DoddDisciple

Did you deal with any international net-net investing during this period? How did you curate your net-net basket? Just basic screens or did you have a shortlist of stocks that you were interested in at a cheaper price?

Hi, Morgan: I'm from around the same area. What bank(s) are you using? The loan I got on a personal residence was almost completely in line with what others have described on here - a lot of red tape and hassle - course that was 2-3 years ago.

For those of you that invest directly in international stocks, how much time do you spend thinking about tax strategies in regards to investing with taxable versus IRA funds? I know dividends can be subject to witholdings that you may not be able to recover, but what about liquidations, special one-time large cash dividends, etc? Looking at foreign tax credits, it almost doesn't seem worth thinking about unless you have a huge portfolio, and even then, between enough stocks, it might not matter as much as I think.

I've been investigating something similar for a while now. I am fully in cash, and want to ease into mechanical value strategies over the next 2-3 years. In regards to funds, I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for. If you do or if anyone else has suggestions, I'd love to know. The fact of the matter is that the combination of value-focus, lowish cost, and small average market cap (say sub $250M) doesn't exist, at least as far as I can tell. If you're willing to sacrifice in all 3 categories, you can find some. I know the Guggenheim Pure Value has done well lately. Actually, I've looked at most of the funds on this link: http://etfdb.com/index/benjamin-graham-small-cap-value-index---total-return/. Maybe something will interest you. Perritt and Bridgeway have some of the smallest average market cap funds in existence that I'm aware of. Pinnacle Value is the most Graham-like fund I've ever come across, but they've been 50% or more in cash for years. Here's a good article on this: http://www.gurufocus.com/news/164674/are-there-any-good-ben-grahamstyle-mutual-funds. If you want to expand this internationally, the options are even worse. Average market cap skyrockets, even for emerging market funds. There are some funds that target $1B market cap, but they are very country-specific, expensive (possibly loaded), and mostly growth focused (if you go off the Morningstar chart). Greenblatt did have an international magic formula fund, which was nice in its setup since it looked at the whole world and invested based on the strategy. However, fees were high and its now closed. Really, I'd prefer to toss 1% or more in fees and have someone else employ the strategies you're mentioning. It just doesn't seem possible unfortunately. Here's one thing to consider on volatility. I think the way it's calculated for a fund or strategy is inherently flawed. It typically looks at investing and rebalancing at a single point in time each year. It's rare to see a blended measure of volatility where it looks at the range of volatility as you select a different starting date. Starting on say November 3rd may lead to wildly different results as starting on July 6th of the same year. If you employ a strategy like say magic formula or net-nets, you can try to put your whole portfolio's orders in on the same day, but that's not really how most people invest. You get money over time and then invest it. It seems to me that developing baskets of these mechanical investments, and each operating on their own timetable in terms of rebalacing/selling, would actually lead to reduced volatility. Can you imagine how scary it would be to have to rebalance your whole portfolio in a 08/09 situation? However, if a 1/3 of your portfolio is being rebalanced and the rest is on a time table 2 years out for further examination, perspective and fortitude in sticking with the strategy may change.

Unobtainium now being mine lol! Okay, I do some utility in bitcoins for gambling/poker sites. Then again, I have no idea if any of these are trustworthy, but it makes more sense to be able to remove your earnings whenever you want instead of holding the money on the site. Then again, I've read that US people are still able to play poker, it's just that they have to do a really roundabout way of funding with like say a credit card or wire.

I typically don't consider options, but LEAPS seem interesting if someone actually wants to make a long-term bet, and doesn't have a problem with their investment potentially going unexercised and hence losing their initial investment. Has anyone combined a valuation metric, say EV/EBITDA or Value Factor One, with a LEAP strategy? I don't know how it would perform in a typical investment climate, but in the 2008/2009 upset, couldn't you just buy a basket of LEAPS based on whatever value investing metric you want to work with? It doesn't seem like there are too many LEAPS available and mainly the largest companies are represented, but that means it'd be fairly easy to rank them based on relative cheapness. Buy the cheapest 5-10% of the universe, so 25-50 LEAPS, and then hold for a period of time. That seems to be a better way to take advantage of a similar 08/09 situation versus holding a leveraged large cap ETF, using margin, or going long alone.

