NewbieD

Strong finish led to +42% in SEK, about +55% USD. CAGR is about 43% since 2011. Could have been a huge year if I hadn't sold my 4% BTC position in May. Now I only have ETH and some small . Still happy though. Some of the larger wins were DDM, Stillfront, FNMA, Catena Media.

I think it's going to be hard to ban cryptocurrencies as such without major restrictions in the internet we are used to. Easy convertibility is another story. Probably not going to be black or white, but it seems likely to become harder. Another reason for governments to restrict use. I think people to an extent will accept crypto as payment even it somehow would be 100% non-convertible. It seems useful as a market for people connected people trading resources such as cpu power, storage space, bandwith, information and why not skills ala Elance. It seems similar to most platforms business models: it's worthless before the first users, not that great in the beginning but then reaches a tipping point where incremental users make it more and more useful. Losing convertibility I don't think is going to happen completely (after all you can go from USD to other currencies and all other currencies would need to lose convertibility as well). But even if it does it might not be enough of a push down to go below the tipping point of usability to keep growing. -- Price wise though for recent investors it would suck with a serious government shutdown.

I'm in the PoW unsustainable camp. PoS gives advantages to bigger players, but don't see that it's worse than for PoW. Cardano has less legacy than Ethereum on the route to proof of stake and the tradeoffs in their design vision make a lot of sense to me. Paying $13B for something that small is repulsive but I took a miniscule bet for learning and hopefully increase at a lower price. Bitcoin development effort look too dominated by economic incentives having priority over transaction utility to continue holding at this stage. I sold all between 12-18 k. Might regret it when the 400 k predictions come true :) Still have Ethereum. They seem pragmatic enough to keep the innovation speed going. When projects are started on Cardano or similar instead of Ethereum I plan to use it as a cue to sell. By the way rkabang, nice call on XVG. I hadn't ventured into altcoins when I read your post a couple of weeks back. Quickest 10X for me so far I think!

Thx for the reminder, and tip about non-dry tablets. I get a small dose in a probiotic I take, but gonna start adding up dose, feels like it could help at this time of year. Fat-soluble (liposomal) seems like a bit of a game changer in supplements in terms of the concentrations that can be achieved in blood. I take liposomal curcumin sometimes when sports injuries flare up.

Bought a little Ferronordic machines pref. Company announced they redeem half of prefs now, half when they have updated yearly accounts = law requirement. 9-10% yield meantime = a few months. Risk should be low. Added some Storytel.

Will check it out. Just saw this after ordering his new book (out in a week): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/1501124021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505108560&sr=8-1&keywords=principles

Interesting, I'd missed that. Berkshire went from 0% of my companys (scandinavian) reinsurance program to being the single largest (10%) provider last renewal. So they seem to have an opinion on where specifically prices are too low. They might be the smart money in this area.

Bought some more Aimia, the preferreds this time. Added to Ferronordic machines, DDM Holding and XBrane. Also Danske Andelskassers Bank.

Working in a P&C insurer, albeit in Scandinavia. Limited experience with US cat events but I've been reading up a bit. From what I've been able to gather it looks like this is less of an insurance event than one might think. Or people estimating are way off. One estimate that claims total claims as low as $6 billion of which most will be paid by primary insurers: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/08/29/462672.htm. One reason being less than 1 in 5 homes have flood insurance, and many of them are under the federal program. Also, there is a lot of capital chasing yield which is still pushing reinsurance prices lower: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-reinsurance-pricing/ratings-agencies-see-falling-reinsurance-rates-despite-harvey-idUSKCN1BG1LF

Hope all is well with boardmembers and family. Looks like the worst since Katrina. Since this is an investing board I also hope it's not too cynical too ask - how much impact will this have on UW result of insurers? FFH, Berkshire, Markel etc. I'm a newbie in this area so would be interesting to hear some guesses.

Not as many or strong favorites this year. DDM Holding and Ferronordic Machines (spec sit) currently.

Wikipedia is a nice source, hard to beat when it comes to truth:) Yes, it's not perfect with all immigrants. Some of them have lousy views of women in particular, and not all are trainable for work it seems. It was a big difference in the last 'batches' compared to earlier rounds. Probably because more of the smart and educated people fled earlier. We'll probably have to live with remains of this for the forseeable future. But it's not like the end of the world, pretty localized incidents. And the pace has slowed from the (given other countries choices) crazy let everybody in. It's not all bad though. There is plenty of cheap labor and should help in having a higher GDP growth. Now that the US tech hubs will have a harder time attracting some foreign computer vizes it's already easier to recruit them to Sthlm. Anyway, a lot of people are desperate to make the decision to accept a lot of immigrants look bad. But I wouldn't be surprised to see in 20 years time that countries who had a decent volume of immigration (Germany, Sweden) are better of because of it. It can create more diverse culture, innovation etc - like in the US.

