AchilliesValue

Seems they all do have a SEDOL so I don't think that is the issue. Since its London I probably could ring the international desk and they could make it work, but was trying to avoid paying the extra fees by going through IB or electronically. Haven't tried asking IB to add the security for listing, thanks for the suggestion.

Hey All, I've been looking at some UK small caps recently. I've found difficultly purchasing certain issues on the AIM exchange (I have both Interactive Brokers and Fidelity). To give a few examples: (I'm just pulling random ones and have no opinion on any of these) On Interactive Brokers I can find the symbols in the database for Verona Pharma (VRP LN), Proteome Science (PRM LN), and Wandisco (WAND LN) Then I can't find symbols for Jarvis Security (JIM LN), Toumaz (TMZ LN), Seeing Machines (SEE LN), etc. The cut off doesn't seem to be by market cap since I've found some in the 10-30M range on IB but then others in the 50-60M range that aren't available. Anyone else run into this problem? Any broker suggestions? Seems a lot of them trade on the AIMI and AIMT sub segments of the market (according to Bloomberg) whatever that means.

Anyone know the name of his investment firm? Curious if we can find his portfolio via 13Fs.

The bigger problem is that the non-agency securitization market is basically dead right now so if you don't fit into the Fannie and Freddie rigid criteria there's little chance of getting a mortgage. Snce banks can't hold your mortgage on their balance sheet your basically shit out of luck. That market will eventually come back but it hasn't yet. You guys that have had problems and live in Cali or the Northeast should try First Republic. I've found they basically built their business filling this void of investment professionals that have lumpy income. Thus why they have some quarters where they have $0 in charge offs.

It's funny because the only firm I still see floating around with the crappy looking .txt filings is Blackrock the largest asset manager around

Buffett probably passed because he has a pretty set pattern of waiting until something has a 10% pretax earnings yield. I don't own AMZN even though I think it's undervalued simply because the range of outcomes is too wide, but I think a lot of the bashing I've seen around here is from people who haven't done a whole lot of work on it. Granted doing work on AMZN is extremely difficult because their disclosure sucks. Back on topic BOBS is probably my best current idea. I've owned it for over a year and it has nearly doubled, but remains meaningfully undervalued. The only reason I'm not adding is that it is already a large position and I'm afraid management will try to low ball for the remaining third they don't own.

Only shows 1.3b. Question is whether we can find more of the 4.8b (3.2b is in cash) for total of 8b AuM. ;) You can see why with Baupost which has $4B out of ~$25B on their 13F. The differences are cash, global holdings, bonds, and private holdings. Baupost does real estate as well but I doubt Abrams does any of that with an investment staff of 4.

His essay in the 6th Edition of Security Analysis was excellent I highly recommend it.

Seems like Bloomberg is unsure of how much he owns, but credits the full stake in his net worth calculation. From the blurb from his spokesman it sounds like he probably owns some, but less than I originally thought.

Source? I thought Liberty/Malone had reduced DTV ownership to ~0 since 2009. Hmm... you might be right. I grabbed it from Bloomberg (attached), but didn't notice the filing was from 2010. It isn't mentioned in the proxy, but it is below 5% so it shouldn't have to be disclosed. My mistake feel free to delete Sanjeev.

Anyone else recall the last time John Malone sold something to AT&T? Holds 27.7M shares worth ~$2.6 Billion at the transaction price. Also is about to have $780M (less taxes) in dry powder. All while spins are taking place at LMCA, LINTA, and LVTNA... interesting times. Anyone want to wager the one he views most attractive won't occur until after the DTV deal closes?

They detailed all of it in a recent investor presentation found on their website. I thought it was odd the CFO left during the approval process. Granted he left for IDXX which is among the top of my wish list of wonderful businesses if the market cracks but seems like odd timing.

I prefer an absolute benchmark so I use inflation plus 10% (stolen from Longleaf). The idea of benchmarking yourself vs purchasing power makes the most sense to me. The fund I work on uses the Russell 3000 Value which is probably one of the best choices out of the mainstream indexes. I'd recommend that or the Equal Weight Russell 2000. I've thought about keeping track of the formula funds ETF returns as if I can't beat the "magic formula" I may as well just do that. The only problem is I think the tax leakage is quite high and not reflected in those returns.

