should blame the media.

I hate to go back on-topic but the latest issue of the economist featured a couple of interesting articles and interviews on prostitution: www.economist.com/news/leaders/21611063-internet-making-buying-and-selling-sex-easier-and-safer-governments-should-stop www.economist.com/news/briefing/21611074-how-new-technology-shaking-up-oldest-business-more-bang-your-buck www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/08/interview-sex-worker I thought these were good articles. Practical approach & no preaching.

Wrong again. If I am invested in, say, Fannie Mae, because I believe that the court will reverse the 2012 Amendment that sweeps away all of their capital -- explain to me how there is "no way to definitively prove" whether I was right or wrong. Why would the actual result of the litigation not "prove out the strength of [the investment case]"? Oh...all this time you spent telling me that using results was the wrong method. But I guess that you're getting around to my view. You realize in these scenarios you're looking at an investment case after the event happened? Markets reflect information that flows into them such as the FNMA court verdict or what TSLA's gross margin will be and that is what drives market returns, they do not simply appear out of thin air. Furthermore all value investors depend on the market recognizing value at some point, and if the market never recognizes the value of your holdings, you will not be a very successful value investor. Frankly, I find your disdain for investing in these names to be pretty amusing, it seems that you think that buying TSLA or AMZN is just throwing your money in a set of random outcomes, and which leads to some random price movements on a screen. I have no interest in correcting this view. Speaking of pigs, my view is, "why argue with a fool when you can bet against him". I'll be doing that. You miss the point. Merkhet never gave an opinion about either stock and he reminded you of that multiple times. It's just that your investment 'philosophy' doesn't make sense and sounds like something self-concocted taking parts of EMH and value investing as you see fit and he is trying to point that out to you. Instead you act insulted because you think somebody is critical of your AMZN purchase. I think the core problem is that you fail to distinguish outcome from process which is a very bad trait for an investor. Like Merkhet pointed out, you make no distinction between a 'undisputedly' correct decision into one that is 'likely proven correct'. These things are so completely different that I wonder why we are even trying to argue with you. I think it would be useful to study some casino games - just to get familiar with the concept of expected value.

If you use the market price to judge a stock - what are you comparing? Price with price. So what's your analysis? Nothing. Was CYNK a better company at a $10 billion valuation than at $10 million? You don't know if you don't look at the underlying business - you are speculating. Please quit the nitpicking, all Merkhet is trying to explain to you is, if you had bought Amazon for $20 billion, how much cash would roughly have ended up in your bank account after a decade? Probably less than $160 billion. Seen from that perspective (I would say the value perspective) Amazon wasn't a 800% return investment. What the stock did in the meantime is irrelevant for that analysis. Do you really not understand this line of reasoning? Also, if the market is 'right' about Amazon, why did you buy it? Risk-adjusted return would not beat the market ..

Well, if you say Buffett is 'dead wrong' and come up with a bunch of speculative names he should've bought you can expect some heat on a value investors forum.

You said, "The fact that a stock goes up after you decline to buy it doesn't mean your analysis was wrong". Ok, then what shows this analysis is wrong or right? We don't know. The last 10 years could've worked out better or worse for Amazon and the next decade could go either way too. That's why I think it's a bit assuming that you announce Buffett was 'dead wrong' on Amazon. You don't know what considerations he made, what alternative futures for Amazon he considered and how he weighted these scenario's. You can't look at a stock price now and judge a decision made 10 years ago - investing doesn't work that way. Also, if you look at Salesforce, basically it has never been profitable. Any thesis that justified buying the business a decade ago hasn't been proven correct so far. Same thing holds (to a lesser degree) for Amazon. The jury hasn't reached a verdict yet, as far as I am concerned. If you bought KO in the 1980's, MSFT in the 1990's or GOOG in the 2000's the current and past earnings justify the purchase made. Although also in these cases things could've turned out completely different and you could argue that the thesis to buy them was incorrect at the time I'd say that these are in a whole different ballpark than AMZN and especially CRM. By the way, I'd be aghast if Buffett had decided to buy Salesforce. It's brave that you try to make this point on a value investors forum though, always good to have a few dissenters in the mix :) .

