yadayada

How does that activist thing work anyway? Is that possible with only 15 million$. Seems you need to buy into really small company's to make a difference.

depends on your pedigree and connection/how much you are starting with/how good of a salesman you are/and a big dose of luck. assume you can raise 10-50 mil from yourself/family/connections, you basically have 3 years to show strong (30%+) and consistent returns. If you are still in the business after 2-3 years, your fund should be at least $100 mil by then. Then you are investable to the institutions. Good fortunes can snowball from here. That's my understanding of the state of the industry right now. Vast majority of the potential investors are outcome focused and only care your performance so luck plays a big part especially you only have a year or two to show good performance yea the thing is, Im pretty confident about my picks. ANd I think i could with little extra work invest like 10-20 million$ in those stocks. My goal isn't really to make enourmous amounts of money. Just leverage what I am currently doing, with little extra effort. Even 5 million$ would be ok, Im ok with living everywhere, so i figure I could cheaply set up a fund for that. I guess I would first have to try and get my family in then. letter I found from his hedge fund: http://www.mesoncapital.com/letters/2011_Q4_MCP_Annual_Letter.pdf oh wait they were closed positions. Anyone has a list of his current holdings? http://seekingalpha.com/article/1801362-odyssey-marine-an-open-letter-to-ryan-morris-of-meson-capital Anyway it seems strange to be a huge fan of buffett and then do short selling. http://seekingalpha.com/author/meson-capital-partners/articles I also read up a little bit about that stock, and some short sellers did seem to use some shady tactics.

how hard is it to set up a hedge fund? Any forum members who went through this? Seems the best way is to find smart investors who are willing to vouch for you if they think your thinking process is right. And you have a few good years of succesfull picks behind you.

hmm ok so your basicly pricing risk then when looking at debt. No risk would mean your mostly discounting the debt. And FCF implies interest payments right? FCF is ebitda - capex - taxes - interest?

Let's say that a 15x multiple is reasonable for a business that is likely to grow with a moat and reasonable return on capital. One business (that fullfills the above requirements) makes 100 million and has zero debt, the other company is identical in everything but has 1 billion in debt at reasonable interest rates. How much lower will the second company rate? If we say the first one deserves a 15x multiple, would the second one get a 10x multiple? If you go by FCF/EV first one deserves a 15x multiple? But the second one should by that same logic get a 5 earnings multiple vs a 15 earnings multiple? (to get the same FCF/EV ratio). Let's assume that this business will v likely be around at least a bigger size then now in 20-30 years from now and like I said, they have a nice moat and arent a threat to each other. Another example would be cigar butts Obviously if the business might not be around 10 years from now, debt plays a much bigger role? What is a good way to think about this? Real life examples might for example be Outerwall which has v nice FCF now (300 million), 600 million in debt, but might not be around in 10 years (or they might, you don't know). But it is certainly not a close to 100% probability they will in this size. But for example GNCMA will v likely be around 30 years from now (and earn more) and has 100m in FCF and 1 billion in debt. So how much do you discount their debt in the FCF multiple here?

wasnt this guy up to something? Collecting money for a new fund right? Im curious if its just value investing or some special situation again like those derivatives.

book says that he made it a habit just to talk to everyone he saw. That is not a bad habit.

http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf Found this by googling it. Not sure if illegal. You can also buy it, but not on kindle. http://www.amazon.com/Parkinsons-Law-C-Northcote-Parkinson/dp/1568490151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398688938&sr=8-1&keywords=parkinsons+law Every socialist should read this book. He explains how bureaucracy happens and multiplies. Short interesting read.

Parkinson's law: http://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf Should be required reading for every economist.

The one thing that is wrong with socialism, and I love the Feynman quote (paraphrasing): The government is still stupid and innefficient and sometimes flat out corrupt, untill you fix that, socialism is a giant waste of resources. My problem with economists is that they think way too much in a vacuum. It all works great in theory, but in reality they forgot we are all greedy animals, mostly out for ourselves. I think a better solution would be to give the upper class a tax exemption if they donate money to institutions that try to better things like education instead. At least there the money will be more efficiently used by smart people who want to improve on the system. But the moment you mention less taxes, your a selfish greedy capitalist.

how does this work with international brokers? If you call and ask about AIM stocks you should be able to buy them over the phone right? Im not jumping to sign up with saxobank now and get raped with huge fees :) .

seems like the problem is not really with those cable companies, that is only a sympton. But your system where corporations can basicly legally bribe politicians seems completly absurd. The US is also the only country where you see so many pharma commercials on tv. Which seems like a bad thing.

I personally like simplistic arguments. Like with Outerwall, everyone jumps to conclusions without looking under the hood with their coinstar and dvd business about how DVD"s will die etc. But it is pretty easy to dismantle that and figure out if it really is true by looking at economics of streaming DVDand bluray sales and looking at what it takes to operate those coinstarr kiosks. Or with HPQ about how personal computers are dead and how shareholder money is wasted when there was plenty of strong indications neither will have really an impact when they were trading at less then 4x multiple. Seems like a lot of people have this black and white thinking. It is either/or two extremes, and not somewhere in between. Usually over time it becomes somewhere in between when it is evident that is not either/or. The thing I hate about Russia is that basicly 60-70% of population is paid by government. And where does the government get this money? Oil and gas. Because of this distorted system all innovation is killed, because all the bureaucrats want to protect their livelihood. And what happens when Oil and gas starts running out? More money is plundered from these company's to keep stability, because lifes are at stake at the top if there is instability. So I wouldn't want to be in the first piggybank they will break if this happens.

isnt there a difference in purity? There might be impurity's and you would still be paying a premium? And is there collectors value in these coins?

quote from what I think is a chinese person on reddit

what about 1347 PIH? These guys operate in louisiana. seems ot be in a niche. Big insurers have moved out there due to recent large losses and rates are up.

yeah no need to learn all that beta volatility bull shit. The problem i had (and still have) is that i see some businesses minting money year after year with pretty good ROIC. And then I think about them and look at competition and it just doesn't make sense. Bcause their moat shouldnt really be strong. I guess reading this book would help understanding that better.