What symptoms do you see jouni1?

[police says he answered other questions than what's shown in the fox segment about Swedish crime] http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/swedish-police-featured-in-fox-news-segment-filmmaker-is-a-madman/ [fake news factories driven by poor guys in Macedonia, buying jeans for the american clicks] http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/from-this-basement-came-a-piece-of-fake-news-about-who-had-desecrated-a-church-in-sweden/ Not directly investment related, but to me it seems we are approaching a Point in a few years where politics could have real influence on investment values, unless more people start caring whats true and not.

Fun thread!There's also Spiltan, which is smallish and unlisted (traded monthly). But has a nice discount to NAV which is mostly composed of a company I like (Paradox entertainment). Also steered by swedens biggest Buffet fan, Per H Börjesson.

No opinion on the investment (yet). But props for the Communication style, imo. Wouldn't mind more companies doing this.

Mostly studying. I started writing a bit here: scandismallcap.com, nothing that interesting yet though. One of the write-ups I did (on google drive) I sent to the editor of the stock-section of a major swedish newspaper that used it as a base for a writeup today. 4th biggest holding (Stendörren) went 5% on that while index down:) maybe should have pump&dump as a new strategy for this year..

Follow-UP: Also: Deposit 8000 SEK/month ( $1000) - FAIL, probably 5000. It felt less urgent when portfolio was doing great. Keep running and get back into climbing (now with my kid) about once a week. Help my wife get two big time chunks for her hobbies a week (3-4 h). - Semi success, but now no time due to having another kid. Keep studying investing/valuation/sociology/psychology. Have a blog/page where I put my Writing (analysis / book notes / commentary). - Semi success. Keep working part time even if it means my career doesn't go straight to the moon. - Yes, still chugging along at work. Remember to book a holiday with some sun in November because this year was depressing:) - FAIL, due to kid arriving. Time to book something for Easter instead. Check prices less regularly - FAIL Get an investing job - FAIL

A comment on this :"because they won't be able to find them in sufficient quantities for everyday use." Bitcoin is not like the coins you have in your pockets. You can divide them into very small parts. Someone here might now the exact number of decimals that can be handled, I just know it's many. So when hoarding gives a value per bitcoin of a billion USD, you would still be able to pay the right amount for a beer.

Storytel - dominating audiobooks, growing 100%+ outside home market, majority of revenues abroad + expect hindi launchwhich will attract other investors. cutting costs at legacy book publishing arm not understood A City Media - digital signage roll-up, dominating small market with good ceo Inission - good operators + allocators, way too cheap Smart Eye - unexpensive. betting on hype when the market realises they are in a few coming premium cars for 7+ years and Autoliv will see them in many more Moberg Pharma - continued profitable growth + bingo option for new nail fungus treatment

+44% my account, +41% incl family accounts. If counting some dividend shares not showing in account add 2-3%. All in SEK. 8% less in USD or so? About 100% invested on average, now 90%. CAGR 43,9% since starting 2012-01. Sharpe quote this year was 2,49. Major contributors were Bahnhof, Effnetplattformen, Stendörren, Fortnox, Cherry, Storytel. No big loosers. Timing on selling was good, but results would have been much better if I sold more when moving to new positions instead of 20-30% of position. Partly due to pscyhological reasons getting used to larger positions I think. Developed a bit of a side income/gambling habit on short term trading related to company events. Probably employed about 5% of the capital on average in this type. Don't know exact returns but higher than 40%. Most fun event was attending my first board meeting in Effnetplattformen. Since sold 90% of my shares which turned out to be the big mistake of the year.

I'm considering making one of my first merger arbitrage bets buying Meda stock. Mylan has put an offer with expected payment in august. The offer is 80% cash and 20% shares in Mylan. Assuming a 5% probability of non-completion and static shareprice of Mylan would give an annualised return of about 14%. Now I'm trying to analyze if 5% is a conservative estimate. What is the high level probability for a public bid to fail (not considering company specifics)? Anyone know a site with statistics like this? Googled but came up empty. What are some things to watch out for in judging the probability of failure? One is obviously acceptance of the deal, but I'm not so worried there since it was a 95% premium and the major shareholders have accepted. Another would be cash position of Mylan. It seems they have some margin. The CEO is talking of further purchases and they have negotiated with companies 3 times as large.

I came across this guys videos for CFA. Very to the point, well edited and good visuals for the memory: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHr-sT0AjrD3sBwr1eRUNg

Trying to think of historical examples of countries being better off after breaking up from a formed union. Can't think of any. Leaving would be like giving up in a marathon because you have signs of cramping. Hydrate and take some salt instead. The EU has flaws that need to be fixed, but what is the evidence that it's so flawed it won't be fixed? It's much easier to come up with examples where incremental improvements turned a so-so thing into something great.

I bought a few more shares of Goog after looking at this: Also sold some index futures.