frommi

That would be nice, but i doubt it. =GoogleFinance("UPRO") also doesn`t work anymore, any ideas?

I had the same problems, had to rework all my spreadsheets today. USDUSD doesn`t work anymore and some tickers now need the correct stock exchange prefixed. Until today you could get data with FFH.TO, now you have to use TSE:FFH. And they changed the layout on the GoogleFinance site, so for all tickers that are not available directly with the GoogleFinance API i pulled the data from google.com/finance, that also doesn`t work as before. I now use quote.wsj.com to import japanese and singapor stock prices, but the loading takes forever, i would love to see a better idea to get japanese and singapor stock prices into a spreadsheet.

Bought MO,WPP,XOM Covered shorts on HSCG,SPNS,TWLO,IRWD,WAB,RBA. shorted ZB futures with a tight stop above the daily high to protect some of my REIT/dividend portfolio against further increases in the long term interest rate Much more long now than at the start of the year, will keep it this way till the end of april where i will do my normal summer hedging with OTM put options on DAX. Learned a lot the last 6 months about shorting, maybe this helps me get better on the long side but shorting the way i did has increased my portfolio volatility a lot more than i thought, so i will reduce this part of the portfolio for now, even though i made a small profit doing it. But it was not very funny overall. (TWLO has gone up 50% in 3 months and has pretty much sucked up all my other short profits.)

Yes, but rukawa is right, 50m is way to high. The average NCAV stock in my portfolio is between 5 and 50 million and i won`t include anything above 150m because these tend to have lower returns. But adding a filter like >10k daily volume and price > 0.1 should help with the noise, at least in my backtests it did.

Thanks for your answers. I asked about the years because i am under the impression that these type of returns come mostly from the years after a larger market correction, so its probably not something to start after an 8 year long bullmarket. Thats the reason i reduced my NCAV portfolio (from 80%->20% of the whole portfolio right now) and put more money into low beta/high dividend stocks. Maybe at the end of the year i will realize that that was a mistake, but i don`t really find a lot of good netnets right now and i really don`t want to hold crappy cash burning companies in a bear market. My plan is to switch gradually back into NCAV stocks when some good ones re-appear on my screens.

Btw. the 200/100 Jan2020 put spread on TSLA pays 6:1 right now and a 120/100 Jan2020 put spread on QQQ pays 10:1. I can imagine that these are some of the best equity hedges right now. With just 3-4% of portfolio value in these bets you can hedge a whole portfolio for 2 years. I have this little feeling that this year is the year where you want to be protected. ( But i must admit that i had this thought every year for the past 4 years ;D ) Oh and one for the long side: SPG 200/220 jan2020 call spread also pays 10:1.

Thanks! My observation over the last 2 years has resulted in similar conclusions. A large cash balance and/or share buybacks are the things you want to see in a netnet for huge returns. (Still hold SHOS, but my patience is getting smaller every quarter) I have some questions: Was this a backtest with international data? What was the rebalance timeframe? Are the results stable when you exclude really low liquidity stocks like price < 0.1 and daily volume < 10k USD? When you exclude 2009 and 2003 are the returns still that high?

Thanks for posting, might be a good hedge for a dividend heavy portfolio. The Jan2020 95/93 put spread has a payoff of 10:1, that looks like a really good bet.

Posted it already in the other thread, but i think it also belongs here. REITs: STOR / Christopher Volk (http://ir.storecapital.com/interactive/newlookandfeel/4553160/STOR_2017_CEO_Letter.pdf)

Read the latest CEO letter from STOR. (link: http://ir.storecapital.com/interactive/newlookandfeel/4553160/STOR_2017_CEO_Letter.pdf) While the others are surely more discounted, i think that STOR might be the best long term play. I choose BRX from the rest of the pack because they are the most discounted and it looks like they are doing the right thing with asset sales and share buybacks. (And their re-lease spreads are high, at least in the presentations.) *EDIT* And BRX is selling their worst performing locations for a 7.8% caprate but the whole REIT trades at a 8.5% caprate, i think that shows how discounted it is right now.

Covered short call and short put on DERM with a small profit after all volatility was sucked out of the options. In hindsight it would have been better to just use a bear call spread to short it. But damn that vola looked so good, i had to short it too.

reduced SRG and SRC positions to 5% and sold TYO:7922 after a nice pop this morning. bought STOR, SPG, BRX, SOHO, EAT and more WSE:SOL. Invented new rules for position sizing: 3% position will be standard 5% only when the management is shareholder friendly >5% only when i find an NCAV stock far below net cash or a diversified holding company like BRK or MKL. >20% never.

