CorpRaider

Finally reading this one. Pretty good so far. Interesting that John Jr. wore handed down dresses from his older sisters until age 8 even though daddy already owned the largest refinery in america. Also, all 4 (or maybe 5) kids shared one bicycle.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but Arnott is co-founder of RAFI and "created" the rafi index methodology. Schwab and Powershares have ETFs tracking these indexes (each with small tweaks). So does ishares via tracking the MSCI "value-weighted" indexes. I think he has stated that dividend weighting, as championed by WETF and others, should outperform over the long term as well (so should volatility weighting and revenue weighting, according to some...basically anything that doesn't systematically overweight the glamour stocks like cap-weighting does).

Yeah, my point was sort of if you subscribe to either of the two preceding narratives, why then is he investing in marketing, profile raising, PR campaigning or whatever you call building a huge building to "house art" and btw your offices, and reopening his fund while launching hedge funds, all with the result of raising additional AUM?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/us-usa-lng-excelerate-idUSKBN0K81CP20141230

Thanks, Liberty. :) One of my New Year's resolutions is to go back to putting more of my investment thoughts to paper, as I think it helps to keep the mind sharp. Finance Twitter is very fun and valuable, but it's obviously very difficult to lay out nuanced arguments there. And the snarkiness is fun but not necessarily helpful when trying to get the truth of a situation in order to profit. Also, re: my post, I mention POSCO as the closest analog to O&G. But, duh, WEB is invested in XOM, so . . . Haha. I was all geared up to mention XOM, but you beat me to the punch. He also didn't get totally out of the sector with the like-kind exchange of the COP stock for the (or the railroad investments, really). I caught an article somewhere yesterday about an LNG export facility getting scrapped to collapsing prices for LNG which are apparently set off the price of oil in asian markets. Hopefully, more companies survive the oil and gas revolution than made it through the internet revolution.

Interesting that: 1 - All of your winners are North American and IP or brands. 2 - Most of your losers are foreign or commodity-based This might suggest one of two options: 1 - Foreign and resource-based companies are outside your circle of competence 2 - Your losers just reflect that it was a bad year for commodities and international stocks It's funny you point this out because I experienced this exact revelation a few years ago and now I refuse to invest in int'l or commodity companies (among many other "No's"). It's too hard to predict commodity prices and unless you are in the low-cost producer, bankruptcy is always an option (US Energy will be interesting to watch un-fold; although, POSCO can certainly go belly-up as well). There's a few int'l companies I'm really interested (L'Oreal is really shareholder friendly) in but with so much available in the US why take the chance with currencies, laws I don't know or understand, and lots of other factors I don't need to consider with US companies. I was pretty royally screwed by accounting fraud by a Chinese RTO company in 2010 and I realized how valuable the basic protections the US provides shareholders are. This is extremely uncommon but investing in the UK or any other country (maybe ex-Canada) leads to a LOT of small, hidden risks that are ignored when picking US stocks. Yeah, I prefer to stick to countries with several hundred years of experience with the rule of law/capitalism. Sooo, the Netherlands, UK, US, Canada, Australia, etc...

Maybe. But he told the Fortune reporter a few years ago (when he as putting up numbers) his wife made him buy a measly stereo because he was too obsessed with investing and had no hobbies and never left his home office. Now he's a museum curator, architect and model who is devoting additional resources to marketing his firm and making sure he's a big Papi in the Miami scene. Maybe he should move back to Connecticut to drown out the noise. Does not compute for me. Although, the same thing happened to Tubbs and Crocket.

Looks like about a +23% in my primary discretionary account. Big ups to my main man Richie Kinder and his warrants (really I suppose I should credit hedge eye and barron's for the buying opportunity). I gave a material portion of that gain back on the TLM takeunder, but it was a much smaller position, thankfully. Could have been a real nice year, as I had an order to double down in TLM at just about the low tick for the year, approximately two days before the Repsol offer but I didn't get a fill. Maybe CPP will come in with a $10-$12 bid and light up my life.

