sigis

I could never understand comparing somebody's net worth to GDP. GDP is a measure of income, not net worth.

I think you have missed the point. Comparisons are fine. More data is fine. If there is something that can be done better, than one should do that. There is a difference between eyeing your neighbor for informational purposes and coveting what thy neighbor has. If you can use the information to better yourself, then that is good. If it makes you do things you wouldn't normally do and be comfortable with that is not good. Your last two sentences contradict each other. Part of improving is doing things that you wouldn't have done before. The trick is to figure out what you should change and what you shouldn't, and there are no shortcuts for that, some learn better and faster than others. I agree with you that there will be those that attempt to replicate this years results taking way more risk than they should but doubt that this thread has anything to do with it, it is just human nature.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that 24% return is great in abstract but in the year when SP500 returned 30% it does look mediocre. If you think comparing yourself to a benchmark or other investors is greed or envy or just not worth it, its fine, but to me it provides some additional data points that hopefully keeps me intellectually honest with myself and helps me to improve. This board provides a lot of investment ideas but it is also gives real time accounts of how other investors think and react - to me this is just as valuable if not more. I read a lot of threads from 2008-2012, and they were great! I do think my results would have been positively affected if I discovered this board earlier.

+24%. Just like everybody else in <50% crowd I feel somewhat discouraged but looking back I don't feel I would have changed much. My only excuse is that I joined the board in March 2013, so only had 9 months to realize a full benefit of this board!

Credit Card ABS issuers and rating agencies would have that information for securitized pools, googling should get you something. Alternatively, if you have access to Bloomberg, they have monthly charge-offs and other reports for credit card ABS.

I looked at them 2 years ago when they seem to be very cheap on paper but didn't like their declining cash-flow. Things got much worse since then, so it really seems the stock is cheap for a good reason, hard to see where FFH sees value here.

I think people are discussing two different topics here: holding cash for liquidity reasons and holding cash so that you can take advantage of opportunities when stocks get cheaper, e.g. 2009. Holding cash for liquidity reasons obviously makes sense. But I don't understand the argument of holding cash because things may get cheaper tomorrow. If I see a stock with 50% upside, it's a buy. If tomorrow everything is down by 50%, I will have a stock with a 200% upside. If some other stocks offer 300% upside now, I can rebalance into those. In any case I should be able to get out of the crash well ahead. Sure, if I could time my buying perfectly, waiting till tomorrow is better. But how would I know? And if I did, why would I hold 10% cash instead of 100%?

I am with you on this one. The two reasons I can see for holding substantial amount of cash are (a) you are managing OTM or have other reasons to expect substantial withdrawals and (b) the number of existing investment opportunities is such that the concentration would exceed your risk tolerance.

A new article by NormR http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/strategy-lab/value-investing/an-out-of-the-way-investor-with-out-of-this-world-returns/article15571522/

I feel this is a wrong way to look at it. You should invest because you understand the investment and it makes sense to you, not because another smart person invested it. I regularly check dataroma.com but use it as a source of ideas that I can further analyze, not as a 'buy' signal. Knowing that another smart person is investing along with me may add to my level of conviction but that's about it. But if I rephrased a question in terms of which super investor most often have investments that I understand and want to follow up on, I would probably pick Lou Simpson and Michael Larson. Although this board easily outranks them by the number of ideas that I am interested in.

Seems like another example of a good idea taken to the extreme. I seriously doubt Charlie Munger's checklist is half as long as these guys.

I think applying Kelly to avoid over exposure makes sense, this thread definitely got me thinking about what I should be doing on my portfolio.

Very interesting. I am a big fan of Kelly's formula but always thought that it is too hard to apply it to stock investing because of uncertainty of the estimates. Is it a 'real' Kelly or is it just loosely based in a sense that higher conviction/probability ideas get higher weights? If it is real Kelly, do you use fractional Kelly? You are probably aware that over allocating is much more dangerous than under allocating. How do you decide when to rebalance? For example, if your target allocation is 10%, do you rebalance at 11%? 15%?

I had exactly the same thought - ETF popularity should be overall good for value investors and stock pickers in general

Buffett maybe doesn't tweet but he surely reads WSJ and watches CNBC.

Value investors do sell when stock price approaches its IV. I think the difference between this and market timing is much smaller than most of us care too admit.

Bringing back an old topic - does anyone have suggestions how to access old issues of OID? Their website seem to be down. I am based in Toronto, so Brooklyn Public Library will not work :) and Toronto Public Library does not have a copy. A search on ebay didn't yield anything either.

I used to play quite a bit and was a decent player. Remember playing once against Buffett and Sharon Osberg on okbridge (most popular online bridge club at a time) some 15 years ago. They usually would have set games but ocasionally would open a table to anyone. Yes, that's the closest I ever got to Buffett :) It's a great game, unfortunately it is slowly dying. Whenever I go to a live bridge tournament, the average age is well over 60, and I am usually one of the youngest players (I am over 40).