ACooke

Yeah I thought similarly to you re. Dumb Money, Spec. If you liked Super Pumped Hollabread, I'd highly recommend WeCrashed and The Dropout if you haven't already seen them. I preferred them both to Super Pumped; though I watched it straight after the former 2 so it's possible I had some business drama fatigue going on. I thought the woman (I should know her name) who played Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout did a fantastic job - she nailed a lot of her mannerisms and all.

I really struggle with the topics question. There's no doubt times when you probably 'should' but to me it's almost like a subconscious and principled response - I double take, chunder in my mouth a little, then close the report - never to be reopened. I'm sure I probably have and will continue to miss opportunities because of the aforementioned; but it is what it is.

Fantastic show. I watched it a while back on one of our lesser-watched local free-to-are channels.

Bought/am at the very tail end of buying a basket of Japanese net-nets/neg EV co's. Made it a little under 10% of my portfolio so it's reasonably small. Focused on the above plus a growing cash pile/growing NCAV over the past decade + profitability. I can't say i was overly enthralled with the purchases as they've almost all run a lot over the last 6 months and as is probably news to no one - not so much over the longer term; the perennially "discounted" Japanese market. I think it's probably going to be paramount that the soft-mandate put forward of reducing discounts to book, is at least taken somewhat seriously - and I can't say I'm completely confident it will. Will the threat of delisting instil fear and action in the boards of these companies? Probably some - but I suspect many within a basket like this would probably not shed a tear.

Just finished this. Very entertaining and fascinating book that spans mostly the late 20th century and talks of the author's many decades structuring deals to collect on debt denominated in capital-controlled and inflationary currency or owed by war torn governments. To do so he trades huge sums with shady black-market currency-traders compiling small collections sent home by workers working in foreign countries for USD and collects in everything from government granted equity stakes in small private enterprises, and property, war-currency, white goods in the form of foreign made washing machines. He visits Vietnam, El Salvador, Turkey, Iraq, Brazil, Guatemala and so forth. Super fun book.

I've been watching 'Big Little Lies', I found season one was really good. There's a bunch of football 'behind the scenes/turn around' type docos around. 'Sunderland til I Die' is good as mentioned above. 'Three year Plan' is another which begins with Queens Park Rangers being bought out of essentially bankruptcy by Bernie Eccelstone (of f1 fame) and Flavio Briatore (of F1 infamy - banned for the 2008 'crashgate' fiasco) amongst others.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the UK market although many of those I'm most interested in probably require you having a view on construction/housing/refurb markets over the near term - or holding through what could be a bit of an ass-kicking. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stuff in Europe and Japan atm too but for monolingual chumps like myself, it's easy to throw it into the 'when I run out of easier things to look at' basket.

My set up is a mess. I use seeking alpha to quickly glance changes on days I'm not at the screen (many days). Above that I use a 'word' doc (lol) where I have a list of stuff I'm pretty interested in with a short note and a 'take a hard look at this at 'x' price', or similar. Then I've got a deeper watch list on IBKR. It's a garbage set up because seeking alpha doesn't allow anything much outside the US and much of what I look at now is outside of the US and IBKR requires logging in, etc. Previously I've used things like Docoh which i think from memory only showed larger cap stocks. I do pay for TIKR but have been too lazy to set up a watch list - I think because I've done it so many times over so many different platforms that were less-than-ideal, plus I'm not certain I'll continue paying for it and that concerns me. The thing I like about seeking alpha is they make it so easy and quick to bring up and so easy to view articles and so forth. I just wish they supported ex-US.

Recently finished The Bear which was fantastic - season 2 particularly. I'm sure many have already seen it; and 'Dark Winds' which I really enjoyed too. Aside from that I generally just throw something semi-brainless on to wind down. I really enjoy all the mining and similar docu-dramas, particularly 'Outback Opal Hunters' and some of the Gold Rush and similar type ones - Aussie gold hunters and Gold Rush White Water are good. Been working my way through Big Timbers i think it's called on netflix which isn't bad either. I think I'm just drawn to 1. not having to think too much whilst i'm watching it/allowing me to wind down and 2. finding the different processes and problem-solving mildly interesting. Not really sure why I'm so drawn to those type of shows, but i seem to be. Going to give The Witcher a try next I think. Not really something I'd usually watch but have had a few people rec it.

Silo's based on a book series which we're really good. I didn't love the tv series but I think that may have been mainly due to it going against how I portrayed the books in my head - although the plot varies. Seems to have good reviews and others i've spoken to liked it so I'm comfortable to concede that I'm the odd one out here.

