sfbm21
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Posts posted by sfbm21
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16 hours ago, Libs said:
Blakehampton,
You are wise to ask this question at such a young age. When I was 30, just starting out, I was naively running my thumb down a list of P/E's and declaring Washington Mutual a great bet because it was only 8X earnings. I thought that was all that mattered. My point is, you're going to learn a lot about how to value stocks; it's not going to be just cash flow or just the balance sheet. It truly depends on the company and industry.
I'm 61, and have been doing this for 31 years. Lots of lessons learned along the way, tons of mistakes, but it's worked out very well (unless I blow it in the home stretch).
Here are some specific things I've experienced.
1) I lost 25% of my net worth in one day in a single stock. Turned out instead of selling used cars in to Africa, it was a an arms-smuggling operation. The whole thing was too good to be true, of course.....the numbers were made up. I still feel like an idiot admitting to it today. I had gotten caught up in group-think and wishful thinking.
2) Many years later a company called Valeant had, in their reports, a table showing the growth of some of their divisions, or possibly their recent roll-ups. It doesn't matter. What matters is how they presented it. It went like this:
division / growth
A 20%
B 30%
C 15%
D 1%
E 22%
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Avg = 18%.
Sounds great, right? Except Division D was huge and dwarfed the others in size. The weighted average, which is what matters, was really like 3%! Had I owned that stock I would have sold it right there, based just on that piece of chicanery. And it did collapse from fraud. I guess I had learned something...
3) I was poking around XPEL and found a post where someone described their moat. It all suddenly made sense to me. I did some modest industry checks that confirmed it, and voila, a few years later it was a 70- bagger. You never know, if you read enough, where you will find that nugget of info that clinches the idea for you. It might even be Jim Cramer ( I know, I know).
General lessons, mostly learned the hard way:
1) There are some people on this board who can make you rich if you learn from them. The posted stock ideas are a great place to see how ideas are vetted.
2) Never buy a stock based on a guru. Always do your own DD, or you will have weak hands and sell at the first sign of trouble.
3) Hold on to your best ideas like grim death. The coffee can approach works. See Dealraker's posts on this.
4) When your thesis is broken, sell. Avoid style drift.
5) You're young enough to test out different strategies. Do it, with money. You need to have skin in the game to learn anything.
6) Post ideas. Be grateful if someone tears apart your thesis. They did you a favor.
7) There is always someone smarter than you in this game. Try to identify them and learn from them.
8 Unethical management - avoid no matter how cheap the stock looks.
9) Melting ice cubes- same
10) It hurts to spend days / weeks on an idea, fall in love with it- then the last thing on your check list is a deal-breaker. Just move on anyway.
11) As Gregmal says, the spreadsheet people will miss out. Getting the core idea right is always more important.
12) Don't let macro fears stop you from buying something good.
13) Be open-minded. Principles are forever but landscapes change.
14) Accept that great investors can have polar opposite opinions on the same stock. That's ok.
15) Know the bear case. Why is it wrong?
16) Read Buffett and Munger, then read them again. The best posters here have adopted their foundation and built on top of it.
17) Temperament > brains in the long run. If you have both- look out!
18) Review your winners and ask if you were just lucky. Review your losers and take full accountability.
I wish I'd started at 21. Good luck to you!
Great post.
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16 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
I have actually found it’s really easy to get concentration in a big way if you utilize leverage in a half intelligently structured way. Have had mid single digit positions turn into 20-30% positions, and low teens positions turn into positions greater than 50-70%. The problem blocking many from doing this is 1) understanding how to punchcard this strategy, 2) navigate options trading and 3) they’re petrified of losing let’s say 5-10% which to me is silly because if I’m not willing to risk 5% on a trade, I don’t know how I could ever reasonable expect to make a decent amount of money on it. But that’s really the key. If you are fine putting 5-7% on the line, and can isolate the strategy to punchcard ideas and structure it to the upside, it’s ridonkulously asymmetric.
can you elaborate little further?
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On 1/17/2023 at 4:06 PM, Gregmal said:
Haha yea. I dunno. But it’s gonna close sooner than later and 70c-$1 for up to $5 upside in totally market neutral fashion seems like solid use of borrowed monies lol
How much is the CVR worth here ?
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On 7/27/2022 at 11:51 AM, Spekulatius said:
Sold PYPL on Elliot bump.
