writser

Yes, I agree. It's a bit of a smaller position. Not a good business probably but I really like the significant share buybacks at 0.3x TBV. To be fair, in general I'm not sure if my qualitative screening of these companies adds any alpha (probably it doesn't). I'm not a very proficient analyst and there is also the language / culture barrier. Nevertheless I see it as an interesting experiment for a small part of my portfolio. As long as I stick to the basket approach my personal opinions should not interfere with future returns too much. And the numbers just look unbelievable. Thanks for the links both of you. My solution for picking stocks is a bit lazier easier: just look at all the stuff other bloggers / forum members come up with.

The ensuing discussion could be fun though. I've always wanted to see an online crusade here :). We've only seen Darwin roundhouse kicking Jesus around so far.

That is your bottom line, not mine. As you pointed out in a previous thread, if only the gods know what is wrong and what is right, well, then you are just as clueless as I am. So you might as well use drugs and cheat on your wife - maybe the gods appreciate that after all! No way to know, right? Even if supernatural beings exist, we, humans, are all clueless regarding morality according to you. We'll only find out when we die. Not much different from the animal kingdom you love to refer to. However, you still won't visit a hooker because you have personal opinions about what is right and what is not. So do I. We still strive to act morally - regardless of what supernatural beings think. Something that you keep dismissing. Anyway, these discussions would be much more fun if a radical muslim showed up arguing, using your line of reasoning, that it's ok to marry 12yr old girls and to stone a woman to death if she's unfaithful. You couldn't claim the moral highground anymore and would be forced to find a better line of reasoning.

Please stop with all the evolutionary references. I respect your views on social issues and I agree with most of them. If you don't like people going to hookers, fine, but don't try to rationalize things by fitting them in your self-constructed moral framework, where, if you don't believe in your specific god and your specific values then it's ok to murder your boss, cheat on your wife and inject your baby daughter with heroin. Your line of reasoning on morality is outdated, egocentric and doesn't stand up to scrutiny, as several people tried to explain to you in previous threads on similar issues. Besides that, your constant references are a very childish way to end any productive discussion. "You don't agree with me? You must be a barbarian living in the animal kingdom ... ". Right. Some people have a more nuanced view of what's right and what's wrong. They try not to listen to their gut feelings (like those in the animal kingdom ;)).

Nice interview indeed. They even put the entire raw audio footage online, not some heavily redacted transcript.

Problem is that apparently you decide for yourself what is "okay" and what not. Al Qaida has a different set of beliefs. Should we take theirs in consideration as well when designing the law? Why would your feelings be more important than theirs? I suggest we try to leave our personal opinions out of it and base policy on measurable outcomes instead.

Time for a bump. 'West' brought up a couple of very nice Japanese companies the past few weeks. In a couple of his threads there was some interesting discussion going on about investing in Japan in general, currency hedging and what approach to take when building a Japan basket. I was initially going to reply in a couple of different topics but maybe it's easier if we start dumping all our thoughts in a single topic again. In one of the threads somebody asked when to sell. I have no good answer for that. In general my strategy is to buy stuff very cheap and to try and sell it around book value. But due to terrible corporate governance in Japan I'm not sure if a lot of these companies should be trading at or above book. However, I don't really think it's that big of an issue at current prices and I excel at deferring all difficult decisions :) . Especially if TBV is growing at a nice clip I don't mind holding on for a while if the stock price doesn't go up. Nate pointed out something interesting in another thread: maybe it is better to avoid the cheapest net/nets and to buy slightly more expensive stocks that look good on other metrics too (ROIC, P/E, FCF). @west and others: what does your current basket look like approximately? How many companies and how big a part of your total portfolio? Mine is still work in progress but I am considering the following companies primarily: Car Mate - 0.9x NCAV, 0.45x TBV, 6x 5yr avg P/E, CAGR 9% for the past 5 years (topic). Isamu Paint - 0.7x NCAV, 0.4x TBV, 8x 5yr avg P/E, CAGR 6% for the past 5 years, shares outstanding decreased 5% the past few years. Fujimak (bought already) - 0.5x TBV, 6.5x 5yr avg P/E, CAGR 10.5% for the past 5 years, expanding in Asia. (topic). Okayama Paper - 0.7x NCAV, 0.3x TBV, 6.5x 5yr avg P/E, CAGR 7.5% for the past 5 years, shares outstanding decreased 14% (!) the past years. Murakami - 0.46x TBV, 5.8x 5yr avg P/E, CAGR 13% for the past 5 years, 0.7x EV/EBITDA. Looks actually like a decent company (topic). This is a second tranche of companies that look slightly less attractive at first glance: Sugimoto & Co - .07x NCAV, 20x 5yr avg P/E. Not too enthousiast about this one at first glance. Has run up quite a bit already. KSK - ~1x NCAV, 0.6x TBV, 11x 5yr avg P/E, buying back small amounts of shares. Namura Shipbuilding - Still have to look at. Already some shipbuilding exposure, also have some preliminary doubts about the competitive position of Japan in this industry (topic). Global Food Creators - Still have to look at. Looks like it ran up a bit already. KG Intelligence - Still have to look at. Already have some magazine exposure. Not sure I need more. Maruzen - Still have to look at. Kitchen equipment, Fujimak looks cheaper at first glance. Hakuseisha - Still have to look at. Maezawa Kasei - Still have to look at. Riken Keiki - Doesn't look extremely cheap at first glance anymore. Any interesting additions? Each position will be around ~1 to 2%. I am looking to allocate approximately 10% of my portfolio to Japan, around 8 different companies. I'm splitting between some traditional net-nets and a couple of companies that are slightly more expensive but (I hope) make up for that in quality. By the way, I would like to do something similar with Korean preferreds. Packer had some great ideas but I have no decent broker for these as of yet. I'm mostly jotting this down for myself. Feel free to ignore. Probably contains horrible errors.

