Spekulatius

Wexboy has a series of posts on German real estate companies and ended up buying BIW.F (KWG). Although not a Reit, I like SPB.F (Sedlmayr Grund und Boden). They own commercial and residential RE in Munich and Stuttgart ( via Dinkelacker). They are good owner operators and have been building their RE holdings over more than a hundred years coming from the Brewery business (Spaten). My mom (who is ultra conservative) bought some on my advice, more than a year ago, at lower than prevailing prices. I will probably inherit them at some point. I also owned some Vastned (a dutch shopping center Reit) a while ago but sold, as the discount to NAV was closing. Generally, i found Reits in Europe not to be particulary well run. I do have a significant part of my portfolio invested in RE related stocks, but mostly in thr US and not much in Reits.

1. Andre Kostolany : Geldgeschichten (Kostolany did more to popularize stock investing than anybody else in Germany in the 80's) 2. N Taleb: Fooled by Randomness 3. Buffet/Munger: Berkshire shareholder letters and other writings (Their writings are better than the books about them,imo) 4. Greenblatt: Little book that beats the market 5.Kindleberger : Maniacs, Panic and crashes

There was no recession in 98 in Europe or the US per say, but there was a severe and short lived bear market in many tech stocks. Of course there was a severe bear market with asian stocks and even quality companies could be bought for a song. This was similar to 2010 (Europe crisis) or 2011/2012 (Japan, Fukushima). Bottom line is that there are buying opportunities at least every 5 years in major stock markets.

Adidas' market cap is ~22B$ vs UA's ~10B$, so even if UA catches up to them, it's not going to get you far. I think it is pretty far fetched to find a stock that makes you rich based on buy and hold right now, given, extended valuations and a pretty extended economic cycle (5 years into a recovery). Once we head into a recession and the market turns down 30% or more and some baby's do get thrown out with the bathwater, things will get easier. Yes I get excited just thinking of that day..... someone once said, you make all your money in the bear market, you just dont realize it at the time. HOWEVER, we can spend our lives waiting for the bear, Warren Buffett has said if he was starting over with 1 million he'd be fully invested..... Bear markets in average occur every five years or so. I have seen 1982, 1987, 1990, 1998, 2002, 2008,2010 and there were some pretty good opportunities in between. I have experienced all the above (started out in 1982 with 600 DM then) The key is not to lose too much going into the bear markets. Guy Spiers Aquamarin (just to name one example) lost ~47% in 2008, this is just too much. I lost a great deal too in 2008, but not 47%. So getting more defensive towards the end of a bull market cycle is key. Problem with value investing is that many value investors are starting to stretch at the end of the cycle and growth stocks simply become unaffordable. Just take SAM at 20x EBITDA and 30x earnings . It just does not make any sense to own these things from a risk/reward perspective, since they can loose 50% in a bear market, even if fundamentals stay intact and even more if they don't. I am not claiming to have a solution to this as there are issues with market timing and opportunity cost, but I do like to keep a healthy cash buffer around in times like this (20%, preferably more)

They could fill them easily but before that, they need to go down 5-10x in price.

Adidas' market cap is ~22B$ vs UA's ~10B$, so even if UA catches up to them, it's not going to get you far. I think it is pretty far fetched to find a stock that makes you rich based on buy and hold right now, given, extended valuations and a pretty extended economic cycle (5 years into a recovery). Once we head into a recession and the market turns down 30% or more and some baby's do get thrown out with the bathwater, things will get easier.

I just tried it, google then hit images. That is odd. What does google think BH stands for? Big Hooters? in dutch it stands for bra BH=Buestenhalter (german=Bra)

Germany --> North Bay, CA

At 5$/share, buying back stock would have done wonders for BAC, at current valuations, I think they are better off paying some dividends. BAC trades at almost the same price/tangible ratio than JPM and JPM is arguable a much better managed bank.