I have done no analysis and I never said that I did. I was just pointing out that your argument is results-oriented. If you put $1000 on black and win with roulette, did you make an 'indisputably' correct decision? No - you were just lucky. To judge the decision you have to focus on the business, not the stock price. Hence the CYNK reference.

I guess he should've bought Salesforce too. Up 1000% since he passed on it. And CYNK, how could he miss that one? The fact that a stock goes up after you decline to buy it doesn't mean your analysis was wrong ..

@ blainehodder:interesting list, was this the result of a screener of some kind or just a portfolio snapshot? I own or have owned about ten names on this list and have studied another dozen. Probably because they all were featured on some popular value blogs. Might make sense to look at the rest too. With regards to Amazon: ;)

As long as you assume the market is completely rational. If, for any reason, other market participants prefer dividends over buybacks and the stock price moves up sharply when a company announces a generous dividend policy then I'll happily join the dividend camp (assuming I have a position already).

We can stop the discussion on morality. I have found this supernatural being Stahley is referring to. ... Bibleman! Did anybody ever watch this? :P (hat tip to Richard Dawkins)

I assume you don't want to share before buying into a full position? Fair enough :) . I really like your ideas so far, appreciated!

Agreed with Nate: in most cases I'm fine with an imperfect translation. I uploaded the Fujimak annual a while ago: http://www.writser.nl/fujimak/translated.htm , translated in English. I'd say it is quite understandable. Good enough for me in any case.

The Japanese equivalent of the SEC filings page is EDINET: http://disclosure.edinet-fsa.go.jp/EKW0EZ1001.html . If you run a search query you can view the resulting documents online or download them either as PDF or XBRL. Download the XBRL version (it's a zipfile), unzip it somewhere and you can open the HTML-files it contains with Chrome.

Is the low ROE partially due to holding significant excess cash? Although Japan is not the US, it's still reasonable to exclude obviously excess cash from the ROE when calculating the quality of the business, imo. Sure, the ROIC is much higher than ROE for these companies due to all the excess cash & investments on the balance sheet doing nothing. But what's the point if they keep hoarding all this cash for decades? If nothing changes in Japan the 2% ROE companies will continue growing BV by ~2% p.a. So unless the market decides to rerate the P/B at which these companies are trading you are stuck with a basket of perennial net/nets with stock prices that increases by 2% p.a. on average. Granted, it is probably an ok approach to buy a basket of these stocks. You have a huge margin of safety and occasionally something good will happen either with the stock price or the underlying business. However, given the choice I'd rather buy something like Fujimak, maybe not the cheapest net/net out there but it grows book value by ~10% p.a. I would expect that to be reflected in the stock price over the long term. The way I see it you get paid to wait. A somewhat higher ROE suggests either a better business or better capital allocation and that's what I prefer in the long run. Especially in Japan, given the lack of shareholder activism.

You can get the annuals from the TSE website and translate them using chrome, but I didn't do that. However, in Morningstar you can check the past 6/7 years on the summary page. If you look at, for example http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=9760&region=jpn&culture=en-US I'm fairly certain that the CAGR for the past 10 years isn't spectacular (if it is even positive to begin with). Obviously this is extremely superficial 'research'.

Yeah, most of these have a < 2% ROE for the past decade, it looks like. Not really my cup of tea - though buying a basket of them is probably not a bad strategy. Couple of exceptions: Tomen Electronics looks decentish at first glance, growing revenue, growing book by 4% p.a., sporting a 2% dividend yield and trading around 0.75x NCAV. Tomen Devices also looks reasonable. Fujimak has been discussed already, I own that too. What I like about these names is that, even if everything in Japan stays the way it is (no activists, terrible capital allocation, market multiples stay the same) at least these names should grow by 5-10% annually.