[amazonsearch]Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors[/amazonsearch] Highly recommended, he analyzes moats in detail. Im only 10% so far, but one of the things I picked up that is that you need to think in combinations. For example Large capital requirements can be a serious barrier to entry depending on the industry. I think you can relate this to the leasing industry, where if you throw large amounts of money at it you might cause oversupply or you will compete on price and ruin margins for everyone. This raises financing costs, and that is exactly one of the moats you can have as a large scale leaser, low financing costs. So that is why some leasing industry's have only a few players and don't really see new entrants. Or investing into intangible assets or tangible assets you cannot sell if the whole thing turns out to be a failure. Especially if the potential pay off won't be as high due to oversupply or heavy price competition. Book goes much farther then just explaining how for example scale is an advantage. But also discusses when it is a disadvantage and in what situations it works best etc. There is also a section in the book where he gives instructions and tips on how to analyze industries. I haven't got to that part yet. But I think every investor needs to read this book. And then there is also this one http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Advantage-Creating-Sustaining-Performance-ebook/dp/B001CB34KY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398455812&sr=8-1&keywords=porter+competitive+advantage Anyone read this one?

So I thought it would be interesting to make a list of the equivalents and see what their Alexa ranking is. Chinese google = Baidu.com Nr 1 in China http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/baidu.com Chinese Bloomberg/Msn.com nr 4 in China http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sina.com.cn Chinese Youtube? Youku nr 18: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/youku.com vs Youtube: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/youtube.com Seems people spend a lot more time on youtube, and it gets more views Chinese Amazon ranked 39 in China: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.cn VS Tmall.com on nr 7 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tmall.com Twitter, is Weibo.com on nr 6: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/weibo.com vs WeChat.com on nr 1800: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wechat.com vs QQ.com owned by Tencent, ranked nr2 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/qq.com Chinese Ebay, clearly the leader at nr3: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/taobao.com Chinese Facebook: Renren on nr 93: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/renren.com Kaixin on nr 273: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kaixin001.com Various video sites Tudou(owned by same company as Tudou), i think this is their streaming equivalent. Rank 83 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kaixin001.com Cntv rank 57, think this is like an ESPN in china: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cntv.cn Ku6.com, I think this is for Chinese movies? Rank 129 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ku6.com Xunlei, some sort of video on demand, rank 113 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/xunlei.com Sohu.com Rank 8, but they also offer a search engine: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tv.sohu.com Seems like they are losing to Baidu who stand nr1 Letv.com. China's hulu ranked 105 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/letv.com I can go on with the video sites, but it is clear that for user generated content Youku.com is the clear leader. When it comes to netflix and hulu.com type websites, this seems really hard to gauge. And I guess competition is severe. When it comes to twitter like websites, seems like there are 2 competitors and QQ.com is indeed winning. http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;0/CN Interesting that Sina is so popular. Also a lot of layouts on these websites are absolutely god awefull. Seems like this industry really is in its infancy over there.

yeah im just summarizing all the things from the alibaba trhead.

From the Alibaba thread, i think this deserves its own discussion. A few ideas: Go long SINA (they have alot of cash, stake in alibaba, chinese youtube, but most importantly a 56% stake in chinese twitter). Go short Weibo (the chinese twitter). Youku Toudu, the Chinese youtube, is valued at 5 billion $ now. They are still losing money. I saw a comment in the alibaba thread saying that our youtube makes around 3-4 billion$ a year in net income. Given that the China market is much larger, 5 billion$ seems extremly cheap now? Sohu sum of the parts. Havent looked into this. And obviously trying to own Alibaba directly or indirectly through softbank (but lets keep that discussion in the alibaba thread). Would love to hear some feedback from people who know more about social media stocks and who might have an educated opinion about our twitter for example. Our twitter still loses a lot of money and is valued at 26 billion$, Their twitter is valued at like 4.5 billion$ and already made a profit last quarter. It seems like these stocks could have lot's of potential to do v well in the future at current valuations, but I have to start reading I guess. It seems like there are culture differences here that can cause subtle (but over time large) difference compared to their western counterparts.

not sure if this is mentioned, but what about hedging against inflation of the yen? How expensive? Best way? When to do it?

ok thanks. So it is probably best to just throw all these things on the too hard pile? Im curious why it is written up on VIC.

For people who cant find idea's, look at these company's. GNCMA LUKOY F GLBS DAP.U OUTR SNMX EHL etc. They might not be traditional net net's, but they do seem mis priced.

If we use magellan, their 10-k says this: 500-600 million barrels implies about 45-55 billion$. 10% of that is 4-5 billion$. If we assume 10% profit margins that is 4-500 million$ of value. For people with more experience, what do you look for here besides taking their word for it. Market cap is around 100 million I think.