I'm a buyside equity analyst on a mutual fund team. We run 5 strategies w/ a lot of overlap, all value oriented.

I recently joined the "evil empire" of a large asset management firm and it's interesting to see the other side. As much as there is the portrayal of managers ripping off clients I think you hit the nail on the head and a lot of these institutional clients shoot themselves in the foot. They don't want an asset allocator, for instance they want you to invest X% of their money in US equities and put restrictive mandates in place that limit cash balances, geography, and market cap. It forces you to work in terms of relative value vs absolute value. Another thing that bugs me is the report demands. A lot of these big institutional clients demand monthly manager commentaries, communication, attributions, performance reports, etc. This takes time away from the most important aspect of a managers job, investing. Also the back/middle office infrastructure required to support it makes it uneconomic to run a fund that is say sub $500 Million, putting a size anchor on performance.

Yeah I don't think the 30 year was introduced until the '70s so that our government in a brilliant stroke could lock up its highest borrow cost in history long term. I'd have to do some reading but I believe the war bonds were 10 years and sold for as little as 2.75% during peak propaganda. But back to Shilling, its an interesting mental model because he's not talking about sustained 30 year rates that low. He just thinks that there will be a deflationary event that sparks the drop to those rates before a sharp recovery. In essence a greater fools theory that you can take the capital appreciation of the rate drop because someone would be foolish enough to pay that rate in a time of crisis. But that crisis can't be Lacy Hunt's "Bang Event" which causes government interest rates to spike over fears of being able to be repaid. I guess if I were to try and put myself in that fools shoes I would cite the Market Segmentation theory, i.e. that the yield curve reflects supply / demand. There are always going to be forced buyers at any price. Insurance companies trying to match liabilities, pension funds with mandates, etc. That's kinda an out answer though. If your down to just those forced buyers does that keep you at 2%? I doubt it. Though if short term rates which the Fed largely can control drop below inflation I could certainly see people reaching just above the water for that 30 year and a real positive interest rate not contemplating that if interest rates rise they'll just sink below faster. Still to buy a 30 year at a 2% rate w/o the mandate you have to A) believe there will be severe deflation for several years. I could certainly cite the numbers to make that case but then it makes it difficult to explain the quick turnaround. Enforced austerity maybe that forces an increase in the savings rate. That's what happened during WWII. Its not totally inconceivable that Uncle Sam enforces forced saving. Or what if they government put further restrictions on what you can invest your IRA in. To be tax free you have to put X% in government / muni bonds to "prevent excessive stock market speculation." Or to take the opposite political angle a curtail on entitlements that spurs further saving / productivity. These are extreme examples and would cause an uproar here (well maybe not the entitlements but that would cause louder uproar elsewhere) but is it totally inconceivable? Or B) things will be so bad that the perception changes from return on capital to return of capital. Hard to make that argument in terms of taking a 30 year instead of something with a shorter maturity though. However, I think there's merit to the idea that as short term rates cross the zero real return barrier people shift further out on the yield curve to seek out greater return even at substantially more risk. Also 2% is just a number. There's certainly a psychological lower bound of 0% but in real terms it doesn't mean anything if prices are dropping. We've already seen rumors of banks threatening to charge depositors if the 0.25% discount window is removed. If I'm Schilling, I could just point out that we've never had a deleveraging this large, i.e. more debt that ever, etc. so its not inconceivable that the rates will be lower than ever before, but you could correctly point out then how does he expect the 5 year turnaround.

No I wouldn't endorse that statement, but I do enjoy playing devils advocate. The US was on the Gold Standard, but that did not prevent them from debasing their currency. From 1933 to 1934 the US devalued their currency by 60%. You had numerous examples in WWI and Great Depression era of countries simply abandoning the gold standard. If investors saw that you could change the rules shouldn't they have demanded a premium? Yet rates drifted lower from '34 to when we entered the war.

