frommi

Thanks for your answer. I used my free time on screener.co already and was pleased with the data, but i am just to cheap to pay for data. Perhaps i should just do it. I read on alpha architect that a shiller PE screen had very pleasing results, too. Do you think when you take the average EBITDA of the past 5-8 years you get better results? Or did you do that already?

Are the 10/30/50 stocks always the cheapest 10/30/50 or is it a random pick out of decile #1? Are netnets in it or are they left out because of a negative EBITDA/EV rating? Is there a free/cheap screener that can do exactly that type of screening? If not, west why don`t you set up a website and charge a fee for it? :) ( Can`t wait to see data from 2008/2011. )

And rebought some S&P puts.

Bought a small position in AUY.

Sounds good, i thought about a similar structure for my business some years ago. But i have thrown that idea away because of the additional work/costs involved with a second company and i thought that the advantage in germany is rather small because i pay around 25% on all capital gains/42% income tax as an individual and the company would have to pay around 26% on all the earnings. And my thought was that when i want to pull the money out of the company i get taxed a second time. But perhaps there was a flaw in my thinking or are the numbers in italy so much different?

Congrats, very well done! Is your family actively working in these businesses and why did you choose to accumulate capital in the business instead of getting it out via income? Is this more tax efficient in italy?

I really love this business, but the VIC writeup is in my eyes a bit optimistic. For me the market maker belongs to the brokerage because it makes this company antifragil against erratic market behaviour. The growth in customer accounts is very impressive and the growth in customer equity, too. But a lot of this is because of the runup in the market and the heavy growth of margin debt. I doubt that that continues when the market tanks someday. But of course at that point the market maker spits out profits, so its probably better to take the FCF of the last 5-6 years and put a multiple on that. And than there is a second point. From the IPO until 2012 the expenses for employees has skyrocketed and eat the complete growth of the company. This changed in 2013 and was probably the reason the stock has gone up a lot in that year. The author mentioned that Peterffy was shareholder friendly, in what actions is this visible? http://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/INTERACTIVE_BROKERS_GROUP/128170 Btw. an interesting side effect of reading the annual reports was that i feel now a lot more secure with having my funds at IB. :)

I don`t think its possible and there where at least two bank robberies in germany this year where a lot of deposit boxes where stolen, so i don`t trust that method. Or is my name on the stock certificate? While we are at that topic, are my stocks safe when they are in an electronic brokerage and an EMP hits the whole world and kills all electronic devices? :)

I am now a long term FFH holder, too :). I am still thinking how to trick myself into not selling in the next 10-20 years.

Given that he is right than this is probably the catalyst for the mean reversion. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/global-watchdogs-take-on-the-tax-avoidance-villains/article20710670/

I think the relevant question is not if they mean revert, but when. I am 100% sure that they will mean revert over the course of the next 30-100 years. But i am not sure about the next 5 or 10 years. As petec wrote a catalyst for that may be higher interest rates, higher wages, higher commodity costs or even deflation (and people have only money to buy low margin stuff and cost of capital does not mitigate that anymore). So as long as we are in a stable environment (inflation 1-2%) margins will probably stay that way.

That sounds like "this time is different", heard that a lot around 1999/2000. :) Higher margins always attract competition and when the worker class has less and less real money they buy the cheaper stuff regardless of moats or brands. So in which world should this be sustainable in the long run?

I buy with a margin account at IB, so i am short the same amount of Yen that the stocks are worth at the time of the purchase. I am still thinking about the idea of readjusting that amount from time to time.

I think common wisdom is that profit margins mean revert, so no. When sometime in the future interest rates and wages go up they will mean revert. Otherwise we get so much wealth transfer from the poor/middle class to the rich that we get revolutions. (And at that point they will mean revert :D)

I am aware Fairfax might declare a loss for Q3 2014 in a few days. If that happens and the price declines, I will buy more gladly: I have never had so much cash before! ;) Gio What you are doing makes perfect sense to me given whats going on in the market. I just wanted to know if someone has a really good estimation of current bookvalue.

Have you factored in the losses in SD and XCO?

I hedge out the currency in these situations and i think Japan is a good bet because a lot of japanese investors/pension funds are underweight in equities. So when inflation picks up its natural to shift to foreign investments, domestic equities and real estate. Any company with hard assets and producing things the people/world need are a good idea. But i would avoid companies that are only cash proxies, too. Think about how much money Toyota can earn when their costs go down because they pay Japanese wages and sell their cars in harder currencies. (or any other exporting company, perhaps Toyota is even a bad example. A business that produces only in Japan and sells everything abroad would probably be perfect.)

He said that it matters most in the long run. What i am missing is how in the world all the different ecnomies work together. At the moment we have a beautiful deleveragin in the US, but a deflation with austerity in europe and a debt bubble in china. Now is the US importing deflation through the currency and killing the beauty?

Thanks for posting. In the last year there where lots of companies buying back stock with debt, so is this good debt? :D From my view this is bad debt, because you have to repay it later and therefore earnings/fcf is lower in the future just like debt used for consumption. But on the other hand you buy an asset with income, so whats your view? What really makes me thinking is what Mr. Grant said in a presentation i watched last week, that the swiss central bank buys US equities with printed money because they have pegged their currency to the €. So they create assets out of thin air. Really strange thing to think about. The BoJ does it, too. And since they buy ETFs its probably not even stupid to just buy index funds yourself when all the liquidity goes into them.

Oh you are right, stupid little me should have looked up the definition of GDP earlier. Thanks for your enlightment. :)

I would argue the other way round, because we had the baby boomer generation there was lots of consumption growth and with rising debt you got more to spend at that time. (of course you borrowed consumption from the future). In your scenario when you produce more but don`t need it, jobs or prices get cut. The theory says these workers can now produce something else and therefore GDP rises, but does this happen in reality? And now the baby boomers go into retirement where they don`t help the GDP anymore, this should be a headwind for GDP going forward. (Visible in the workforce participation rate?) From 1980->1990 there were the baby boomers, from 1990->2000 there was debt balloning in the US, 2003->2007 we had a huge debt ballooning in europe, from 2008->2014 it was china. Now what comes next that lets the world economy grow?

Aren`t these comparisons with the past a bit misleading, given that we had population growth back then? Growth in real terms can only come from new consumers or more debt or not?

Does anyone know where/if i can look up insider transactions of australian or japanese stocks?

With the google translator (translate.google.com) you can even translate pdf files, just choose the translate document and then when the dialog pops up enter the link to translate. But it won`t translate pictures or pdfs that are too big. (I had some reports with mainly pictures, there is no chance to get them translated.) I found some english annual reports when searching via google "company-name english annual report", but that was mainly the slightly bigger companies.

I used http://www.tse.or.jp/english/ to find the documents and then the HTML links to have it directly translated in google chrome. Doesn`t work for everything, but i was mainly interested in the corporate governance filings to see insider ownership. But i think west and nate have access to english annual reports, there was a discussion about this in the Fujimak thread.