rohitc99

Why don't you ask Uccmal via private message? That was certainly a catalyst to my thinking about it. I wasn't picking on him. It just occurred to me it is really difficult. Bill Miller performed spectacularly until he didn't and much was lost. You can find dozens who have crashed badly enough their long term records reverted to the average. Lampert did great until he met Sears - then he ran into himself and the Peter Principle. Its awfully hard to recover from a really ugly pick(s). Walter Schloss kept up high returns for decades by sticking to a tight formula, and never doubling down on anything. John Neff did the same, with similar results as Walter. Partly I am tired of my own crappy results the last couple of years. My portfolio is Now 90% in dividend payers, except pdh, and pwt. I am trying to pick companies that will maintain, and raise their dividends regularly. I am willing to take lower total returns to have downside protection. And I am trying to get them on sale, at least somewhat. there seems to be some link between concentrated portfolios and trouble. most of the spectacular highs and lows seems to be with concentrated portfolios. you keep doing well for some time and then a few bad picks cause the returns to revert to the mean. in contrast the likes of schloss never went for home runs ..so their highs were not as high, but the lows were not as bad. i guess unless one has the skills of a buffett/ munger , a few % outperformance with a diversified portfolio has a much better chance

There has been a change in the competitive scenario in india. New licenses for payment banks and small lending banks have been issued. HDFC bank may find it difficult to maintain these growth rates in the future

different investing styles, different currencies and ofcourse different countries if not continents. are these results representative of anything ? on individual basis maybe, but we dont know what is getting aggregated in the graph

maybe the difference if someone who is still a bear on the prices or does not know which will it will go (like me) will miss out on an opportunity (among several other possible opportunities). this fund manager has bet his reputation and possibly a lot of his own money on being right ..so he better be right for his sake :)

Except that the lenders would rather extend the debt than own the companies where ever possible, especially if the companies can meet their debt obilgations. Arx, and wcp, are having no trouble meeting their debt and dividend obilgations, and pwe may be headed there shortly. With each succeeding day at these "new low prices" the producers are bringing costs down in NA. In the non capitalist countries there is no incentive to bring costs down. I can only imagine the difficulty for Russia's, or SA's state oil companies to cut costs. Russia and SA are dependent on oil and gas to finance government operations. NA is not. In N. America's diversified economies something else picks up the slack. If the prices rise, the surviving NA producers will become very profitable very quickly. Packer, thanks for the chart. Nice summary. Not if that US or canadian producer has a ton of debt obligations he/she needs to meet! The hypothetical US or Canadian producer with a ton of debt has a finite amount of time in which they can produce at a loss, as does Russia, SA, etc. But, the US/CDN producer has a much greater finite amount of time. -Crip Not necessarily, the US/CDN producer has creditors who can declare it in violation of debt covenants anytime. Russia has gunz. The Russians and Saudis have no incentive to cut costs. Their economies and social programs and bureaucracies are incentivized for the opposite. If they cut costs people lose jobs, and there are no alternatives. Can/Us have much more elastic economies. Lenders are never in a hurry to take on the expensive dog's breakfast of CCAA or Chapter 11, if there is any chance they will get repaid at some point. We have seen lending agreements modified over and over in the Canadian west over the past year. The survivors in NA will come out of the low price environment in very good shape. If the price remains steady they will continue to cut costs as needed. Eventually the other countries will be forced to capitulate. This didn't work out according to plan. +1 this is close what i have been thinking. The saudis/ Russians are not rational economic actors in this ..for them it is about revenue and keeping their spending afloat. if we apply game theory it makes a lot of sense lets say, OPEC reduces production to prop up price, price goes up, NA and Canadian producers with marginal cost increase production and the price goes down. So the OPEC and other countries lose market share without gaining anything OPEC increases production, price drops ..everyone suffers equally. this almost looks like the prisoners dillemma - atleast in the short run. In the long run, it all comes down to whether oil demand keeps growing, or solar/ alternates caps that. on that count, it is even more confusing (for me)

is it not also the case that countries like Russia, Saudi, Iran etc will have to produce no matter what the price. A canadian or US producer reduces production if the price start falling and remains low, but what option do some of these countries have Just as a thought experiment, lets say by post 2020, alternative forms of energy reduce the demand for oil and the price gets stuck at say 50, production out of US and canada could reduce and only the efficient producers keep producing. but dont the other countries keep producing to the max just to maintain their revenue and support their economies ..they really dont have any other source of revenue. and anytime the price spikes, the marginal barrel of oil in NA comes online capping further upside. i dont know the answer..but wanted to check what others think of this