Ah I see your point now. And yes sorry with Lacy Hunt's point I was more referring to the question about yield being held down by the Fed. I guess to make Shilling's argument you have to believe that inflationary expectations will remain low despite strong economic growth. If you believe that that interest rates as a product of real interest rates and inflationary expectations. I don't know enough about economic history to try and make that argument myself, macro economic history is a recent hobby, but I would be curious to look at the 1929-1953 periods where rates remained low but real GDP went from 1,055,640 on Jan 1929 to 2,568,912 in Jan 1953 which is ~3.75% per year if I did my math right. And that's not starting at any bottom (1933) which would have shown stronger numbers. Looking at a different set of interest rates it doesn't look like they crossed the Pre Great Depression rates until ~1966 when CPI change ticked up toward 5%. I guess you could maybe pick 1949 to 1966 instead to exclude the war years where inflation spiked. But, throughout this entire time period you had strong economic growth, low interest rates, and generally low inflation. Certainly an uncommon time but I think it may be possible to make a case. For kicks I looked at the YOY growth rates of CPI and took the geo mean for a few time periods. I was surprised how low it was even with the war year spikes. If your goal was preservation of capital or purchasing power you would have done ok. 1929 - 1966 1.77% 1929 - 1953 1.80% 1939 - 1966 3.12% 1945 - 1966 2.98%

Do you mind sharing some of your other short volatility ideas? I thought about trying to be clever and look companies with high stock compensation that in theory would be forced to report much lower GAAP earnings as volatility rises, but I get the impression they can cook the implied volatility a bit and anyway most the companies that have high stock compensation exclude it in "adjusted earnings" anyway so it doesn't impact the price performance as much as it should.

I've actually spent some time thinking about this strategy as well. In particular buying puts on TNA. I ended up not doing it and I think there are two main risks. The implied volatility on the puts is very high so while the underlying security gets killed in time decay your also getting killed in the instruments time decay. I think the other risk is that for this thesis to work you need the ETFs to in effect "blow up" and I was concerned about being able to cash out my position if that in fact happens. You could exercise your now deep in the money options but then your essentially writing off everything but the intrinsic value of the option. I think this could work really well but you'd almost have to get the timing perfect. I've never been good at that so I passed.

I think his assumption of long term real GDP growth reverting to 3.2% is just a reversion to the mean statement. To answer your question here I would turn to the case laid out by Lacy Hunt http://www.hoisingtonmgt.com/pdf/HIM2013Q2NP.pdf who as you might recall was referenced in Prem's most recent annual letter and I think has largely helped shape his deflationary views. I can't figure out how I'd paste the charts in without cropping and uploaded them myself but I'd reference charts 1 and 6 that support his case. What he lays out is pretty convincing and they have an excellent track record in managing treasury bonds. I'm in the process of reading all his commentaries (I have them going back to 2000) to see his process over a cycle. Still I find it hard to imagine myself going long 30 year zero coupon bonds at the moment as it reminds me too much of how I think of merger arbitrage. Like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Certainly a contrarian view to keep in mind though. I found it striking that in the most recent Barron's financial adviser survey the largest consensus on anything they asked about was that 91% had a negative view on US Treasuries http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904462504579135833535241144.html?mod=BOL_archive_twm_ls#articleTabs_article%3D0 Actually tied with Sears also 91% negative. I like reading a decent case that is against the consensus.

These are all outside my circle of competence and I would speculate are for most of us. But you gotta remember one of the unique things about Baupost vs other very successful value investors is that he has a huge staff. 180+ employees as of the last article I've seen about it. So they have a deeper pool of specialists than most of the funds we typically look at. Being in Boston also probably has its advantages. There is a huge biotech industry, bunch of very good medical schools, plus nearly every I-Bank / Consulting group's top healthcare people are based in Boston. Id wager they have a few very smart MDs working there.

As of Heinz's last 10-K Walmart was the only customer that accounted for more than 10% of sales. Also according to The Post the relationship was small at least domestically. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/28/the-ketchup-wars-mcdonalds-wont-serve-heinz-anymore/

I don't think so. When most people dump their cable package they usually use Netflix or something like that. Who controls the "toll bridge" to get to Nettflix? The same cable companies. Hearing John Malone speak he acknowledges that these bundled packages won't be around in 5 years though he also thinks the current model with content providers shouldering no usage cost is unsustainable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404579119372754344050.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection Long suspected but Journal broke it today as confirmed. Apologies if this was posted on another thread. Curious to see when these "different positions" will show up on the 13F or if it will be a separate filing.