Haha, awesome! I'm afraid those are not as rare as the other one, but I'm sure you can work them into the rotation. Happy Holidays!

Berkshire is a bit of a straw-man. I would just focus on the totally illogical comparison to the actual previous Fairholme funds site, which was just upgraded with lots of pithy catch phrases, multiple cinematic head shots (I mean look at those monochromatic glamour shots) and pictures of his sand-crawler coincidentally, when his numbers went into the tank and he happened to launch a hedge fund with heightened marketing strictures? It just strikes me as some panty-dropping, asset gathering fever activity. Of course most mutual funds do it, but its not totally consistent with the persona BB had me buying.

I just don't see how the slick new website and high profile office space reconciles with his statements about closing his funds to prevent hot money from coming in and diluting performance and creating tax bills for the long term investors, if and when he starts to outperform again. Most of his funds are already closed now an he just did his flip-flop on closing FAIRX within the last year. I sort of prefer crappy marketing and websites with great numbers to the inverse. That being said, I doubt I'm his target demographic.

I didn't know you had a blog. I will check it out!

;D Nice list Kraven. It is fun to read an authoritative sounding post on the meaning of life or something light like that and then have a little whisper of recollection, "Wait, wasn't that the guy who just posted a question about shaving for the first time?"

Bbby isn't bbry Hah! So full of fail! ;D

I find it difficult to believe that oil can continue to crater in the face of 5% US GDP growth (that's the 3Q print).

Thanks for sharing.

I didn't really like this one either. The insider trading story was pretty amusing.

ECB does full blown targeted stimulus while Fed starts to tighten. Greece leaves the EU and no one cares. Dollar continues to strengthen in first half of year eventually stimulus and weak euro lead to actual european growth. Impressive gains in constant currency, decent gains with currency factored in. Wisdomtree blankets financial media with adds for HEDJ. Kinder Morgan buys Williams, and Spectra Energy. People start calling Richard Kinder, "commodore."

Anyway, as I was saying, it should run from $5 to $6.30 on high volume over the next couple of days. :o

Mainly by vomiting in a trash can. Haha! ;D

Hi Ben, That's funny, I was actually thinking of asking you if you had looked at it. Here's a Sunday morning stream of consciousness: I read a BofA report and a couple of other blurbs from analysts and when oil was at $70 they were pegging the valuation at $6 billion up. I think Morningstar has a $21 per share target. Its trading at $2 billion (~$5.50). I think the analysts were cheating somewhat prior to spin (or actually using the best comp) because Oxy made CRC pay divvy of $6 bil up to parent and they may have inferred that parent co and its bankers valued it at ~$12 billion and decided to take half (actually, Chazen is a former banker, and pretty much keeps his own counsel as I understand it). Of course oil has fallen off a cliff since then, but not by 2/3. You know there's an explanation, they were spun into a storm with no SH support really the Oxy base probably doesn't want a small cap california only fast growth e&P stub (.4 shares per share of oxy), and no yield support. They pretty much own the Monterey (for better or worse); have a somewhat supply constrained local market in California, unless and and until somewhat gets an ok to run a pipe from the permian. Apparently most of their producing assets are actually conventional. They also own a downstream chemical operation and a power plant so they're not a pure play bantam weight E&P. Obviously the California regulatory environment is a handicap. Oxy still holds 20% and is planning to potentially distribute via a share exchange. Could be an opportunity there if they do something with the exchange rate that makes it seemingly unattractive (probably just the share exchange mechanism would do the trick). I always try to look at the incentives in these things, as Greenblatt has instructed, and Chazen stayed with the permian focused parent and took the cash and held onto 19.5% of CRC, so maybe Oxy is the better play. Oxy is going to have like $15 billion in cash of they can sell Al Hosn gas fields working interest for what people expect, and they only have a $60 billion market cap and are supposed to plow that all into buybacks. Shrinking the market cap in this environment dramatically will probably work out well 2-3 years down the line. It also makes them more attractive to acquirers and they've got a CEO on the way out the door. That being said, I agree with what some others in this thread have said about sticking primarily with the sellers of the picks and shovels (the service companies and capital equipment providers) and the transporters, so I've done nothing. This is very helpful, thank you! I have not looked at it much. Was Morningstar really at $21 assuming $70 oil? I do wonder if OXY isn't the better r/r in the event oil continues to decline. Very clean balance sheet, and kind of like XOM they will have a field day, no pun intended, picking up cheap assets in this environment. Why do you think they hung on to the 20%??? Yeah, I double checked the Mstar. I was wrong. That's with $90 as their mid-cycle assumption in their PV-10. Oxy is going to have a ton of cash, but I bet they will plow most of it back into their own shares, which should work too, I guess. I don't know on the 20% but they've mentioned doing a share exchange. They have stated intention to spin it or otherwise dispose w/in 18 months. Maybe Irani wanted the option on it via the exchange offer. Just noticed some insider buying in CRC too. SWN CEO is on the board and he picked up 100,000 shares at a little over $6. Also, book value as of 9/30 is like $12.60 and this thing isn't leveraged up and drilling marginal shale assets (or north sea assets like TLM...please spaniards...pay me in stock).

