investor-man

I have (had) about 10% direct'ish exposure to oil via MCR.V and about 15% indirect exposure via GNCMA. I dealt with it by watching MCR.V sh*t the bed, and I've reduced my GNCMA exposure by 2/3. I feel comfortable hanging onto MCR.V because of its strong balance sheet. I may add to it a bit if oil hits $40, $35, $30, so long as the share price continues to shrink along with oil. GNCMA has been going up and continues to, but I felt uncomfortable holding such a large percentage of my portfolio in a state with an economy so exposed to oil. I should add that I felt my exposure to GNCMA was to large regardless of oil, and I'd have reduced it a bit anyway. This info is not helpful. But I'm not going to do anything cute (hedging), mostly because I don't feel confident in my ability to do so.

You forgot to mention that MCR.V also just announce buybacks within the month :)

haven't read the article, but.... Isn't their growth rate around 7%? I find it hard to imagine they'd go from 7% to a negative growth rate for two quarters in a row. They are having issues, sure, but it feels like speculation to say they're headed for a recession.

lose 15 lbs

IIRC the most often cited positions for this type of concentration were BAC, AIG, GM, which tick none of those boxes (well maybe the first). In hindsight they all looks like no-brainers, but that's hindsight. I read all of the blogs and research on ASPS/OCN before it tanked, and it was very compelling. I can understand why people invested in it, and it's very unfortunate what's happened. Someone said earlier that it's all about style and preference. HEAVY concentration isn't for me, and I think it'd be a tough one for anyone with a family or investors. Also, don't listen to me. At the moment, I suck at this ::)

I think the biggest argument against concentrated investing is playing out on the board right now in ASPS/OCN. There are some very well respected folks on this board who understand the businesses very well and are/were highly concentrated in them. Due to some bad luck those stocks have completely tanked, and it looks to be somewhat permanent (correct me if I'm wrong - I haven't followed that closely). I suppose if you hedged it, you're portfolio would be "safe" at a 50% loss. I can tolerate volatility, but I doubt I could stomach too many 50% losses on the year. I don't know how I'd justify that to my wife in a year where the S&P went up by more than 10%, and I think she'd be justifiably upset about it.

Hi orthopa. Welcome!

Sorry to hear that. To Tom!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays including Festivus! I enjoy being a member of this community and look forward to the coming year!

I've been dreading this thread since October, but I want to acknowledge my failures so I can get better at this or abandon it should they mount up year after year. I'm at -2.68% XIRR for the year. When I look through my portfolio I still like everything, and I'd tack this year up to bad luck. I was up about 18% in September, and then in October my portfolio sank with the market and it never recovered. I have a basket of Korean preferreds that dropped about 20% and is still there. MCR.V has tumbled with the rest of the oil related companies. I bought AIQ the day after it was rumored to be looking for a buyer, and then it promptly tumbled about 25%. Intralot has completely sh*t the bed from a price perspective, but I feel that it's extremely cheap and the new CEO is doing some good things lately. I have a few other stocks that are flat this year, and Fiat and GNCMA have performed well. The major mistake I think I made this year was buying Altius Minerals. It was priced fairly, but I went in expecting them to get Kami financed, which they did not. The mistake was that I bought on speculation, and I want to avoid that. I want to look for solid companies that are mis-priced. Altius was not mis-priced. Good luck to everyone next year and congrats to everyone who did well

Just to add some info about Fidelity - I have to call the trading desk to get international trades done in my IRA. It doesn't allow me to do it through the web interface

Haha, it's tough to look at LUKOY and not want to get in. I just can't make myself do it. It's a scary one.

Korean firms’ dividend payouts to be among lowest this year http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20141210000615 A few months ago there were proposals to tax cash holdings on Korean companies to encourage them to pay dividends. Anybody heard where that proposal went lately? Has it just fizzled out?

+1

@oddballstocks where are you getting the numbers from?

I can definitely agree with that - terrible interview

I believe the gap between the perceived and real is why getting a hold of his letters is impossible. ' Yeah, Nate. I just don't know man. I like Pabrai from everything I've read. He seems really smart and cool. With that being said, a 1.5% outperformance of the S&P 500 over 10 years is good but not outstanding, especially when one figures taxes into the equation (and the roughly 70% drawdown). I'm guessing the article is incorrect or else Eric wouldn't have invested with him. I agree, I have a lot of respect for the guy. He gives great talks and seems like a really nice guy. But something in this interview sent up red flags for me. Saying it'd be illegal to discuss performance is weird, if he were up 30% this year would it be illegal? So many managers openly discuss how they've done for the year, it doesn't seem like an issue. One of his talks really helped me understand marketing in a new light, for me the talk was invaluable. Here's the rub for me. Everyone will underperform at some point, it's just how it works. So he's underperforming this year, big deal. But just come out and say that and move on. We can't control when what we own realizes fair value. All we can do is buy and wait. I don't like how he was trying to dodge the question on some weird technicality. The interview said "Pabrai Fund 3" had 9'ish percent returns -- aren't there 5 funds, hence the name "Pabrai Funds"? To get an idea of what his returns are you need to have numbers from all of the funds. A rough proxy for this is to look at the size of his fund over time. It's at $700 million now, and he started with $8 million 15 years ago. I don't think he's raised much more money since then aside from Dhando, which isn't included in the 700 million figure. I'm writing from my iPad so I can't easily calculate it, but that growth feels inline with his claims. Also I do understand and agree with his stance on not discussing his holdings. He's cloning Buffett, who doesn't discuss his holdings, because he doesn't want to answer constant questions from investors about them, which might cause him to second guess his decisions, especially at the worst times for the position, which is when questions are most likely to come in.

Intralot is discussed not infrequently. It has been painful to own, and it looks like the pain will continue for at least the short term with the latest news from the EU

=Substitute(importXML("http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=OUTR160115C00050000","//*[@id=yfs_l10_outr160115c00050000]"),"*","") If you've got Chrome, you can right click the thing you want to scrape, click "inspect element". Then another frame pops up with the html of the thing you inspected. Right click that and select "Copy XPATH". That's the second argument to the importXML function (//*[@id=yfs_l10_outr160115c00050000]). I know that's confusing. PM me if you want to do a google hangout and I can share my screen to walk you through it. I'm on vacation until Monday, but can do a hangout after that.

He discussed this in the last video he did for the BC Business School. Not saying don't ask, but just giving you a heads up if you're interested.

Very cool! Here's a question: I know he doesn't talk about his current holdings and I know he's bullish on India. Are there any companies he looked at in India that he thought were a good buy, but passed on for some reason, like because the liquidity was too low given his capital base. Can't wait to see the details!

haha. This guy sounds a little like Eric here. ;) Nice slight of hand here "Before frictions (fees, transaction costs, etc.), they cannot underperform." Best part of the article:

Haha those "sponsorships" are genius!

Saw a good overview on value walk http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/11/13f-summary-q3-2014/

Thanks for posting!