CorpRaider

I think its somewhat likely they got comfortable with discounted (or perhaps offered and declined settlement) the value of the litigation with Gilead as their margin of safety. They had some conviction for sure.

Thanks. I think I read it, but I will double check. Here's the paper upon which I believe the methodology employed in the Ishares enhanced etfs is based: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2179247

Not sure how big you are but both Schulte Zabel; Seward and Kissell are reputed to be top notch HF firms. Seward would probably be a bit more affordable.

Awesome, congrats!!

One other sort of "weak form" option for people you discuss, in addition to the Ishares factor etfs, might be the guggenheim pure value etfs, especially RPV. The expense ratios aren't terrible and they are value weighted, primarily using price to book if memory serves. You could probably make a compelling case that since RPV is limited to S&P 500 funds that is in effect somewhat of a quality screen, as many of the criteria for inclusion in the S&P 500 are at least quality-esque.

Well that's not quite what he said. He said he would be happy using it, but he things it has one too many factors - i.e. the ROIC calc detracts from performance. You can test it on portfolio123.com (with Compustat data) back to 1999 – it's not that far back but as far as it goes I don't see that he's got a valid point there. At least in my test (1-year rolling periods), the Magic Formula out-performed pure EV/EBITDA or EV/EBIT by about 6% per year. His is hardly the only analysis I've seen, and the data Greenblatt himself talks about is supportive of the statement. I've played around with something like this (as well as other quality factors) and arrived at a similar conclusion. 6% a year BTW is a massive number to outperform EV/EBIT by. Massive. That' would be like almost 10% annualized over the market return. I would be curious to know what other quality factors you have looked at. I am interested to see how something like cash earnings/low accruals would work. Seems like you just need something to screen out some of the frauds and accounting oddities. To me a one year snapshot of ROIC isn't the greatest factor for that. Your point about the impact of quality on drawdowns is probably pretty insightful. One could probably argue Buffett brought in the quality focus for that reason around the time he started using float and drawdowns could become really problematic for him. Have any of you guys looked much at the ishares enhanced etfs? They combine value and quality ("factor tilts") , but I think they use P/B and cash accruals for their value and quality proxys. The tickers are IELG, IESM, IEIL and IEIS, (I think) for the domestic and foreign etfs, respectively. They all have low expense ratios. Also, Wes Gray (Quantitative Value) is going to launch some etfs it looks like this year. I will be interested to see what the expense ratios are on those. Another interesting thing to me is that the international mf mutual fund was getting smoked by its index and now I notice gotham is only offering domestic funds. Must be some problem with getting good data.

He had some interesting discussion of analysis of its performance in real life by both he and greenblatt in his presentation which was recently posted on this site in the book thread.

I dunno about that! ;D

The euro is such a cluster f.

What are the usual terms fo the january promotion? I think I might sign up. I like the site for the access to the ebit/ev and some other valuation ratios, and the financial data on one page..

So the presentation is their methodology as discussed in Quantitative Value, right? Interesting to hear him talk about replicating the MF. Wes Gray has talked about their not being able to replicate it, but Carlisle explains that pretty easily and satisfactorily. BTW: Wes had some copies of QV on "sale" via his blog/amazon this week. I dunno if he sold out yet.

if memory serves there's a fair amount of detail about blue chip in the snowball and/or damn right. I'll try and flip through and see if I can give you a tighter range of reference if no one else offers a clearer recollection.

Yeah, I suggested they drop him (if needed to make room) in favor of Icahn, Keith Meister, Mark Rachesky or some others.

Packer, I too expect that PRF is going to be really tough for diversified large cap funds to beat over the long term. Let me flag VLUE for you, if you've not already looked at it. Its an ishares knockoff/clone of the RAFI index with a lower expense ratio (.15 I believe).

I could probably think of 20+ funds i would buy before this one, including just about every fpa fund, dodge and cox, tweedy, oakmark maybe half a dozen vanguard funds, etc. It is fair to say that an msci developed or all world index is probably a fairer benchmark for this fund and some of the tweedy's. W/r/t the EMH, we should of course be mindful that we are in a period following an epic bear run; one which has resulted in even the WEB underperforming of late; leading to the usual cyclical questions about his and other value investors' alpha. I suspect many of them will look better five years hence.

Yet they still hold KO.

Icahn has a somewhat relevant post today on his new yahoo finance blog that you may find interesting. In the post he acknowledges that he's a devout "reductionist".

Re Greenblatt: Here's a link to a recent interview which most have probably read. With the following quote: "Does the more regimented and diversified style of his new funds mean he’s concluded his original strategy is less viable? Not at all, he says: “Were I starting out again, I’d do it exactly the same as before. With the concentrated hedge fund strategy we made very high returns over a long period of time and I was okay with the volatility because I knew the underlying securities very well and as long as they remained cheap, I had no problem sticking with them. The approach now is probably the better strategy for most people. We’re still fundamental value investors and I expect very good long-term returns, but the ups and downs should be much less severe. That means people are more likely to stick with it, which should turn out far better for them in the long run.” https://www.gothamfunds.com/UploadFiles/968ee205-e.pdf

Greenblatt is the best for my money. Though Buffett was/is a bargain for $100K a year.

I was going to post this in the CFX thread as there are a few short mentions, but I decided not to as it really didn't add anything to that discussion. It was an interesting read though. I am pretty interested in to see how DE does, having been taken out of that one. Some interesting characters. I've got AVP on my radar, given that those guys (via COTY) all tried to take it out relatively recently for like +40% from current value.

I'm surprised how good his records look now. I haven't looked at him in a while and expected a big "hole" in his performance. My takeaway is that sort of shows the power of value investing to outperform, even when one makes huge, arguably boneheaded mistakes.

yeah i like that blog too.

Does the press account not indicate that the demutualization will be accomplished via cash payment to the policyholders? Looking forward to following further developments.

me likey too. Listened to the first two; skipped levit.

This is very off topic, but I'm pretty sure it isn't that easy. Not everybody is able to contribute enough to be worth a high minimum wage. I don't know if you ever visited a super market in for example the Netherlands, but you would probably be amazed at the relative low number of people working there (I was amazed at the high number of people working at Wallmart when I visited the US). When you raise the minimum wage you might also be forcing the less skilled into unemployment while they are replaced by technology and/or other alternatives (doing stuff yourself as a customer: no-one here in the Netherlands to pack your grocery bags...). Go to Aldi if you want to feel at home. We've got a range, from Whole Foods, where PHD candidates bag your groceries whilst reciting the entire supply chain of custody for each item, to Aldi where you get yo stuff yerself. Also, w/r/t to the technology the self-scanners seem to need an intervention on the part of a human every other transaction. When we get the cisco commercial with RFID on every product so you can just walk through a gate and pay without unloading and reloading, I will be enthused. Of course I'm sure there will be loss prevention issues, which may or may not make that feasible in reality.