Jump to content

frommi

Member
  • Posts

    1,347
  • Joined

Posts posted by frommi

  1. source:

    https://can-turtles-fly.blogspot.de/2009/08/charlie-munger-stock-market-as-pari.html

     

    The model I like to sort of simplify the notion of what goes o­n in a market for common stocks is the pari-mutuel system at the racetrack. If you stop to think about it, a pari-mutuel system is a market. Everybody goes there and bets and the odds change based o­n what's bet. That's what happens in the stock market.

     

    But if you look at the odds, the bad horse pays 100 to 1, whereas the good horse pays 3 to 2. Then it's not clear which is statistically the best bet using the mathematics of Fermat and Pascal. The prices have changed in such a way that it's very hard to beat the system.
  2. If you have access to financing and are a local I'd definitely recommend direct ownership in premium areas of cities. I've done only a cursory look at the reits so I'm not comfortable in recommending names at this point. I guess I'll make a post before or after I pull the trigger on specific names.

     

    I am german and looking for a new home since around 2 years now. I can't find anything above a 3-3.5% annual rent/price yield with closing costs of >10%. This is in a medium sized city in NRW. The buying side is pretty crowded right now, so even if i can get low finance rates i just don't see how that is attractive right now.

  3. 2%

     

    currency +-0% (made money on USD, lost some on JPY)

    longs +20%

    shorts -18%

     

    really fucked up on the short side, but made some mistakes on the long side, too.

    On the long side i sold some things too early, like OKE, RGLD, BAC-WT or AHPI.

    On the short side i really need to stick to my rules, 10% of the loss were because i started shorting in early March instead of the end of April and i was at -150% net short exposure at times. Next time i will just go to cash if i have the need to be out of the market outside my short-window and i will not go over -100% short exposure (which is scary enough when i think about it). I am now at +-0 on the short side after 3 years without a true bear-market, so no reason for me to give up shorting in the summer for now.

     

    Maybe i am not that much wealthier than at the beginning of the year, but i learned a lot. (especially about international netnet investing, which i started in september this year)

  4. STRI and 8148.JP

    I have that nagging feeling that cash will outperform ~95% of all mid or largecap stocks in 2017.

     

    Are you talking about STR Holdings?  It's delisted right?  Curious why you think they'll come back from the dead.

     

    Yes, its delisted. Its just the cheapest stock in my portfolio (price/intrinsic value) and i think its time that mean reversion kicks in. Maybe the closing of the malaysian factory is finally visible in the income statement or they get a big cheque from the insurance because of the fire in their factory in china or they simply fix the money leakage somehow. At 15% of NCAV there is a lot of negativity priced into the stock already, even if there is just a 30% chance of going back to NCAV its a very good bet. But i wouldn`t bet the farm on it.

     

  5. At the current point in time the best investment for a young person is probably knowledge, so tell him to buy some good investing books instead.

    If that is already part of the plan i would pick a small cap stock with a business model that is easy to explain and follow. I believe that AMNF or CSVI are good picks for that.

  6. Na, this is too simple to be working, it has to be a compounder with ROIC > 50%! And look at all the crap that you have to buy!!  ;)

     

    Seriously, i think its better to buy a stock where cash, receivables and inventory are evenly split and it trades at a 50% discount to NCAV than to buy a shell company where there is only cash on the asset side of the balance sheet and the discount to NCAV is small. Therefore i would argue that a large discount to NCAV (<50%) and current assets/liabilities>2 is one of the best strategies out there and also delivers roughly 50%. At least there are some studies that have found that to be the case.

    I still wonder if its a good idea to exclude companies that have issued a lot of stock in the past because i have not found any studies researching that. Most studies probably include all these stocks and still return 30-50%, thats pretty damn hard to beat. Currently most netnet stocks i found are in Japan, Singapur and Hongkong.

  7. How are we defining bubble here? ;)

     

    I think it depends on whether margins are sustainable.  If not, it's an epic bubble.  If they are, then it's just at the high end of fair.

     

    That's for the US.  Plenty of ex-US markets are more reasonable.

     

    +1. But margins are already contracting, so its unreasonable to assume they will widen further from here. Foreign countries are a little cheaper, but its unsure if you will be able to get the returns of the foreign markets without hedging the currency and you have have other risks there, too.

  8. IBKR (although I'm sure you're already aware of them). That's the only company I own that I think could be a long-term compounder.

     

    IBKR is growing, but is it because it reinvests its capital or would it grow without it? For me this is a business that doesn`t need to reinvest its money, because the business scales so well (at least in theory). The problem is they reinvest it into higher wages and more developers. Is this necessary (and what is the return on investment here) or could the money be used for higher returns on other uses?

    The problem with ROIC is that it masks the real "return on investment", it is just an accounting number. You don`t know why earnings were growing, it could be inflation, price increases, a consumer fad, higher/lower commodity prices, organic volume growth etc. It doesn`t necessarily come from reinvestment of earnings.

  9. To find "compounders", you need a qualitative assessment of the reinvestment opportunities. Backtests are quantitative.

    Finding a compounder that you can understand with high ROIIC, long runway, strong moat, and fair price is extremely rare.

     

    Yes, but a qualitative assessment is subjective. For example i wouldn`t put CMG into that basket. My problem is that everybody talks about this subject and thinks that for example BRK belongs into that pocket. But its nothing special to compound capital at 10% like BRK or MKL did during the last decade, in fact i have plenty of companies on my list that did that and 10% is the long run average ROIC for american companies. Most of the time it will be better to just get the money out as dividends or sharebuybacks where i can invest it at higher rates.

     

    And for the companies where growth was higher in the past there is always a question mark if they can sustain that level of growth. If the answer is yes fine, but often when the answer is no and you find it out too late the investment results can be a disaster. In the end when you want to invest in companies with growth of >20% most of the time you are a momentum investor. Theres nothing wrong with that, but you should be aware of that fact.

  10. I think the calculation is undervaluing dividends. The dividends get valued at face value after the 10 year period but of course they are paid out during the period at which point I can reinvest them somewhere else at the same ROIC! I'm not arguing against a compounder but if a company does not have high ROIC investment opportunities and it distributes the excess cash via dividends to me, at which point I invest it with a high ROIC (which could be again investing in a business without good reinvestment opportunities, provided it's significantly undervalued) I can get similar results as investing in a compounder in the first place!

     

    Of course, one gets mediocre results if a company without good ROIC reinvestment opportunities deploys the cash at bad ROIC or (even worse) just keeps it on the balance sheet. It needs to distribute the cash so I can deploy it somewhere else to achieve good investment returns.

     

    +1. I don`t know if it was Buffet who said that, but the best investment is one that grows without reinvestment of capital like See`s Candy and throws of a lot of free cash on its way. This whole compounder stuff is way overrated since ROIC is mean reverting. Number one determinant of future rate of return is price paid, every backtest that i have seen confirms that. ROIC doesn`t even have an impact on returns, this was highlighted in "Deep Value".

×
×
  • Create New...