yadayada

ok thanks. The pyramid of holding companies seems weird though. Why do they do that? So chairman owns 100% of Trillion Resources, Trillion owns 71.2% of Shun Ho resources Shun Ho resources owns 100% of Omnico And Omnico owns 65% of Shun Ho technology (actually listed) And Shun Ho Technology owns 71% of this one: https://www.google.com/finance?q=0201&hl=en&ei=sk_rU8COEOT2wAPTzIH4BA Which seems to pay the dividends? It is all a bit confusing. Valuations of these holdings seem to vary wildly, while income statements seem to look the same. The dividend paying one (Magnificent Estates, that one actually advertises the book value discount) seems to be valued more then 5x higher.

hahaha that 'cheers!' at the end really cracked me up.

Don't you have to account for non controlling interests? Discount is much smaller and more similar to Keck seng if I just take stake holders equity of the company. I also do not see dividends to regular stake holders of the company. It seems a lot of these Asian companies trade on dividends. And it seems unlikely you get fat dividends here (if any)? Seems more likely with Keck seng judging by it's history. That seems to be the catalyst to close the discount usually. Otherwhise they can trade at a discount forever. It is basicly like owning a safe that has a million dollars in it, but you cannot open it.

You have to take these things in context. These guys cannot advocate some complicated strategy that requires quite a bit of work. Where you have to understand financial statements and business models quite well. Most people will listen to that advice and mess it up, so it is safer for them to just buy a good business for decent price and forget about it. When they make these general statements, they just advocate the thing that people are least likely to mess up. Finding and analyzing these special situations takes a certain type of effort that most people are not willing to put in.

I am not sure calling it selfish is right. Severe depression can feel like your own brain is torturing itself. Most people have not experienced this on a regular basis. And to really understand this, you basicly have to experience it. No other way about it. I can tell you that hard drugs are amazing, but it is impossible to even have a slight clue unless you tried it. There is just no way to show this to someone else in picture or words. I think it would be more comparable to being tortured, at a certain point you do anything to get out of it and mechanisms like rational thought and empathy are mostly shut down. That is also why mental illness often goes hand in hand with drug/alcohol abuse or other addictions. I think depression is basicly your defense mechanism (feeling bad about something) working a little bit too well. most people are pretty much in the middle. If -10 would be feeling the worst possible and +10 would be doing pure heroin, then most people are between -4 and +6 through out their lifes. So it is pretty much impossible to really know what someone with bipolar disorder going from -10 to +10 on a regular basis really goes through untill you experience it yourself. The mistake people make is assuming that someone who kills himself does it when feeling like -4 instead of -10, and should have just slept it off or something. Especially if you have never seriously considered suicide, you should probably praise your lucky stars that you won the genetic lottery in that regard and not call these people selfish. Allthough it is not bad to attach stigma to suicide as a society I think.

Anybody encountered any of those mouthwatering greenblatt plays as of late? I recall reading about a special situation in 2008. I think JP morgan was gonna buy Bear sterns. And they accidently garuanteed all Bear's liabilities even if they would not buy them. And this was in the merger documents. So next day it was trading 2-5$, Morgan realized their mistake, and quickly bid 10$ for the whole thing within days I think. Those situations are just mouthwatering :). I don't think the art is in analyzing them, but you just have to find them. I have not seen many interesting spin offs though. I think everyone is now looking at spin offs these days. So many hedge funds looking for long hanging special situation fruit.

I think he was manic depressive. These hyper active entertainers often are. Can go pretty deep mentally if you crash from that. Makes them very good when they are in the zone, but the crashes can be ugly. what goes up...

You don't like Keck seng? Or think the $/sqm assumptions for the Macau apartments are too aggressive?

Packer I think cash flow is a catalyst. I mean if Amazon would do 50 billion $ in FCF 10 years from now and pays out a decent %, it will trade up for sure. And is there a discussion here somewhere on KIH? Is that the japanese one, or the Korean one?

My favorite one is Altisource. Very cheap now. Just read threads around here. I think there is a good chance they will be worth 3-6x more in a few years. And I think the whole regulation think is lot's of smoke and little to no fire.

palantir care to expand why exactly you think AMZN is attractive currently?

it seems a lot of people blindly follow buffett though, without asking themselves why he says something. You should wonder why he says it and nto blindly copy it. They have the buy and never sell attitude, which is very suboptimal. Only reason Buffett never sells is because he is on board of directors like KO or he bought the entire company. They fail to see that buffett would have a different style of investing if he had a small amount of capital today. And a lot of things he says are geared towards the daytrading crowd to get them to stop pissing away money to brokers basicly. So then it is better to take a somewhat opposite extreme point of view to educate them Also investing in megacaps like he does with small amounts of capital is stupid at worst, suboptimal at best, unless they are very mispriced like BAC. You are handicapping yourself. For some reason a lot of buffett followers miss that. Both Munger and Buffett say that they would focus on small and microcaps if they would be investing today with little capital.

We are all focussing on AMZN, but I think people fail to see here that Buffett would obviously never invest in something like this

You said, "The fact that a stock goes up after you decline to buy it doesn't mean your analysis was wrong". Ok, then what shows this analysis is wrong or right? Two points 1) Its antithetical to value investing to believe that market price moves validate or invalidate the research you did. 2) It doesn't really matter if your thesis was incorrect on something you didn't buy. Its almost never worth rehashing it. The reality is that value investing will always miss some great ideas. You have to be comfortable with that. I would never buy AMZN and I can't possibly fathom how someone who calls themselves a value investor as I conceive value investing could buy the shares. But that's ok. Me too, but I'll also have more respect for someone who does their own thinking than a BuffetBitch who takes every word that comes out of our favorite friend's mouth as purer truth than the laws of nature. When you think for yourself, you give yourself a chance to improve. When you follow like a blind sheep, you stay a blind sheep. problem is, he is almost always right. Never do something just because he says it, but if he does or does not do something, you should think twice about it. Guy is extremely smart. Problem here is, this is a ideal buffett stock if it really was cheap, but he knows more then almost anyone on this forum about their position with his experience, and apparantly he does not like it. So who am I to say then that I think he is wrong?

haha i opened up pandora's box with that comment FWIW, Morningstar seems to think it is undervalued.

