Saluki

I noticed the big bump today too. I didn't see anything on the news specific to FF India though. I have a mid size position that I started building in 2019. Not adding or selling at these prices, just waiting for the catalysts to kick in.

SWBI, AOS, SSD and Taylor Devices.

I haven't looked at them but I'll check it out, thanks.

Back on topic, I am dipping my toes into options and I sold 3 puts on Coupang at $20. If it stays here or goes up, free money, and if I get exercised and have to buy more at $17.50 I would be very surprised and probably pretty happy. Unless it's exercised because there is a war with North Korea, which I think is unlikely, but then again a coup in South Korea is not something I had thought was a risk in my original thesis for this. Should I update my Nintendo thesis for "coup risk" too? Bought a few shares of ALCO as a placeholder while I study it. I still think JOE is better long term idea, but if ALCO can sell off most of their valuable stuff by 2027 or so, it looks like a liquidation and you get your money back sooner. Added a little FRPH and ATEX on the dip to maintain the prior weighting in my portfolio.

I don't know if the species of trees has an effect because on west coast those trees in the Pacific Northwest are much taller than the ones on the East coast (don't know about L.A.). But one big difference I notice that not a lot people talk about is that most of the timberland in the East is privately owned (JOE used to own quite a bit until they sold it to the Mormon church) and most of the stuff west of the Mississippi is government owned, mostly federal. So I don't think all the blame goes to California. A lot of it is stupid policies that have nothing to do with fish/water. At some point the forestry service used to put out every fire they could, but that just let the tinderbox grow bigger and bigger and eventually you got huge fires that were not controllable. Cutting down all the trees is bad, but cutting down some and replacing them with younger smaller trees, and doing that at the next parcel and the next, and then going back to the original parcel to start over, is what a responsible timber company would do. But if you are a timber company who is only paying to cut trees on someone elses land, why would you be responsible? And if you are a bureaucrat getting a bi-weekly salary in an office a thousand miles away, what incentive, or even knowledge would you have to make the right decisions about this acreage. Your political science degree from the University of Connecticut didn't ever tell you anything you need to know about the Santa Ana winds.

While being a director at a for profit company is a great gig, at a non profit it's usually not compensated, or a position given to large donors. So it often pays far less than $0. It depends, but $25k does not seem out of the question if you are asking them to travel to India or do other things that would require you to buy insurance so that you don't pay out of pocket if you get sued or investigated by the government.

Trimmed some GOOG the past few days to knock it back down to 20% weighting in my non 401k portfolio. Still think it's a great company, and I added a bit when the DOJ lawsuit tanked the shares, but trimming as it climbs so that my portfolio is more resilient and diversified now that my job situation has changed. Also sold about 10% of the OXY that I own (I overbought a month ago to sell and harvest some tax losses and keep the same weighting). A month from now I'll either buy more or sell more depending on the price.

Small adds to TAYD, CPNG and JOE.

My very long term performance is probably nothing to write home about since I took a pounding in 2008 and was overly conservative for a while after that. But if your recent performance is much better and you are making more in salary (and therefore have more to add to your AUM every year than you did in your 20s, then it's all been worth it because the early years were tuition. I contributed way more to my taxable accounts last year than I did when I was making $75k salary and had $60k in student loans. So if my later performance is better than my early stuff, I'll take it. But I think it's also important to think about asset classes. If you are only stock picking, then the SP500 is a good default measuring stick. But things like bonds and real estate offer things that equities don't, so why compare them at all? With R/E, you get an inflation hedge and non-callable leverage, as well as optionality to refinance a mortgage without penalty. But you also have transaction costs. So it's apples and oranges vs the returns/volatility/liquidity of an index.