Hi Ben, That's funny, I was actually thinking of asking you if you had looked at it. Here's a Sunday morning stream of consciousness: I read a BofA report and a couple of other blurbs from analysts and when oil was at $70 they were pegging the valuation at $6 billion up. I think Morningstar has a $21 per share target. Its trading at $2 billion (~$5.50). I think the analysts were cheating somewhat prior to spin (or actually using the best comp) because Oxy made CRC pay divvy of $6 bil up to parent and they may have inferred that parent co and its bankers valued it at ~$12 billion and decided to take half (actually, Chazen is a former banker, and pretty much keeps his own counsel as I understand it). Of course oil has fallen off a cliff since then, but not by 2/3. You know there's an explanation, they were spun into a storm with no SH support really the Oxy base probably doesn't want a small cap california only fast growth e&P stub (.4 shares per share of oxy), and no yield support. They pretty much own the Monterey (for better or worse); have a somewhat supply constrained local market in California, unless and and until somewhat gets an ok to run a pipe from the permian. Apparently most of their producing assets are actually conventional. They also own a downstream chemical operation and a power plant so they're not a pure play bantam weight E&P. Obviously the California regulatory environment is a handicap. Oxy still holds 20% and is planning to potentially distribute via a share exchange. Could be an opportunity there if they do something with the exchange rate that makes it seemingly unattractive (probably just the share exchange mechanism would do the trick). I always try to look at the incentives in these things, as Greenblatt has instructed, and Chazen stayed with the permian focused parent and took the cash and held onto 19.5% of CRC, so maybe Oxy is the better play. Oxy is going to have like $15 billion in cash of they can sell Al Hosn gas fields working interest for what people expect, and they only have a $60 billion market cap and are supposed to plow that all into buybacks. Shrinking the market cap in this environment dramatically will probably work out well 2-3 years down the line. It also makes them more attractive to acquirers and they've got a CEO on the way out the door. That being said, I agree with what some others in this thread have said about sticking primarily with the sellers of the picks and shovels (the service companies and capital equipment providers) and the transporters, so I've done nothing.

http://www.alphaarchitect.com/blog/2014/12/11/oil-stocks-a-real-time-case-study-in-value-investing/ This is pretty close to my shopping list. Maybe add XOM and looking at CRC; spun into the abyss. Also maybe some SE, PNY if they sell off hard.

I agree with you. Even better if its one with most of the focus on nat gas. This and maybe an integrated that picks up a steal or two and MAYBE some distressed debt of some of the smaller E&Ps if you can get comfortable that they can make it through are what I'm thinking.

Maybe I'm a schmuck, but I like the guy and enjoy his books, presentations, etc...