frommi

And how do you know if we are not going up 20% first? Can feel pretty dumb to sit in cash than. :)

CFX, but feel really bad now. I dipped into margin because i don`t know what to sell for it.

The prius is the ideal car to calm down while driving. :) I drive mine now since 4 years, i have never been a more relaxed driver.

Sold LVNTA/EXPE because the discount has gone down to single digits, bought CABO and BBBY.

24% in € after commissions and interest 8% F/X 22% Shorts in the summer on xbi and russel2k futures 3% long mainly us stocks including ~6% loss on nwh.ax and rsss -5% leveraged asset allocation -3% short term trades and options -2% commission and interest for shorts so no microcap stocks and options for me next year, moved more money to IB to reduce commissions. Was the worst year for a diversified asset allocation in quite some time, so hopefully next year is better there. Overall my summer hedges have saved the year for me.

I understand that, but when i can get Berkshire with 10-15% forward returns, why invest in something that gives you lower returns with higher risks?

Its exactly the same as selling a put option, so to make it easier think about the up and downside of that. You are an insurance provider, in the long run you will make a small profit taxed at short term rates. Not a good business to be in, and a lot of people overestimate the returns and underestimate the risks, which leads to leverage and a black swan event erasing all your profits and some more. Read some books of Nassim Taleb.

Why do you think a company with an RoE of ~6% should be valued at bookvalue? Can someone else earn more with the same assets or what should the catalyst be for higher earnings? I would say Hornbach is in the same league, RoE of ~8% and p/b of 0.8 looks like fair value at the moment. At least as long as nobody is going to sell all the real estate assets, but the opportunity cost for holding until it happens can be huge.

Had some ideas for this this year, as long as it is planned, nothing speaks against it. Was several times thinking this year about selling VRX put options near 80-90, would have been a good idea in hindsight. But i made some stupid bets on short-term put options in june that has cost me some money, or buying TLT for 2 weeks probably just out of boredom. Really interesting to go through all the trades of the year and rethinking of why i did that trade. Buying options with less than one or two years to expiration is definitly something i will not do again. (Made a big comment in my depot spreadsheet, maybe it helps.) On the other hand without making short term sell decisions on some stocks, i would have lost a lot of money this year. For example i made money on VRX,SEC.TO,OUTR,Intralot and AIQ. Holding these stocks for 12 months would have easily cost 20% of my networth(instead of making 10%). Of course we can argue that buying them was the mistake in the first place.

At least its a lot more tax efficient, but on the other hand the 500 original companies of the S&P500 outperformed the index (and when you equal weight at the start even more). So maybe its a good idea to build an index yourself with >100 companies. It shouldn`t be too hard to exclude the crappy businesses. On the other hand you are back to active investing then. Maybe do it like Buffet and make buy once sell never decisions, that should be even better. My goals for 2016 are 1) hold my weight 2) make more friends 3) stop trading options, OTC, microcaps and illiquid stocks and stop making stupid short term trades. (the last one was already on last years list, if someone has an idea to force myself to not do it, its welcome.)

Merry Christmas to all. May the force be with you!

CCP

IBM, BXE.

KMI and BP

Made LVNTA+EXPE short my biggest position today.

He opened a 20% gold position last quarter at current levels, maybe not a bad idea for next year.

Thats not true. Bonds are flat, IWM is up 6% since 9/30 and BBRY for example is up 19% since then, so overall they shouldn`t have lost that much in october. Eurobank is immaterial now. Its crazy how they lost a billion and you don`t even see it in the results (BV). If they suddenly have a good quarter they will hit the ball out of the park.

I have accounts at cortalconsors, comdirect and ib. I suspect that these "free" brokers either sell your data or your order flow, both is more expensive in the long run than ib. And i want access to futures, options and short selling. I am really happy at ib so i don't see a reason to search for another broker.

Value investing in large cap stocks has given only an edge of 2-3% in the past (~1% from 1990-2013), its not that hard to lose it through fees or some emotional traps everybody has. See page 9 of the attached document. Scientific_Paper_Momentum.pdf

Rebuild my short position in XBI, Russel 2k futures and FTSE100 futures. Net long only ~10% now.

Covered the rest of my shorts on XBI. Did that with Russel 2k futures last week already and bought more LMCA, TDG, BRK, DNOW, CHRW and IBKR.

Profit margins erode through competition when there is no true moat or through inflation that can not be passed to the customer, roic erodes because it becomes harder to invest bigger chunks of capital. So in most businesses you see both mean reverting but at some only roic.

But that doesn`t mean its the optimal holding period for everyone. When you deploy capital in tenth of billions, its not really a matter of choice. There are not a lot of businesses that can compound capital at >20% forever (if they exist at all), so when you want to compound faster than that your only chance is to increase your inventory turnover or to use leverage.

Yes but they didn`t use leverage as far i know and when you compound at 27% for a decade and than have a 50% or 60% drawdown its not the end of the world. Especially when you look at the story, i mean he has only played with internet stocks in late 1999 because there was immense pressure from his investors, i doubt that he would have done it when he was a private investor at that time. Just shows how dangerous it can be to invest OPM.