I`ve built on your idea and created a test to show myself that the idea to balance longs and shorts based on something like CAPE10 or regression to trendline improves results further. But i did use results from Montiers backtest instead of Chanos returns from his 2008 paper http://www.designs.valueinvestorinsight.com/bonus/bonuscontent/docs/Montier-Shorting.pdf. For the long side i used the results from the dividend aristrocats, but with SPY returns are similar. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jyYcfKdzxg-Pm1Uc4W57QdlXoXdCUfvh08o8PL6QpAg/edit?usp=sharing So in essence with a static 130%/80% long/short allocation you could have reached 17.8% returns while 100% SPY or NOBL reached a 10% return over that timeframe. But with a variable allocation depending on the current valuation of the market you can reach 20% returns with lower overall drawdowns. And this is without any alpha on the long side!

I see it the same, but i also think that retail real estate is a different animal. If in doubt they can redevelop the properties to other uses. Look what SRG is doing with the old Sears boxes, at least if they own good locations. And i can`t imagine a world where everybody sits at home ordering stuff without going out. That will probably never happen.

Thanks. I will look into KIM, it looks like i was too lazy to do that until now. I have nothing against melting ice cubes, i learned with netnets that these are sometimes the best investments. *EDIT* If i have the numbers correct than KIM trades just at a discount of 30% to NAV if i use the same caprate as for SKT and KIM has a higher debt/NOI ratio. SKT and SRC have to go up by 50% to reach fair value/NAV. Btw. my position sizing is 16% SRG, 10% SRC and 4% SKT, so i wouldn`t see SKT as my absolute favorite.

Maybe you are right, but thinking about it, isn`t it possible that this is both at the same time? :)

Tanger guided for flat NOI/AFFO for 2018, that is enough for me to conclude that the value is stable. Your opinion is the consensus and the reason i can buy at a discount. *EDIT* It is maybe not in the original "Graham" sense (Price to book) to buy REIT`s below NAV, but why not? Since real estate is at least as liquid as inventory and has a private market with a private market price i see no reason not to. With a large enough margin of safety this should work equally good. And if the company sells assets and buys its own stock it widens this margin further.

I am more of a Graham type investor i don‘t really care about quality. I buy things below liquidation value and only demand that liquidation value is stable or growing. Ideally you have a management team that is aware of that discount, sells assets at liq value and buys back stock. In case of SKT NAV is at 33-35$ depending on the caprate you use. (i would think that currently 6.5-7% is very fair for these assets)

Sold FAST (this was more cash/filler position, maybe i should use BRK for that next time.) Bought a large position in SRC after reading a good writeup (http://clarkstreetvalue.blogspot.de/2018/01/spirit-realty-leveraged-shopko-spinoff.html). (this is my best idea right now beside SRG/SKT and all the netnets.) I am heavy on Retail REIT`s now, looks a bit like one large position (30% of portfolio over the 3 stocks.)

I'm sure this has been discussed at length elsewhere but which platform do you use for your derivatives? Thanks. Interactive Brokers.

bought SKT, and shorted MODN with buying puts@17, selling calls@17 and buying calls @22.

Thanks! Btw. this is the original thread if someone is interested in this: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/chanos-nice-interview/

Do you have a link with his returns? I have just found this one: http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/jim-chanos-return-model/ Of course you can`t view the funds returns in isolation since it is short only. You can only value it as a market hedge, so a 0% return would be pretty good as that because it means you will extract a positive return with rebalancing and lower drawdowns. Especially when you withdraw money for retirement spending this is very important. At the moment i think i have a huge advantage over chanos because i can use options whereas i don`t think you can do that with 3-6 billion $ in AUM. So i can concentrate on the best shorts and have a limited downside. If i had for example 10 million $ i might be too big for netnets already but i still think i can buy and sell options on my shorts.

Sold some puts on HCSG,IT and WAB to rebalance the delta adjusted position size in the short portfolio back to equal weight and at the same time adjust my net long exposure back up to 25%. (107% long, 82% short) Because of the falling market my short exposure with options gets bigger with each fall, so i have to adjust that. Bought more MPW, STOR and SRG with the money. I am just 4 months into the "quant" short journey but i am more and more under the impression that it is much easier to create alpha on the short side, at least at the moment. I begin to understand why Chanos is just long indices and short single stocks, with higher AUM i am inclined to follow that path. (or maybe it just depends on the market valuation level, don`t know.)

Haha, but it is really fun especially the last days. :)