NeverLoseMoney

I think they only have to report the individual trade that puts them below a reporting threshold, not all the trades that happened before that final trade. That's why the trades that put Berkshire slightly below 20% and slightly below 19% were reported. Not sure what those thresholds are exactly in Hong Kong, but I think that's how it works. If you go below 5%, you don't have to report any further sales IIRC.

that's awesome...where did you see that? or was that photoshopped? I think it was originally posted on Li Lu's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/li.lu.376043

I'm not from the US, so I don't know about the tax implications. But I saw that this "going private" transaction was done by a Scheme of Arrangement. In case someone else wants to take a look, the document can be found on this page. Why is the scheme consideration being treated as a dividend distribution? That seems strange. Are you sure that is correct? If that is the case, it could be that it has something to do with the US possibly being a "restricted jurisdiction" and that for legal reasons, formally the offer can't be made to you. Perhaps a dividend distribution of the amount of the consideration is a way for the company to get around that problem.

Some critical points about this book: Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors. It seems much of the book is not as scientifically accurate as Walker makes it out to be, so I don't think anyone should be too worried if you don't sleep eight hours a night but feel fine. I usually get around seven hours of sleep a night, sometimes a bit less, but feel fully rested. FWIW: I read the book and enjoyed it at the time.

Investing.com was mentioned by someone in another topic. I've been using that site recently and found it surprisingly good. It offers a wide range of countries. Data is for only five years though and it's annoying that the default view for financials is quarterly, not annual, so you have to click an extra button for every single page. But all in all I prefer it to Morningstar and Yahoo.

I'm on a desktop. The data can not be viewed properly without having to scroll through every page and having to collapse multiple items in the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow screens. It's completely cluttered. For example: I'm not interested in seeing how much of inventory consists of "raw materials", "work in process", "other", or "finished goods" when I'm looking for a quick snapshot of a company's financials. Of course, none of the things you deselect on a page are remembered by the site, so you have to go through this for every single company you look at. This redesign was clearly done by people who never actually use the site on a daily basis.

Also agree about Morningstar. They basically destroyed it and it's pretty much unusable for me now. I never thought I'd say this, but I think Yahoo Finance is the best free source for financials right now. You get five years of data and it's generally accurate. Most important for me is that they cover most international markets. If you're only looking at US and Canadian companies there are probably better alternatives. For free data about most international markets, Yahoo seems to be the only option.

Bloomberg published a follow-up article in which Burry discloses all his Japanese holdings: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-05/burry-s-picks-of-undervalued-japanese-companies-rise-in-tokyo His holdings are: Tazmo Co. (6266) Yotai Refractories (5357) Sansei Technologies (6357) Tosei Corp. (8923) Kanamoto (9678) Altech Corp. (4641) Nippon Pillar Packing (6490) Murakami Corp. (7292) All these stocks are up nicely after he disclosed his stakes, which might be a reason why he decided to talk to the press about his Japanese holdings. A known Burry holding might hold up better in a big downturn as well.

Article by David Webb suggesting the US could use the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to force Americans to sell their holdings in Chinese state-backed companies: https://webb-site.com/articles/trumpdump.asp This doesn't sound like a crazy scenario if trade relations continue to deteriorate. I think China for its part could ask their courts to take a hard look at the VIE structure that is being used by some leading Chinese companies to circumvent Chinese laws restricting foreign investment. I don't think there has been a clear answer from Chinese authorities about how it views the legality of the VIE structure.

So do I. .

