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Inflation only happens in a reserve currency when there is a shortage. As can be seen by the current Fed and in Victorian England that the money supply can skyrocket and result in little to no inflation if there are supply surpluses and labor surpluses. It is only when you mix shortages and loose monetary policy do reserve currencies inflate. Packer

Monish has a 2 to 3 year rule unless you can reliably say that the value has been impaired, a good starting point in my book. Packer

I tried the translation in Google Chrome here: https://disclosure.edinet-fsa.go.jp/E01EW/BLMainController.jsp?uji.verb=W00Z1010initialize&uji.bean=ek.bean.EKW00Z1010Bean&TID=W00Z1010Eng&PID=W1E63013&SESSIONKEY=1413664427186&lgKbn=1&pkbn=0&skbn=1&dskb=&askb=&dflg=0&iflg=0&cal=2&mul=9404&fls=on&mon=&yer=&pfs=4&row=100&idx=0&str=E04375&kbn=1&flg=&syoruiKanriNo=S1002XYW but for some reason it will not translate. Am I in the wrong place. TIA Packer

Has anyone found out how to translate the Japanese EDINET files to English like you can with DART for Korea? Packer

The market cap is closer to $3.3 billion and some the LT debt is now classified as current so net cash is closer to Euro80m. Packer

I think industry is very important as Warren Buffet has said an industry's economics will win over a management teams efforts in most cases. Some of my best investments have been in second or lower place companies in good industries that is part of the rationale for Intralot. Packer

A good compromise (in my opinion) is to be passive with a small cap value tilt. There are a number of good posts over at Bogleheads on this and an author and contributor named Larry Swedroe has written about this approach. Larry Ritholz at Bloomberg recently had a good podcast conversation with him which gives the perspective he is coming from. Packer

The answer is if they both have the same type of governance and industry conditions the one with no debt as it is earning more on its capital so it should be worth more. If the industry is one with competitors with debt, the debt-free company can take on debt and pay out a dividend. For something like this to happen though you need to understand managements motivations. Is to keep the company debt-free to keep there jobs or to maximize shareholder value. For AIQ, I think they have a manageable amount of debt and are controlled by a capital allocator I admire Howard Marks. If Marks was not in the deal it would not be as interesting. I also know that transactions happen in the industry at 7x EBITDA and the comps are trading at a premium to 7x. So I have alot of independent benchmarks of value I feel I understand. For Intralot, it selling for less than half of already cheap competitors and is in a consolidating industry. Management is not top notch but the business is a good business and given the dynamics of the industry they may be bought out. The funny thing is they move up and down with Greek stocks but less than 5% of there business is in Greece. Given current pricing, you have pick the kind of rick you can tolerate and understand. You can get great prices at times of panic but those do not happen often so you have to find what types of risk you feel comfortable with when these are not available. At this point I don't understand much about the risk of Japanese stocks so I have not done much there but I am starting to learn. Heck, I even bought the Japanese Company Handbook. Packer

True. Usually wars were needed to restructure debts, bringing them down to acceptable levels and starting a new expansion cycle. Absent a war? Like we all hope is the case this time? Well, total debts in western countries might come to be as large as in Japan… I highly doubt with different results: deflation anyway. Gio We may have both. Real deflation in goods and wages but nominal inflation in prices and assets as the monetary base grows. Packer

INLOT is interesting in that despite the poor performance recently has grown BV by 6% annually since 2008 and 8% annually over the past 10 years (excluding minority interests). Packer

Examples of Graham's multipliers can be found in Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor: the Appraisal Method section 1949 Intelligent Investor pages 150 to 151. Graham lays out a range of multipliers of 10 to 20 based upon "quality". This is similar to the approach I use to identify cheap stocks amongst particular industry groups. In later editions, he develops the 8.5 + 2G formula to estimate a "fair" multiple Packer

What evidence do you have that inflation will occur when you have excess of goods, services and labor in reserve currency economy? I cannot find one. Inflation in the US and UK before the US occurred when we had shortages of one or all of these items even though we were a reserve currency economy. Packer

The counterargument is the money supply skyrocketed in the 1800s but there was deflation due to the surpluses of goods, services and labor. The inflation in the 20th century was caused by shortages of goods, services and labor. I just do not see absent a war or epidemic how the current goods, service and labor go from a surplus to shortage. What the central banks have been doing is flooding the market to prevent nominal deflation but not real deflation. Packer

Another lazy way is invest via factors (namely, value and small size). There are some Vanguard funds (small cap value for instance) that you can obtain for pretty cheap prices and some ETFs that focus on the SCV factor. This will probably add a few percentage points of return. Packer

Do you have a good alternative investment with as much upside after taxes are taken into consideration? If so make the change, if not don't. Packer

They also can also get a lot of information on the Boglehead blog if they are more into blogs versus books. Packer

I think the concern about cap is either a forced buyback for non-Russians or for a dilutive share offering to non-Russian holders. Either way pretty bad for existing non-Russian shareholders. Packer

I'd second the Boglehead's Guide to Investing because it also include some personal finance issues like insurance, etc. Packer

Excess cash is dependent upon industry so you need to look at what the comps have and any in excess of the high end of the range is a reasonable estimate. However you have to understand the cash cycle of the industry also to identify excess cash. Packer

I wouldn't say that it breaks new ground other than presenting a number of outstanding investor concepts together (like concentration for example) and give actual quantitative citations associated with these citations (like Templeton's 50 percent cheaper switch rule). He does focus on value investors and only briefly discusses more macro or quant investors. This is more of an encyclopedia of ideas but I have never seen in one book the presentation in this way. Another example is the discussion of the use of DCF and how it is rarely used (which I agree with) due to the large number of inputs and you do not need to do this to determine if a stock is cheap (multiples can provide that) and he dives into what is the appropriate way to use multiples including the implicit assumptions with each type of multiple. He also does a good job of describing asset approaches such as reproduction cost and going concern and growth asset approaches. I have enjoyed it and an still digesting pieces after ready most of the book. I think it is well worth the price. As to investors who have beaten the market by 5 percent or more, those are hard to find these days as competition from factor investors have driven up prices for much of the traditional value fare. From what I have seen this is probably the place where you have most of them and they appear to be in personal accounts not effected by outside asset flow. It would be nice to have a narrative of some of these folks but I think we will have to wait for Sanjeev's book for that. Packer

[amazonsearch]Excess Returns[/amazonsearch] A nice summary of value investor techniques and approaches. I found it useful as it sourced many investor techniques together in addressing the implementation of investment strategies. Packer

I liked the book. It was more of a personal account so for me the biggest take aways were psychological like setting up your environment not to be lured into trading and the finite amount of willpower we have each day. Packer

Thanks for the transcript. Sorry I missed the meeting being a shareholder and wanting to ask a questions about GP Investments which was not even brought up in the meeting. Packer

Congrats Josh. Do you have any other interesting bio-techs? TIA. Packer

Some cheap ones: Intralot - 3.8x Glacier Media - 5.6x Alliance Healthcare - 6.4x Hyundai HCN (cable co) - 3.8x Lotte Chilsung (beverage co) (pfd) - 4.5x Taeyoung E & C (construction & media co) (pfd) - 1.3x BYC (branded apparel) (pfd) - negative Daesang Holdings (food) (pfd) - 3.8x Packer