Why? Is n’t it a tailwind? Buybacks, cfo and cost cutting and the Elliot.
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6 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
Added to VRE, MSGE, Nintendo, UBER
what is thesis behind VRE ?
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3 hours ago, Parsad said:
I believe Ted paid $5M for two lunches...so he got an even better bargain per lunch, plus the job!
In terms of who I would pay to have dinner with...Einstein and Gandhi, yes...Jordan, no. Would rather lunch with Steph Curry, Patrick Mahomes or Peyton Manning...they would be fun! Would also pay to lunch with Roger Federer or Nadal.
I did buy a lunch and round of golf with Gretzky, but then the damn pandemic came and never got to enjoy it! C'est la vie!
Cheers!
Would be fund manager or is would want market himself to get the more funds to manage. It’s a marketing expense aka business expense/cost of doing business .
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why is it only Oil companies ? . why not tech ?
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293 for me
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5 minutes ago, gfp said:
Not sure I am understanding your post but the figures posted here are not "per share" figures if that helps.
My bad.is it 666b market cap by 44b earnings comes to 15?
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On 3/2/2022 at 3:30 PM, thepupil said:
i mean it's all one account, but Berkshire is the anchor tenant in my taxable account w/ IBKR. IT's about 30% of that account, which currently has no margin outstanding because i'm getting ready to send a boat load of money to uncle sam in april. if i choose to sell nothing and pay that with margin, I'd be about 20% levered in that account and <10% overall (including IRA's and stuff).
I think margin usage is a very individual choice and one should potentially include the cost of "disaster puts" (way OTM) in order to prevent forced sales.
In the past, I've used a general guideline of Buy $100 of Berkshire, Buy 30% OTM long term puts for 1-2%/yr, borrow $40 against the berkshire for general pupil purposes. that way i could always sell for a 30% loss and still be in line with general margin guidelines.
IBKR would let me go nucking futs with margin. i could be 300% long if i wanted to.
Could you elaborate on margin trade, $40 borrow against $100 of stock. Does IBKR allow borrow cash on margin?
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1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:
@yesman182 awesome analysis and thanks for posting. I think this is how Buffett et all probably look at Berkshire’s valuation as well. The stock does not look screaming cheap but not expensive at all either.
Is n’t at PE of 10. Trading at 452000 off today .
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agree. Energy is the way to go for next few years if you could pick winners. You have ESG on one side and war on the other side and banks not lending to fossil fuel projects and stupid policies. if the hedges roll off for those that hedged, await bumper crop of cash flows.
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37 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:
Added to DPW.DE / DPSGY yesterday.
What is thesis here. Dividend? German govt ?
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EBAY -
Any thoughts on the following,
Here is a message from a (soon to be former) Ebay power seller, from the "trenches". I am an "old timer" as far as Ebay goes - nearly 18 years. Most of them have been good for me. Now, it's time to move everything to Amazon. Why? Because the fees have gone over the top, for what you receive from Ebay as a seller. I can get fulfillment by Amazon for nearly the same price. That means I don't have to do a thing! So my well into 6-figure sales are going to Amazon.
I am part of a local Ebay user group. Collectively, we sell well into 7 figures per year on various online sites, with (up to this point) most of it on Ebay. We're leaving. It's too expensive. And get this - and I just learned this from one of the associates that helps pack our products for shipments. Ebay charges sellers a fee on the sales tax it collects! For us that amounts to thousands of dollars per year lost in profit! I never see a PENNY of that money, even to invest. That was the nail in the coffin for me.
We are winding down now with Ebay. By summer I will be 100% Amazon and will be shutting down most of my operation. I won't need it. Amazon will be doing 75%+ of the work, and I will only need a small space for consolidating and then sending to various Amazon locations. I am aware of others in our user group that will be doing the same. I suspect this is playing out in other areas in the US as well.
It has been a great run. Too bad Ebay had to ruin it with excessive fees. I'm also wondering how many users Ebay is losing because of the new 1099 rules. I understand why the government wants it, but it has to be scaring off many sellers who don't want to deal with a Schedule C on their taxes. -
Dec 23 - cut off
Dec 21 - Noification to Broker cut off
Fairfax India new issue
in Fairfax Financial
Posted
It is looking like that. In addition to that it is in EM and rupee depreciation with respect to dollar etc.Anchorage spin off would help i guess