MUSA spinoff : Positive aspects are: 1) Solid balance sheet 2) Exited noncore business (ethanol) for a nice chunk of cash 3) They own their real estate 4) Insider buys 5) Low cost leadership, which is important in Commodity business 6) Other companies in the same sector doing well (Susser) the big Y: [http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2014/02/alleghany-corp-investor-day.html/url]

Has any one looked at CVE? This integrated E&P seems to have a huge runaway in terms of production growth in front of them, which so far has been financed internally. I think they have done some smart moves in the past,like spinning of ECA and swapping upstream assets for a stake into COP (now PSX) refineries, which sort of hedged against WT/bitumen brent spreads. They pay a modest dividend too. Despite good production growth in the past, the stocks trades at a multi year low. Anybody own this or is looking into this stock? I think it could be a long runaway kind if stock.

Debt load generally appears too high, given the risks and volatility of the business. To make matters worse, some companies appear to distribute too much of their cash flow. I wonder when some of them, just get the message and deleverage. The Canadian E&p's certainly looks cheap based on price/cash flow metric, but one should look at the EV/cash flow ratio and then the relative valuation advantage to US peers is not as large as it first seems, imo.

1) I read about and interesting stock and then put it in my watchlist (~1-2h) 2) When my purchase price is reached I by a first position. I do more research to determine if it's worth a larger position (1-2h), or pot. Sell. 3) Each time, I bump up position, I spent a little bit more on research (0.5-1h). 4) When i sell, (typically after predetermined target price is reached), i also do check to determine, if a higher target price is warranted.(0.5h) I have a diversified portfolio with typically ~30 positions, in various stages of value creation.

I run a fairly diversified. Portfolio: Larger positions: LAACZ NSRGY QUCT TPCA FMBl BP VAST.AS KSB3.DE CAM.L HNFSA medium: DVN FRFC TAP KMI COSWF small: BAP OVLY KO JMHLY MIL ORKLY GTS ESLT CPKF CARE VALE RDI ORCL SFY MHLD ~17% cash And several other tiny stub positions (mostly microcaps)

I don't recommend them for checking accounts, but Penfed is very competitive in Credit cards (gas card with 5% cash back) and as a car lender. Sometimes, they have great mortgage deals too. Member since 2007, and i have their credit card as well As a car loan with them. For those without military associated, it costs 25$ to join.

DVN (partial buyback of a recently reduced position) ASFI (first lot) OVLY ( add)

I think most US investors don't have the expertise to invest in Chinese stocks. I bought some Swire Pacific recently and i like the idea to buy Jardine. Matheson: [http://www.gurufocus.com/news/175836/jardine-matheson-an-undertheradar-asian-growth-story-contest/url] I think Jardine in particular is a nice compounder, trading around book and compounding in the mod teens for a long time. Swire is a little cheaper in some respects (P/NAV) but maybe not as well positioned. In both cases, you get an owner operator and european style management who knows their way around in Asia. Both stocks are buys right now, imo.

I agree that it's a great book, probably an investment classic. It emphasizes the importance of the capital allocation skills of the CEO. I made me look at some of my stocks with a whole new lens. I borrowed it at my local library, but I really think it should be on the shelf in my room.

I was wrong. I import my monthly statements into quicken and import quicken into turbotax. That works without problems. Another plus. - IB's ipad app is very good and quite intuitive and their Android app is decent as well. i find myself using the ipad app for 90% of my trading. It does not work for my complex order types, but. I never use those anyways. If you have several accounts with (which I do), you pay the data feed fees only once.

I have been customer with IB since about 2006. I had very few problems with them. I like their trading platform and their mobile platform. The webtrader is pretty basic though and sometimes buggy. The statements are hard to read And there is definitely a learning curve with their platform. For international trading IB is hard to beat and their low commissions are great for traders. I have used Etrade, Wells Fargo investments and Fidelity and IB id by far my favorite. I found the phone support OK but their online chat support pretty good. I use turbotax with IB as well and download their statements monthly, which seems to work OK. They don't have directconnect though.