CorpRaider

I'd love to see the comparison if you are willing to share it. The only caveat is that Markel's current bond portfolio isn't because of an investment decision. It is largely the portfolio they inherited from their Alterra purchase last year. They have openly said that they are methodically reducing that bond portfolio and moving into equities. They aren't macro influenced investors, unlike FFH. (Neither is right or wrong-- just pointing out the difference). If some major dislocation happens, FFH is bound to gain big, while Markel will trot along, albeit a little slowly. Both MKL and FFH are major core positions for me. Of course I will. If I come up with anything useful, that is. Yeah, you know, I sort of started thinking about that after I posted and you're right. They're almost a little like hedges for one another or at least somewhat complementary positions. Not to mention a little currency diversification...hmm.

I need to compare the allocation to bonds and duration of the fixed income portfolios of FFH and MKL. I guess if you live in a world where you believe real deflation is coming you would have more allocated to bonds.

Yep. My mother in law once brought her bottle of Heinz ketchup to our house because we buy the cheaper store brand ketchup.. Non-heinz ketchup!?! Oh dear. I saw some Wal-mart ketchup in my brother's pantry once and I immediately became concerned about how his life was turning out. ;D Appropriate here. Yup. I'm just waiting to hear "shitter's full!"

Yep. My mother in law once brought her bottle of Heinz ketchup to our house because we buy the cheaper store brand ketchup.. Non-heinz ketch-up!?! Oh dear. I saw some Wal-mart ketchup in my brother's pantry once and I immediately became concerned about how his life was turning out. ;D

Brands are really powerful. My wife still insists on buying Motrin. That's ibuprofen with a sticker on it...with a jazzy name.

Thanks. Yeah, I'll plan to soldier on and finish it. Its not that long and after finishing all the berk letters in chronological order, it is a breeze. hah. So far, I've learned using 90% margin (permissible if you owned a seat on the exchange) was a good thing when insurance stocks are bombed out.

Just finished the chronological compendium of the BRK annual letters. It was pretty good. I gotta' say though I didn't see a great deal that couldn't be picked up via Cunningham's logical arranged book and wow is it faster. Now I'm reading the Davis Dynasty book. So far, so meh.

He's not the sharpest tool in the bag. He was fine doing the quick hits earning updates and dropping his little jokes and whatnot but an anchor? In what universe?

Al Gore on line 1 re: Mr. Boies. ;D

Thanks Hamilton.

Because I am getting nervous… During the last few weeks we have witnessed a short market correction… Which nonetheless was painful enough to prompt the FED into saying it is ready to stop the slow unwinding of QE and therefore to resume its stimulus… And the market promptly recovered… I like it less and less… And I demand more and more protection, meaning insulation from the general market. Gio Saw that too. Planning on a substantial increase in my FFH position come the new year when I roll my Roth 401k into my regular Roth IRA. Things haven't felt right to me for awhile - but seeing the reaction of general markets to a small correction was certainly disturbing and suggests that we are in fact addicted to the sugar high. Further, deflation in Europe appears even more likely than previously thought and small caps are better positioned for a fall than they've been previously and their bonds are killing it. What's not to like at roughly 1x book? Hey Zach, Did you buy the pinky? What custodian are you using, if you don't mind me asking? I wonder if they exempting the shares from the withholding tax (as they properly should) in your Roth? Thanks.

http://www.alphaarchitect.com/blog/2014/10/31/long-cheap-short-expensive-buyer-beware/

Dude is trying to get a free JD on the interwebs. ;D

There's a downloadable file/spreadsheet on the website.

Just a point of fact, the mgmt fee is 2% and the expense cap is 2.25% through 2017. The actual ratio for garix is running @ 2.2%. Alternatively you can do a 1% and 10% performance fee in the hedge fund structure. The unhedged mf are not really the same animal. You could compare fairx strategy of being unhedged and concentrated with Greenblatt's old strategy, of course Berkowitz would probably not enjoy being compared to that record.

I can't remember what thread we were discussing Gotham's long short strategy and how that conflicted with earlier statements he made about the magic formula research, but I came across this FAQ posted to the Gotham website wherein they address that that question. See below: https://www.gothamfunds.com/UploadFiles/a0ea6e51-a.pdf

You could go to the turnkey analyst list and see if you can reverse engineer the EBIT/TEV ratios for some of the retailers. Lots of healthcare, retailers, energy and unloved chemical companies. Interesting! I would also point out he's got some real world performance data on the strategy (coming up on two years worth) from the SMAs on the advisor's site.

LOL! For a split second, I was getting all ready to try and help you out by beginning to gently persuade you how horrible this list was, then my sarcasm meter went off, just in time to save me.

Hillarious!

That's interesting, thanks. I'm surprised they launched an ETF with such low AUM. I imagine regulatory costs would preclude profitability at <$3M AUM? But good for them if they can get more inflows. Press release says they're going to seed it with $50MM of the assets currently managed in separate accounts (a couple hundred million). They've been running a few strategies via SMAs since 2012, I think. All info is on the websites.

Yeah, maybe that's the difference but my recollection was that he talks about it after he shows the breakdown between deciles in the backtest data. Like "why not buy decile 1 and short decile 10?" That sort of a thing. I haven't tried to find the quote I am thinking about because, as you note, the turnover is insane and its hard to get $250K built up in a tax advantaged account (or at least it has been for me so far).

Not that I'm aware of. Well, Blackrock has a couple that are quality-value active etfs with low expense ratios: IELG, IEIL, IEIS and one other (domestic and foreign large and small cap ones). They don't give a ton of detail on the methodology but if you nose around a bit you will find a paper published by one of the guys from Blackrock's quant research department that sam lee from M* said was the basis for the funds. If memory serves, they use low price to book and low accruals/high cash component of earnings, for the value and quality proxies. I've just been tracking them so far. QVAL is going to be funded with $50MM from Alpha architect that they have been running as seperately managed accounts which appear to be based on the same strategy and they have some short performance history records for the strategy on their website. I'm ok with the Gotham fees, I mean I would have given my pinky to get into his prior fund and pay him 2 and 20 and let him compound at 50% per year (David Geffen has said Greenblatt made him more money than he made for himself, hah), but I'm still not comfortable with the long short strategy. I mean I actually heard him say (or maybe read it) that they looked at doing that in the initial MF research and it did great until it "blew up" or something to that effect.

Yeah just Wes Gray. The professor one with the PHD from Chicago. The one that runs the turnkey analyst and alpha architect sites.

Just thought I would share a link to the valueshares site. Wes Gray launched the first of his ETF based on the methodology in the book which is the subject of this thread. Looks like a lot of MF stocks in the portfolio. http://www.valueshares.com/

Single family residential real estate appraisers usually just drive by and play their novelty theme horn (dukes of hazard is most popular); maybe if you get a real professional they do a few doughnuts in the driveway. ;D