I'd really appreciate knowing who are the good posters too, especially those who look at small/micro stocks. Searching on the site isn't that great. Does anyone have thoughts about Micro Cap Club?

Haha: nah. It's a case of if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it. And even if I could, why not just plow all that into bitcoins :P However, there is some data on bloomberg.com, which I guess would be the same as what is in a Bloomberg terminal. So for the few data points that are there, I could check for correlation with what FT and others spit out. Do they? I may be computer illiterate when it comes to their site. I only see a US screener, and its only for NASDAQ, NYSE, and AMEX (NYSE MKT). I've looked at ADVFN too, but it seems like they only has US and CA screeners. What about level 2 quotes? Do they even have these for international stocks? And then, to pick minds further, for anyone that uses IB, what is the optional data feed fee actually provide? It just looks like it gives information that I could get at any other site for free.

Is there an easy way of getting the financials for any company in the world, aside from going through each company's website? I've compared some financials and FT and the balance sheet items seem right for the most part.

Can you provide some general examples of when the data isn't that great? I've compared with FT screener and some other sites and it seems right more often than not, though FMZ scores show a lot of deviance.

Yadayada is bringing up some good points. The fact of the matter is, BTC doesn't do anything better than what's already out there. Who wants to use a credit card with no chargeback options? Through cashback and sign-on bonuses, I actually make money using a card, and if I get a shoddy merchant, it may save me thousands. Fees are nothing at banks and other institutions. I can convert pretty much any fiat for $2 at IB. Yeah, if I am doing this with more than a few million, the cost rises a little ($2k on $1M), but that seems like a rich person problem. How is BTC going to save the world's poor when this is one of the problems it's supposed to solve? Hell, you have to have a computer, Internet access, and some technical savvy to even buy these. If BTC is going to $1M a coin like some people say, why do I need more than 1? That's almost a 100,000% return from now, or a thousand-bagger. I don't see that happening. That being said, I'm a cheapskate in the boonies. $1M and I'd be set. At the same time, for that to happen, there has to be an absolute mania on these. Grandma and grandpa have to put their life savings in these since they've been burnt by the housing bubble, dot com bubble, Japan bubble, etc. and want to finally catch up. There will be a paradigm shift. Cryptocurrency will be the "wave of the future." BTC may be $10k or $100k a coin, but hey, their friendly local broker has a "hot tip" on HoboNickels. "Just think if these go to $1k, they're only $1-$10 now," he'll say. I'm going into these with full expectations that it is a complete and absolute gamble based on greed. When I read about people going from $3k to $100k in 2 months, there is no other explanation.

What does everyone think about bringing back the partnership model where owners are personally liable? This is how a lot of these large investment and banking houses use to be set up.

What screeners do you all use for small/micro caps around the world? Only cost effective ones I've seen are screener.co and value-investing.eu. Do you all use F, M, and Z scores? How does the data for these compare to doing it by hand against the screener results?

I really think a basket method is the best way to go about this. No one knows what is going to happen, except for maybe Satoshi, the Winklevii, and the FBI (since they hold so much of DPR's money :P). Who would have thought Dogecoin and Deutsche eMark (I love these names!) would have rocketed up yesterday? You're not going to see possible 100x growth in just Bitcoin. $60k a coin where you have to worry about them being stolen? Not to mention that the average American is notoriously bad with decimal places to actually split that up and spend it right. I haven't even heard people talking about Ripple, which is near a $2B market cap and where they did the complete opposite of BTC as far as I can tell and made all the coins and are now selling em'. It's #2 ahead of LTC.

