kirkomi

-20% compared to the Swiss Benchmark (SLI) of +0.7% 8)

The recent drop in CACC share prices were (I believe) because of several groups of shareholders suing the company. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/harwood-feffer-llp-announces-investigation-200500605.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/important-shareholder-alert-goldberg-law-234500227.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shareholder-notice-goldberg-law-pc-184300224.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/glancy-prongay-murray-commences-investigation-213200434.html

So, I have looked at and rejected AXP before (maybe because I was stupid) but I ran the calculations again to day and it seems incredibly cheap. I will be happy if you guys can point out if I am being stupid again. This data is from morningstar. Metric 2005 2014 FCF $7.4B $9.7B Revenue $23B $34B Shares 1.25B 1B The company has grown at around 4% compounded (both FCF as well as Revenues are up 50% in 10 years). They have additionally returned some value via share-buybacks. Buying 20% of the company in 10 years. And they are paying a dividend (after tax) of around 1%. So, a back of the envelope kind of calculation means the company is expected to return the following to the shareholders 4% (growth) + 1% (dividend) + 2% (buybacks) = 7% Let us now look at what we are paying for it. Market Cap : + $72B 2014 Annual report figures: Cash: - $22B Customer Loans : - $69B Customer Deposits: + $44B Account receivable: - $44B Debt : + $58B = $39B That can't be right ... Is there a mistake somewhere ? Edit : So, I see my mistake a bit. The company is kind of taking money from the market as debt and giving it as loan to the loan-card holders. Given that this is the business model I can't really add and subtract like this. But then I need to think on how to value this. The company is paying 2.34% on its debt (2014 figure) and receiving ~ 8.3% in interest on the loans it has given to the customers. So, it is earning around 5% for the service (approximately $3.5B a year with $69B loan). If this stream does not grow *at all* and at 15% discount rate this part of the business is worth approximately 3.5 * 1/(1.15-1) = $23B. Looking at the income statement, the non-interest revenue - all expenses = $5B. Again, at 15% discount rate, this stub is worth = $33B And now, with $22B cash on balance sheet, I should be willing to pay ($23 + $33 + $22) B = $78B. Phew ... this seems closer to the market value.

Heico, Hunter-Douglas, GBL, Swatch, Grenkeleasing, Dolby, Loews, KSB, Peugeot.

Anybody knows at what prices he got into FCAU ? He started buying Q4-2014 so that suggests around ~$9/share. But, I might be wrong.

-10% :) Overweight PKX, that hurt. And then CHF keeps giving me the hurtburns. I measure myself in CHF but invest in the US. Lost 15% in one day when they removed the peg earlier in the year.

Can you please share these names ? I have been doing a lot of research lately but I do not find anything which is obviously cheap (except as I mentioned earler, NOV). I am also looking at SSW but I only made a small position because the customer concentration ( + Chinese) is stopping me from making a bigger investment. Rolls Royce -- Not cheap in an obvious way. Small position. AIQ -- Too much debt. I am not able to put a baseline price here. Small position. Altius -- Already 7% of my portfolio. Will go higher if it drops significantly, say to C$10.

Did not buy anything today either. Did not find anything obviously cheap except NOV.

You are jumping around quite a bit frommi. PKX -> SEC.TO -> QVAL.

I see. Thanks ! That makes sense.

Hello All, I am a part time investor, so pardon me for asking something which you might find stupid. I follows Geoff's blog and I came across the post today on BWC. http://gannonandhoangoninvesting.com/blog/2015/1/21/sold-town-sports-club-bought-babcock-wilcox-bwc Now, Geoff claims that BWC is a net-net. I fail to see that. Here is their most recent balance sheet (Nov 5, 2014). Current Assets: $1.37B Total Assets: $2.6B Current Liabilities: $711M LT Debt: $298M Total liability: $1.47B Market Cap: $2.8B The questions is: how is this a net-net ? I have read some of Geoff's analysis, so please take him seriously.

I can't find any new ideas. Would you mind sharing the names. I will like to do my due diligence. Regards.

Ok, so this is interesting. I was up 6% last year and I lost 15% of my portfolio today ... because of the EUR/CHF peg.

I think my biggest multi-year mistake is Tesco. I finally let it go at a 30% loss. But, it has taught me a valuable lesson. Don't buy a stock if you see a business model risk. I made similar mistakes with Best Buy and HP but did not learn my lessons there because I was able to exit them at small profits. The second lesson was the Sberbank investment. I conjectured that Ukraine will be a short term issue and the stock will pay off handsomely in a small time. I feel less comfortable after the drop in oil and the continuing instability in the region. I am still going to keep my Lukoil and CTC Media positions though.

Congratulations to all who have performed well (by their respective definitions). My performance is a measly 3.4% ! I am justifying it because of ALS, PKX, Liberty and SHLD -- my largest positions (>70%) have all performed quite badly this year. Maybe I get lucky next year.

+1! ;) Gio +2 :) Congrats. +3 :p

Well, if we kept explaining the magical things in that imaginary world of yours ... using something which is not magic then I would go with "we don't know yet".

These are all good questions and very smart people have grappled with it. An excellent set of lectures can be found here. http://www.justiceharvard.org/ The beauty of evidence based reasoning is that you come up with ways to explain the world around you. It will be great to come up with a theory of morality without religion. And several people do have such theories. Some of these you can find if you look for "secular morality". For example, it answers the questions you raised i.e., if someone feels good committing a murder, is that objectively "good" ? If you cheat on your wife and you are both happier because of it, is it moral to do so if she never finds out ? Is it moral to eat a person to save the life of five others in dire conditions ? Is it ok for a doctor to save the life of five sick patients by harvesting organs from one healthy one ? You will not find the answers to these question on a message board. I can try but it will be fruitless. The only way would be to read the people who have put in the necessary amount of time and effort to flesh out the intricacies of the issue and then use your own grey cells. Instead of trying to convince other people to read "the bible" or "christianity", your time will be well spent on reading evidence based literature. I sure as hell don't trust a book which claims that it is the word of god -- the all powerful and is true because of that very reason. That is a logical fallacy right there.

Horizon Kinetics has a position in ASCMA. He had a very nice pitch in Value Investor Insight. Look at page 5 here. http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Value_Investor_May_2013.pdf

It is called "Smart Woman Securities". Are you implying that there should be no women specific groups related to things that also interest men ? I work in Computer Science and there is a group "Women in Computer Science" which is also women specific. This is nothing unusual. It also makes sense if the percentage of women in a job is much smaller than 50% even though the job can be done well by either sex. I am pretty sure that the percentage of women in "important" finance related jobs is much smaller than 50%. https://www.stanford.edu/group/wics/cgi-bin/wordpress/

Doctoral student in Computer Science and Mathematics. This is my last year. Planning to move to industry, probably tech job.

21%. I had more than 30% cash at all times. I was pretty lousy in the previous two years too. Still learning the ropes.

I use the premium version of StockMarketEye. http://www.stockmarketeye.com/

Reitmans is not a real estate play. They have a big distribution center, but the mortgage is only partially paid. Otherwise, they have 5.8M land on book and 52M in building. They mostly have leased stores in malls. Here is a short introduction of the company. The author seems to be passing on the investment. http://www.gurufocus.com/news/238741/reitmans-an-owner-operator-business-with-messed-up-expectations