vertek
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Posts posted by vertek
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Thanks for the reply, although today's subsequent price action has killed much of the remaining upside. I wonder if there's a way to suss out pre-LIQ announcement candidates.
I do quite a bit of specialization in CEFs and periodically arbitrage the pure commodity funds CEF & GTU. They're super simple to hedge against. We should talk more one on one.
- vertek
Hi vertek,
These funds have made significant announcements in the last week or so.: SGL, HYF, FDI, FTT AND RIT. Happy hunting!
Thanks
Mark
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What were the other announced liquidations and open-endings?
- vertek
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The best thing about Dave Ramsey is he helps folks get out of debt.
The worst thing is he wants them to use his commission brokers for investing.
Totally agreed on this point. Another thing that always struck me as strange, is that he entirely advocates a "growth-stock" mutual fund, whereas his approach is all about being a cheap-skate. I'd think a value approach would benefit more, financially and philosophically.
- vertek
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@tombgrt - My understanding, is that this new investment allocation evolved from his experience in 2008/2009. Having cash at the bottom of the market would've allowed him to take greater advantage of dislocations, and he wants to preserve that optionality. It also reminds me of a point that Klarman made, which is that not only do you have compare attractiveness across different investment options, but also across different investment times, (i.e. investment opportunities yet to come). Let me know if that makes sense, or if I'm incorrect.
-vertek
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I've used www.compete.com and www.quantcast.com as well.
- vertek
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Possible short opportunity?
- vertek
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Glad you enjoyed it! I've read both "The Power of Habit" and "The Compound Effect" and found this one to be the most enjoyable, and actionable. I agree the book can be simple and repetitive, but I don't find that to be mutually exclusive with impactful. Also dovetails nicely with one of my favorite Munger quotes.
"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts... Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, at the end of the day -- if you live long enough -- most people get what they deserve."
- vertek
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Seems like most of the managers I follow are in the hedge fund space, so my experience with mutual funds is limited. With that being said, I'd suggest looking at the Gotham funds. It's managed more like a long/short value-oriented HF, and Greenblatt has one of the strongest track records / reputations out there.
It really is a challenging question because by the time a MF manager is widely identified as having talent, the scale of their AUM tends to dilute their alpha.
Greenblatt Interview on WealthTrack
- vertek
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Agreed with the repetitive aspect, but I think that can be fine if the point is important enough. Along those lines, my "hurdle" for marginal benefit of additional reading becomes higher each year. I'm thinking it's probably more useful to re-read several select books (Margin of Safety, You Can Be A Stock Market Genius, Buffett Letters) and better absorb those ideas and actions, than to try and read new "flavor of the month" ideas. The delta between knowing a thing and applying it is just so large.
- vertek
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[amazonsearch]The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness[/amazonsearch]
One of my favorite books of the dozen or so that I read in 2014. I plan on re-reading it multiple times in the future. It played into a lot of Buffett's concepts such as horsepower / output of personal productivity as well as habit formation. It also nicely coincided with one of Guy Spier's concepts of the Thank You letters.
Anyhow, the basic premise is that there are no huge singular moments of change in life. It's all a product of small habits done repeatedly over time. "No success immediate, no collapse sudden". The catch is that:
1) These actions are easy to do, and easy not to do. Skip a day at the gym, who cares?
2) No visible difference for a while. Saving 10% and overspending 10% of your income look pretty similar in years 1-5.
We're all familiar with compounding as it applies to finances, but this book deals with the compounding impacts of habits and behaviors. Enjoy!
- vertek
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In his 2007 lecture, he was asking the students to ballpark estimate the CDS prices for countries like Italy, Croatia, Qatar, etc. Then he demonstrated that all the students guessed too high, since their current market prices were in the teen bps. Insane timing.
2006
http://www7.gsb.columbia.edu/video/v/node/1307
2007
http://www7.gsb.columbia.edu/video/v/node/1299
2008
http://www7.gsb.columbia.edu/video/v/node/1300
- vertek
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1. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
2. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
3. Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor
4. You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits
5. Video Lectures of Andrew Weiss
Overall, having the proper philosophy and search strategy have been most important for me, and all 4 books provided that. The examples of the last 2 books absolutely set my mind on fire. Dhandho and More Than You Know were both contenders for #5, but to add something new to the thread, I would suggest the video lectures of Andrew Weiss at Columbia. I absolutely love the way he thinks, and his results are strong.
- vertek
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My approach was to go the following website, and grab all the tickers for the common stocks.
http://eng.krx.co.kr/m6/m6_1/m6_1_1/JHPENG06001_01.jsp
Having done that, then I brute-force created a list of all combinations with the last digit change to 5,7, or 9. Then, I created a query to ping google with those ticker combinations to see what came back. I had to clean up the list for names that hadn't traded in a while or seemed to be nonexistent. Here is the list I came up with. Cheers and let us know what you find!
- vertek
Closed End Bond Funds Historical Discount Spreads
in General Discussion
Posted
TEI looks attractive, especially from a historic perspective. I'm turned away from CEFs that trade for persistent 10% discounts, but this looks more anomalous. Is there a proper way to hedge the NAV?
- vertek