Who's actually purchased any of these? What online wallets are you using? I'm thinking of getting 1 BTC and holding, and then an equal BTC/USD amount of each other crypto currency and the same equal amount for each cryptostock and holding them as well. That's more than 100 position types, hence my desire to not setup a physical wallet for each one. I don't see how anyone can have a directional position on any of these in the short term. I've frequently seen "pump and dump" being explained as a good thing (for current holders of course) and if you look at the IRC/trading chats, there is a lot of discussion of technical analysis. Maybe there's some value in technical analysis, I don't know, but even if there is, I don't see how any of it could be relevant since the markets are not liquid on these at all. There are multiple day delays between USD to BTC to altcoins and back again. You could have a massive increase on the altcoin basket side and then lose 50% going from BTC to USD. Who knows, maybe HoboNickels will be the currency of the future :P

Overstock.com to begin accepting Bitcoin Q2 2014? http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/12/19/overstock-com-to-accept-bitcoins-ceo-says-money-is-too-important-to-leave-in-the-hands-of-government-officials/

But what if Satoshi Nakamoto = North Korea, NSA, etc. Again, possible tinfoil talk :P

Stocks seem to be the most resilient form of holding value. The article I mentioned about German stocks keeping up with Weimer hyperinflation was really fascinating. Do you all know there are actually bitcoin and cryptocoin stock exchanges? Where you can invest in the miners and currency exchanges? Has anyone looked at these?

I love it. Actually, a Flooz sounds better than some of this stuff. I could actually at least get a book from B&N with some Flooz. There was also eGold around the same time, right? I don't know what this sudden interest in bitcoins and similar cyptocurrencies mean in terms of where we are on the bubble cycle. I have long felt that social media companies have been bought and traded at insane valuations. But can it be a bubble when the public at large can't partake? Bitcoin seems to be an extension of whatever's been happening in social media to me at least.

Why are we talking about Bitcoin? Dogecoin is up 400% today :D

Commodities have always perplexed me. Most of the funds and ETFs are heavily weighted towards energy, like 50% plus. Leverage makes it where at any given point more of each commodity is being traded than is actually available on the Earth. Does anyone actually employ Jim Roger's use and utility weighted commodity strategy? I see something like wheat or water rights being a hell of a lot more valuable than oil, but maybe I'm mistaken.

Right. I can't easily put even $1k into this. I have to open an account on Coinbase using my information (there's the privacy angle gone), wait 4 days and they know my bank account to convert the money into BTC. Who knows what will happen over those 4 days. Maybe it's USD/BTC $1000 or USD/BTC $500. To get any of these other things, I have to then open an account on Crypsty and TRUST that they aren't like all the other sites. Additionally, they also have my information, so again, privacy gone further. What I'm interested in is what happens when Wall Street and the Winklevii ETF goes like. There's already been some cash flowing into BTC on SecondMarket. If this goes into full-on frenzy mode, I see Dogecoin 10k :P

The government still controls the physical space. How do you exercise power with bitcoin then? I understand and agree with your perspective of how much power currency controllers have. On the conspiracy side, a lot of people may have been offed who wanted to upset the balance of power. I don't know what's true or not, but maybe the reality is between what we know and what people claim happened. I'm still investigating putting a little in each coin on Crypsty and holding for a year or so or until things go haywire on the upside, assuming that they all may go to zero.

How? The government has, what, 1.6 billion rounds of ammo? Are they really going to let a new 1% exist that got there by putting $100 in these a few years ago? Power is much more complex than just how paper wealthy someone is. Right, just look at the cult-like status of these things. People are even arguing Dogecoin has value outside of a joke meme.

If inflation is the problem, why not own stocks? I'd say German stocks keeping place with hyperinflation is a pretty good sign that investing in them is what you want to do with cash you don't need at the moment. Banks and card processors can screw you over, but at least I can issue a chargeback or sue in the worst case scenario and potentially recover some value. Anyway, I'm interesting in putting some money in and holding until it gets too crazy. Course, based on coinmarketcap, I should have done this yesterday since prices are up across the board. Would you recommend coinbase for fiat to BTC and then Crypsty for holding a little of each cryptocoin? I know digital wallets are not good, but I don't want to setup 50 paper wallets. After I sell out, maybe I hold onto at least 0.1 BTC per https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345228.0. Don't know how accurate it is, and I don't see how BTC is supposed to "free the world's poor" when it already has created a new 1% of hoarders, but let's see :)