I think the thesis is that they will get bigger since internet retailing is still pretty small %, and eventually they will rise their prices somewhat? But find it hard to see when this will happen, and how much scale will play a role in this. If you had to put a rough ball park figure on what Amazon would be earning 5-10 years from now, could you do it?

how do you get comfortable that buffett looked at this and didn't like it? He owned the bonds in 2003. This is basicly a typical buffett company. Right market cap , large moat, and he holds a lot of cash. And I would bet a lot of money that Buffett read all the AR's.

What? This doesn't make any sense. First, from a practical perspective, you don't know if Management destroys shareholder value until it does - at which point it's too late to sell your shares. Secondly, if the stock price appreciates, do shareholders take the credit for that great decision or does Management? So it's shareholder's fault if the stock goes down but Management's credit if the stock goes up? Secondly, Management is entrusted with the stewardship of a Company's capital. If I rent your house from you and then I burn it to the ground with a can of gasoline, is that my fault or your fault? Let me burn down your house and see if you blame yourself. Something tells me you'd demand I be put in prison and you'd sue the crap out of me. management destroys value if they buy overvalued stock. So that means that you made a mistake buying overvalued stock. You bought 80 cents for 1 dollar basicly. If you do your job right as a vallueinvestor, you will never have to worry about this. Because the stock is always cheap, as you sell as it starts to be expensive. It would only be a mistake if they should have reinvested it in the business instead. This would be bad. Get a 10% return with buybacks, a 5% return with dividends, but if they would have gotten a 20% return by investing in the business then buying back is a mistake. But vs dividends it never is a mistake if the stock is trading below intrinsic value. For example if a company is fast growing, it could trade on high multiples. But this could still be cheap. BUT it is not cheap if they are using too much capital to buy back. You are basicly buying the stock hoping it will grow earnings and reinvest capital at attractive rates. But if they are matured and trading at depressed valuations, buying back makes lot's of sense. OR if they are growing moderately, and have left over capital and growth, ROIC and competitive advantage (ie: risk) is not properly priced in yet. Or simply if they don't need a lot of capital because ROIC is very high. But if you own for example Intel now if it was trading at 40x earnings, then yeah your an idiot. Sure buying back is bad on their side, but not very relevant as the more relevant thing is, why the hell are you owning intel at 40x earnings, it is matured for the most part! So to boil it down, if it is very likely that the stock will have a larger market cap 5-10 years from now, and they don't have cash to invest elsewhere at attractive rates, then buying back is always preferable over dividends.

I would just read every idea posted here and on VIC. This will probably amount to about 500 idea's if you begin half way 2013. Someone else already did the legwork, and you can more efficiently learn about industries and potential interesting companies. I tried screening myself, but it is horribly innefficient. You will find very little actionable idea's. And learn a lot less in the progress. For example Extendicare is a very interesting special situation. Does not show up in any screener. You would only find out about this one if you understand the nursing/reit business, and then looked in detail in all of them. And if you read conference calls where they said they will turn their underperforming US business into a REIT and sell operating side. And then you would have to find out how much AFFO other reits make. So here is a situation with about 100-150% upside with a near term catalyst and a dividend. But there is no way you would actually find this one randomly screening for companies. But if you read a bunch of write ups on Nursing companies on VIC and some AR"s you would be a lot more competent in this industry and quickly find bargains. Now when I see a LTC company like this, I look at right away how much beds they have, where they have them, their quality rating, skilled nursing %, margins etc.

why are we having this discussion? if stock is fairly valued, buyback is better because lower taxes for cap gains right? But because we are value investors, buybacks are always better. If you say buybacks are not better, you are basicly saying that your a bad value investor. Because your holding a bunch of overvalued stocks. So can we end this discussion right now please :D If you disagree, I invite you to work out some examples and see what will yield a higher pay out over time. It would be a lot more interesting if we would discuss examples of reinvesting in business vs buying back on a cheap stock.

http://www.dailygrail.com/Alien-Nation/2014/5/UFOs-Norway-Are-the-Hessdalen-Lights-Sparks-Giant-Geological-Battery this is also very fascinating. what is spooky about the hessdalen lights is that they found a piece of wet land in some swamp being cut out and removed in a perfect square. Later they found another one with exact same measures, but this time the piece of land was just moved. This would weigh several thousand kilo's. And there were no tracks or any traces found of who did this. You could say , well someone moved it to make it look like aliens, but then how the hell did they move it? interesting place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIxxJg1tu20 around 6-7 minutes.

whenever I read a report by them, it seems very well thought out and makes a lot of sense. Are there more interesting reports of them floating around out there?

owner operators should be more motivated to buyback? Sure they can get a short term bonus, but they add far more value by buying back at the right time. But a lot of asian companies do not take advantage of this either.

I think the lesson with Abercrombie was that other retailers started to copy them. in 2007 that was all fine, because there was enough disposable income. But when disposable income fell away the stock got crushed. Seems like clothing retailers mostly rely on being a fad. Anytime you own shares in company that gets its business from disposable income, you have to be really carefull. They are not very recession proof, unless their moat is rock solid. Clothing is one of the first things to go in the pyramid of disposable income.

not to invest in, but check out Mango stores. Just got like 9 pieces of clothing there for 200 euro's on sale. Looks good, good quality and really cheap.