I met Mohnish a couple of times in Toronto at the Fairfax side events. He was pleasant and even signed my book. (I am a book nerd and I have a copy of Security Analysis that Tom Russo signed, and a signed copy of Arnold Van den Berg's book too). He seemed very accessible in Toronto but there was a circle of admirers following him in Omaha wherever he went. I really don't get why he's so polarizing. Maybe it's because of his schtick where he says he's lazy and doesn't have any original ideas, and that he naps in the afternoon and still beats the market. It seems to rub people the wrong way like the kid who hands in his math test in the first 30 minutes and walks out, and you are sweating over the next 1.5 hours. I think you can learn a lot from anyone, so you should watch his videos even if you dislike him. I do that with Peter Thiel, who is a literal vampire. Even a white belt can teach you something because they react in ways that a "trained" opponent won't, so it's more like someone in an actual fight might react. I thought his Coca Cola and Blue Chip Stamps explanations were very good. Everyone who takes Securities Law (and a lot people who take Corporations) will have studied the Blue Chip Stamps case in their textbook and seen the spaghetti like ownership structure. But while the case is pretty straightforward (you have a fiduciary duty to all your shareholder and you can't favor one set of shareholders over another set), I have never seen a law book or even a history of Buffett that does a good job of explaining how BCS worked and why it was set up (the dominant stamp company wouldn't do business with some supermarkets) and why the float was important. So I don't know if he just did a really deep dive or got it explained to him by Charlie, but it's something that should be out there, and I'm glad it was there. I don't worship him like some of the newbie Fintok or YouTube people, but I don't feel any vitriol towards him either. There some people in value investing circles who are "respected" but I get a bad vibe from. I hate to talk bad about specific people, but since he's running for mayor and now fair game I will say that I never got a good vibe from Tilson, especially in person. Without naming names, someone who people like to call "the Warren Buffett of tech companies" and refers to himself as a billionaire always gave me weird vibes, and someone on the Fairfax board who is related to one of Prem's mentors never impressed me much. So I put Mohnish in the neutral/positive vibes camp. I will say that some people that keep a low profile like Francis Chou and Packer are really nice in person and deserve the lime light even though they don't want it. And among the people I've actually met, my favorite investing human, is definitely Arnold van den Berg.

Yes, with no commitments you don't need much eff you money. When I was in my early 20s I saw a co-worker quit when a terrible boss with a Napoleon/little man complex tried berating him on the sales floor. It was epic. "Listen. I don't like you. I don't like your people. I don't like the way you run this place, and I don't like the way the you're talking to me."

I mentioned several that I would bet get sold on another post. To add to that list: PETS : It's a profitable sub scale pet medicine website with no debt and a lot of cash. It would make a nice bolt on for someone like Chewy or someone trying to get into the business (like Tractor Supply). McGrath Rentcorp is another. They were supposed to merge with Wilscot but there were antitrust concerns raised by the relevant agency (FTC? DOJ?) and the merger was called off. If the new administration becomes more hands off, they may revive the merger.

I have two accounts I trade in. My main account and another one I opened because my main broker sux and won't let me trade some small caps at all, and even larger illiquid names like Nintendo or Fairfax, it makes me do 2 factor authentication and limit orders. Also since SIPC has limits per account, I felt like I should have more than one broker just in case. I also gave about 10% of my money to a friend who manages money and I haven't checked how it's doing. The smaller one is about 6% of my portfolio and is up 77.73%. The majority is just two stocks, one of which is up (Kraken) and one is down (JOE). My main account is +16.49% this year vs 25.02% for the index, but 41.17% over 3 years vs 29.29% for the SP500, so I'm okay with the results. JOE is my 3rd largest position and that is part of the reason for the results, but a lot of the rest is due to unforced errors. STNG had a great run from $40-$80 and I trimmed, but didn't sell the whole thing because I wanted to wait till 2025 to avoid taxes, and it's now in the $40s again. I moved some of the sale proceeds into other shipping stocks, which are also down, but not as much. I sold VTS and SWBI correctly for a nice profit, but there is no good reason for thumb sucking on STNG or some other ones I held too long. I was slow to sell some losers like ENPH when the story changed, and was a little lazy and just bought some "okayish" names when I didn't have better ideas, when I should've just waited in cash instead. I was distracted by other things like my partner's health issues so while I didn't exactly phone it in, I didn't follow the same due diligence and deep dive on newer positions that I do for larger holdings and there were mistakes made because of it. Small position sizing because of my risk aversion paid off on the losers though. Lessons learned will help me going forward, as always. Since it's the first trading day of the new year, I'll be looking carefully at my holdings and trimming to get my margin down to zero over time and just holding cash if I don't see anything great. Taxes are zero in 2025 so far, so selling winners or losers should be based on the fundamentals now, not my tax bill 15 months from now.

Interesting idea for a theme or basket. I looked at intuitive surgical a long time ago but it looked really expensive. Haven't looked since, but good to put on the investigate list and revisit when I have some time.

This is an old strategy that seems to be forgotten about. I think it was mentioned in Klarmans book. Seems solid but the few mutual bank conversions left are getting harder to find each year. Not exactly micro bank stocks, but there are two that I came across recently but passed on if you are interested in digging deeper: Kyoto bank is trading below book and owns a lot of shares of other companies like Nintendo and Kyocera, so it's a way to buy them at a discount. Neither of my brokers allows me to trade their shares so I can't invest, but looks interesting. KB financial has been written about on here i think. Well capitalized Korean bank but I don't feel comfortable about it because of the exposure to the real estate sector in Korea which has unique and unusual characteristics for lending.