I've mostly stuck to net-nets and businesses trading at extreme discounts to book value. My problem with buying better businesses at low P/E's or free cash flow multiples is mainly the language barrier. It's very difficult to get a good picture about a micro-cap Japanese company by trying to make sense of a Japanese annual report through Google Translate or something. If you're wrong about growth, or that low P/E, your downside can be quite large. I have some profitable, dividend paying companies in my portfolio that are trading at 30%-40% of book value. I'm hesitant to buy something that's trading at say, 7x earnings and 80% of book, because I think in Japan it can easily sell off to 40% of BV if earnings disappoint. Companies can get a lot cheaper than they would typically get in the US or Europe if investors become pessimistic about its prospects. There's some limit that these deep value stocks almost never sink through. I don't think I've ever seen a consistently profitable, dividend paying Japanese company selling below 25% of tangible book value (if you've got any, please post them below!). So I feel relatively safe buying these at 30-40% of BV and doing little analysis due to the language barrier. That doesn't mean that I'll do well of course, but I think I'm unlikely to lose. I've also tried to coattail some activist investors. I don't think any of those positions have worked out well. There's a decent book (bit too long and boring in some spots) about activism in Japan called "Hedge Fund Activism in Japan: The Limits Of Shareholder Primacy": https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Fund-Activism-Japan-Shareholder/dp/1107672503/. I don't think coattailing foreign activists is a good idea today either. As an example: I think one company I owned (SNT Corp. - 6319.JP) did a share offering in August, 2018 to dilute their large, activist shareholder. Perhaps I misunderstood the transaction and there is another explanation. For those who want to take a look, press releases can be found on the Japanese version of their website: http://snt.co.jp/jpn/, but not on the English version. Apparently they sold ~835k shares to "improve distribution and liquidity of their stock" (Google translate). I believe there was a "purchase limit" of 400 shares per customer. The company was already swimming in cash, of course. So I don't think much has changed in terms of the treatment of activists.

I like Legend Corporation (LGD.AX) in Australia. They are active in three segments: electrical, power and infrastructure, innovative electrical solutions and gas and plumbing. Market cap is ~$64m AUD. Net profit guidance for H1 of fiscal 2019 is $3.6-$3.8m. The true "owner earnings" are higher, because there is ~1m a year in amortization expenses that, in my view, are purely accounting charges. If they manage to make around $7.5m for the year (fiscal year ends in June 2019), the company is trading around 8.5x reported earnings. The CEO (Brad Dowe) owns almost 30% of the shares. He has a history of making bolt-on acquisitions. Acquisitions have been structured with earn-out targets. They have not used stock. In the last acquisition, the company disagreed with the sellers about the near term expected results of the business being acquired. They insisted on putting a $2m clawback in place. They were right and got their $2m back. The CEO is not an empire builder, but focused on buying cash flow generating businesses and buying them cheap. I've owned shares for a while and it was obviously a lot more attractive last year when results where a bit depressed, but it still looks cheap to me. The company pays a nice dividend (I think 5%+) as well. It's certainly not a multi-bagger or anything, but I think a solid company with good capital allocation at a cheap price.

This is getting insane. You'd think we are in the midst of some massive crisis. Or that every listed company in the US is cooking it's books... I know Tepper basically just declared the Fed Put dead, but all the writing on the wall, at least to me, seems to indicate that with a little more pain, a lot of folks are going to start looking to resurrect it. Twitter links & links to Bloomberg articles ... -It would be nice if this could be a data & facts driven discussion. Seems like a fact to me that he said it at this point. Are you worried about his statement? And is that why you'd have preferred me not to post those links? Because I'm a bit worried now that you might be worried... I'm not in fact, but that's how confidence works and it can affect markets. If it was mostly about data and facts there would be a lot more rich mathematicians out there.

Just dropping this in here. Apparently the big banks are fine: and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-23/mnuchin-called-top-u-s-bank-executives-about-market-stability Never say your banks are fine if they are fine.

My impression was that you were trying to portray the author of NoNameStocks as a pump-and-dump operator. Most of my comments were with that in mind. Apparently you were just venting your frustration about something that you thought was wrong on the internet. Fair enough. It should be obvious that the best ways to provide feedback on someone's blogpost is to either comment on that post, or to contact the author directly. A comment on a blogpost can be read by all other readers and would be much more effective in warning people if that was your purpose. Why automatically assume that your comment will be deleted? That seems a bit cynical. If the author deletes your comment, that tells you a lot more about him. Then you actually might have a valid complaint and that would be a much better reason for a post here. Commenting or e-mailing can help a blogger learn and they can improve their posts based on your feedback. The overall quality of the blog might improve as a result and fewer complaints about that blog would appear on message boards in the future. All investors have lots of things to learn and bloggers are no different. Accusing someone of pumping a stock on a message board is pretty bad form IMO, but perhaps that's just me. If I disagree with someone I'll just say it to them directly. I'm not posting on Twitter to say I disagree with you.