the truth is out there ...

:D

The four most dangerous words in investing are: 'this time it's different.' - John Templeton. Earnings fluctuate, assets stay - Walter Schloss. The sceptic investor :) .

Nate is probably using a different screener but this one lets your replicate the query: http://markets.ft.com/screener/screenerResults.asp

Vulgar suggestions. We are not trying to make money here. We are predicting the future. :P

I was actually wrong: you do get charged for multiple-day executions. Sorry. I tried to enter AON orders for a couple of different European stocks and it looks like that is not possible. Nevertheless, the daily minimum fee is approximately $5 for most exchanges, so unless you trade some _extremely_ illiquid stuff you should be ok I think. This page explains the commission structure per country: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=commission&p=stocks1

Not sure if IB offers them for international trades but as far as I know if you enter a GTC order with IB you don't pay extra if it is executed in multiple chunks or over multiple days. I assume that's the problem you are trying to avoid?

An interesting book about the subject is Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It's a short and easy read. He talks about this pervasive error in judgement in the book as well as other errors. Yeah, that's a great book. About the chance of sentient beings evolving from nothing: also we suffer from a horrible case of selection bias. No matter how small that chance would be: we can only philosophize about it because we exist. The argument: the chance is extremely small yet we exist -> this is a miracle isn't valid.

I find the entire line of reasoning to be strange. If deities do not exist we just need to overcome our instincts so we can steal, lie and cheat for material benefit... Excuse me? Why should we suddenly do that? As coc pointed out: that's the inverse of what Richard Dawkins ment :) .

No, but you have shown nicely in your previous posts an alternative explanation for why humans tend to have this longing. The need to 'make sense' of the world. To explain things. Our brains are hard-wired to do so - it's hard for us to accept that we are nothing special and that our lives are not special. Why? Because that isn't a very good trait as seen from an evolutionary view. A much better evolutionary trait is believing that one or more gods exists. That way you can cope easier with adversity and spread your genes by killing infidels while having as much children as possible. Surprise: that sounds remarkably like any major religion. On a similar note: why do you think no large religion exists that discourages having children and encourages suicide / abortions / euthanasia? Because religions are also subject to survival of the fittest. That's the classic trick in the theist cookbook: bashing atheists because they don't know what's good and what's evil. Tiresome ... I just think they are assholes based upon my own moral values and those of the society I live in. I don't care for gods that don't agree with me that what happened in WWII was bad. And that's good enough for me. I don't need an paedophile or a dusty book to tell me what's right and what's not.

Funny that you mention that your belief seems to make 'more sense' of the world. Yeah - that's one of the reasons people turn to faith. It's much harder to accept that maybe the world doesn't make sense. It just happens to be the way it is. With regards to my confirmation bias: suppose this thread was about the Loch Ness monster instead. You believe it exists and you point out that I should read books about it. If I don't, I am suffering from 'confirmation bias' and I don't want to believe. I think that that is a ridiculous line of reasoning. Why should I read speculative nonsense? If you think the monster exists, catch it and show me! Only way to convince me. But to me it looks like that's the line of reasoning you are using. You would probably agree with me about the Loch Ness monster but you have decided a priori that your specific religion is very important (why? because lots of other people believe in it!) and that I therefore should read about it. That's no valid argument either to me. Actually I do read some stuff about theism - I just wanted to point out that that was irrelevant to this discussion. And how to define a miracle? Show me a portal to hell. Or an immortal garden gnome. Capture an UFO. Proof that you can heal cancer by praying. Make reliable predictions of the future. Something like that. Tangible stuff. No fuzzy feelings. And with regards to the hypothesis that some gods did actually interfere in WWII: they'd be huge assholes if they did it this way ... Enough to make me an atheist.

Your own version of the 'Holocaust' argument. Three possibilities: 1. Gods didn't know about the holocaust -> they are clueless. 2. Gods did know about the holocaust but didn't want to interfere -> they are assholes. 3. Gods did know about the holocaust and wanted to interfere -> they are powerless. Classic trick in the atheist handbook.