I got this in the mail today, too. Pretty awesome quality for something they're prepared to both give-away and catapult to the other side of the world.

Yep, I'm at a tad under 50% cash. Not really by design but am having trouble finding a lot at valuations that i like currently, although a lot is close and I have a fair few bids floating. That's probably more of a tell-tale of me being more tentative to enter a position and wanting to hold closer to the 10-15 positions mark on top of a bunch of large positions i was taken out of due to buy-outs over the last 2ish years. Most of the cash currently sits in 'offset' accounts against some RE investments and offsets the interest rate due on whatever portion of cash is sitting there so I see it as a quasi 5% return, although in reality it's flipped. Can pull it as I please.

It'd be interested to see where they'd put Australia because things seem, and have seemed pretty spicy here too.

I like the business a lot. They do operate worldwide however something like 75% of revenue is from NA off of the top of my head. They are focusing on growth particularly in Australia and Europe and are semi-winding down their China segment - essentially just servicing existing customers for the most part - from what I understand. I think probably my largest concern outside of the cyclicality (mainly tied to non-resi US construction), is whether their volumes are contracting and if so - why. The reason I question whether they are is because they've added additional groups of machinery over the years and I think it's likely that certain of them are things that would have previously landed under the boomed and ride-on screed categories. So if the historical screed categories are trending down (I'm not sure they are, it's difficult to tell with the noise of the last few years) then that may purely be due to the historical screed categories being mixed in to 2 or 3 additional/new equipment categories rather than 1. They do name the machinery so that should be very easy to nut-out. Where volumes will normalize is a little more difficult for me to grasp. They do have some newish (I believe?) competition within the NA market too. Anyway, intriguing business for sure.

Fantastic. Thanks KJP. I am familiar with Macfarlane and Lewis Robinson but not so with Sabre or Perlican so I'll jump straight in to them.

Does anyone want to share any particular names they're interested in here? I think there's a bunch that are interesting but tied to construction and/or renovation. I think Somero, Andrew Sykes, Headlam, Howden Joinery are all interesting but influenced in varying degrees by the above.

I finished Railroader a couple of week ago; very worthy read.

Yeah I was mostly being facetious but I agree, it's largely a game of confirmation bias and I too find it difficult to buy in to things that I can neither experience for myself nor explain objectively and by what I perceive to be rational means.

I heard some one say, a while back, this which made me laugh; 'Camera technology has made leaps and bounds this last few decades but every UFO sighting (and big foot) seems still to be taken with a potato'. From someone that certainly follow this stuff - it doesn't seem you ever see one that isn't either vying for the world lowest res. photo, or seemingly taken during a catastrophic earthquake.

I've been watching 'Tokyo Vice' as per some recommendations in this thread - great show.

Yeah I tried this one last night too - boring - made it through 1 episode and doubt I'll revisit it. I'm sure some of that's because I already know the story quite well but also - have you really got 4 and a half hours of material there?

There's a bio by Forestier and Ravai called 'The Taste of Luxury - Bernard Arnault and the M-H, LV Story'. I've had it on my list for a few years now but have found it difficult to find and/or expensive whenever I've gone to take the plunge so am yet to read it.

There's a great podcast series covering this called 'Exit Scam'.

Out of curiosity, is there anything in particular that makes you believe Fevertree could be one of the next great global brands? It seems like drinks co's (and similar) are a dime a dozen. They commonly seem to make an initial, big splash then sink - it seems very faddish. However, the ones that grab hold are typically big winners. At initial glance, the valuation looks intriguing although their margin trend concerns me a little. Expansion maybe? Heaps of cash, little/no debt. Doesn't look like they need to spend a real lot on capex. Minimal dilution, stock comp looks reasonable. The build up of cash and dividends makes me think they may be struggling for re-investment opportunities, which is fine. I'd rather them fling the cash back to shareholders than blow it on garbage acquisitions or similar.

I'm half way through this and am enjoying it too. Apple seems to be doing reasonably well with their production - without thinking too deeply in to it - there's been a few series they've released this past year or so, I've really enjoyed. The movie 'CODA' was really good too I thought. I believe they're currently producing Shantaram - a series based on the book. Being that this may well be my favorite book of all time and lingers in my head based on the fond memories of reading it almost 2 decades ago, I'm perhaps more concerned than interested as to what effect it may have on my memories of a book thoroughly enjoyed at a vastly different point in my life. We'll see, I guess.