The Chinese girls pop up surprisingly often here. Sanjeev probably receives a 'management fee' from them. A modest one, obviously.

I do not feel the urge to read books that try to convince me to believe in UFO's, garden gnomes, gods, homeopathy or other stuff I consider nonsense. I feel that would be a waste of my time. People believe a lot of different things. The burden of proof is on them - and writing a book is no proof. So what would I need? A miracle. Literally :) .

As said before, let's end this discussion. You won't change my mind and I won't change yours. I think the concept of a deity planting seeds in our minds is quite a far-fetched explanation of a change in moral values over time. Yet I cannot disprove it and you can't prove it. By my reasoning you also imply that if ISIS is following their moral compass by slaughtering innocent people in Iraq apparently god thinks that's ok. You will feel insulted by this and say that they are following a false prophet or are misleading themselves - your god would never approve. Again, I can't disprove that and you can't prove it. Pointless discussion. Believe whatever you want as long as you don't let it interfere with the state, science or education. One example of accepted adultery: it was fine for Roman men to have sex with their slaves. And why would humans be the only counscious species? Maybe consciousness is not as simple as a yes/no question. Are humans always conscious? Are animals sometimes conscious? Yet again, you will probably come up with a definition of consciousness that I can't disprove and you can't prove - pointless discussion :) .

You imply that I shouldn't feel bad. I disagree with that. You arrive at that viewpoint because you think that there is no morality without religion. I think morality is defined in our genes and by the society we live in. Richard Dawkins refers to this second influence as the 'moral zeitgeist'. As he pointed out, hunting whales and slavery were commonly accepted a few hundred years ago and racial / gender equality wasn't. Not anymore. The moral viewpoint on stuff changes - the bible doesn't. How is that possible? Has a deity suddenly inserted a new set of rules in our mind? Not to mention that different societies have different moral viewpoints. In some societies adultery is perfectly acceptable. In other societies wearing a burqa is the correct thing to do and you risk being stoned if you are unfaithful. I guess these societies are 'wrong'? They will say the same thing about you. Whose god is correct? You can only accept one absolute version of morality that is defined by your specific god. You think that if we don't believe in him we could (even imply we should) ignore our moral compass. I disagree. Why should we? Because there is no punishment in hell anymore? Sure, I could do terrible things. But so can you! The only difference being that you would risk burning in hell for a while in addition to what would happen to me (and I don't even think that stronger punishments will always lead to better behavior). But why would we? It would make us and our friends feel bad and society would become a worse place to live in. I don't need a guy in the sky to point out what's right and what's wrong. I can decide that by myself and by interacting with other people. If you can accept this viewpoint of morality there's no need to believe anymore. Like Parsad, you can evolve to the next evolutionary plane :D .

If atheism is accurate, I agree. With that being said, if we are truly rational, why shouldn't we overcome these emotional biases to give us more material wealth? That's all they are. For instance, I respect the heck out of you, Sanj. Not only for the charity work but also for the, in my opinion, very fair fees you charge your fund. If God doesn't exist, these are both irrational things to do. You are taking your time for charity and money (which could be better allocated to research - unless it's just for networking to bring in additional business) or (Eric, no need to read this one!) charge your clients higher fees. After all, your performance is good enough to justify it. I was just flaming around a bit in this thread, I wasn't expecting the faithful to actually reply. Actually a bit sad that this thread now derailed. Anyway, I want to point out that you are (wrongly) connecting atheism with rationality. Science suggests that humans are simply not wired to be 100% rational. Animal spirits are in our DNA. Kahneman stuff. Atheism has nothing to do with living like Spock, as you are suggesting. So the points you are trying to make by referring to total rationality and sociopaths are completely off the mark in this discussion. Also, you are (wrongly) connecting rationality with selfishness. Again humans are not 100% rational so you could actually do charity work because it makes you feel good to help others. Yeah - atheists can have feelings .. ! And even if they hadn't, they could do charity work and charge low fees for managing funds. For example, because they prefer an increased social status over having more money. Maybe hot girls in Canada love low fee fund managers! ;) Also, you are (wrongly) connecting theism with morality. Apparently you believe I can't feel bad if I kill a kitten because if I don't believe in a random deity I can have no knowledge of good and evil. I'm not going to bother discussing this because you probably won't accept any of my arguments and I won't accept any of yours (also because it is an insulting view). Best course of action: you continue your 'god-fearing' life and I continue my 'immoral' one.

Because this dude is a financial advisor. He deals with rich clients all day. He was interviewing his clients. Exactly. And if he is a huge nerd who likes to read 10 hours / day he probably attracts similar clients. Huge case of selection bias. I'm not necessarily saing it's bad to read a lot, but this is not science. To me this looks like a case of the next 'self-help guru' promoting his latest book with fantastic ways to get rich. Somebody makes a nice web 2.0 infographic about it that self-proclaimed intellectuals share with eachother to point out how smart they are. Intellectual masturbation - the entire thing receives way too much attention. Not to mention that this is a terrible book if you like reading: it's only 96 pages :) .