From what i recall from the book, munger felt quite bad about the losses. he did not mind losing his own money, but was upset that he was losing his investor's money although he rationally know that it was not a true loss and the value was still there. very few can lose 30% two years in a row and still operate rationally. a concentrated makes sense only if you are both smart and rational ...i am not and hence diversification makes sense for me -

Drillers Unleash ‘Super-Size’ Natural Gas Output Applying newer fracking methods to existing field offers potential for more and cheaper fuel The U.S. may have far more natural gas than anyone imagined, all reachable at a profit even with today’s bargain-basement prices. Experimental wells in Louisiana by explorers including Comstock Resources Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Inc. are proving highly lucrative thanks to modern drilling techniques and the sheer volume of fossil fuels that can be coaxed out of the ground. http://www.wsj.com/articles/drillers-get-super-size-natural-gas-output-1441127955

another FDA approval to do tests outside the lab http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/fda-clears-theranos-to-do-test-outside-lab/

+ 1 ..they deserve the success and more, though the likes of holmes and musk dont seem to driven by the money. who would really work 7 days a week for 10+ years for an extra billion ?

i think this is a good start on validity of the claims. the company got recently got some FDA approvals for their system and hiv tests https://fortune.com/2015/07/02/theranos-fda-approval/

writser I agree with your point a 100%. i have been guilty of the same thing often. To give a brief background, i have invested in india for 15+ years focussing on small and midcaps and done fairly well. However in an effort to 'feel' smarter i decided to try my luck in options, oil stocks and other commodities and got my head handed to me. Instead of feeling smart, i ended feeling dumber. I think munger said this in the poor charlie's almanac to the effect, that not everyone can be the no.1 player in tennis, but if you work hard enough and focus on your area of advantage you can come the top plumber or something to that effect, in bemidji. I am now focussed on finding my own bemidji :)

difference between being in top 2% versus top .000001% ? i think being in the top 2% is not a bad place to be :)

Can FFI only invest in public stock holdings in India?... or does their prospectus say they can also buy private businesses and do joint-ventures, etc? Does it matter? They will certainly pay a premium for growth and that is already reflected in the NAV. A premium on FFI is like a premium on a premium. (And you pay fees for that luxury, so in reality it should trade at a slight discount to NAV.). Otherwise FFH could just setup a hedgefund on a hedgefund on a hedgefund on a hedgefund and in the end you pay a 1000x premium on the original business. The stock market crash of 1929 came through this type of packaging. I think you are making an assumption here. Look at thomas cook - fairfax was able to buy it at 10X cash flow. IKYA was around at sub 10 levels and a lot of other tuckin accquisitions in IKYA have happened at fair decent valuations. same for sterling holiday resorts As an indian investor i can tell you that growth may be overvalued in a lot of cases, but not always. So fairfax india can always find attractive deals

This is exactly the point I wanted to make. When you are young and your portfolio is relative small betting 100% on a single stock is not necessarily risky since the net present value of your human capital could easily represent 90%+ of your 'instrinsic value'. When you are older the net present value of your human capital usually drops because your are getting closer to retirement while at the same time you hopefully converted your human capital from the previous years into a bigger stock portfolio. It assumes that if one suffers such a loss, it will not impact him/ her emotionally. I have seen some young guys lose quite a bit early on and then they were over cautious going forward. not everyone is emotionally mature to handle huge losses

thanks for sharing these personal stories. Makes me feel better ..i was thinking i must be loser for being so paranoid about risk and not wanting to exceed a certain % in terms of concentration.

any reason why these costs - especially the non-opec ones will not change ? most of the junior O&G companies seem to be showing a 3-5% drop in costs for the last few years. will that not continue and keep pushing the cost curve down ? if one combines this with low cost of NG and other sources of energy which are being developed (at the periphery for now), this could depress the demand at the margin too. just thinking out loud

Hi Uccmal how do you use leaps on these ? do you get leaps on such indexes too ?

The market is pricing in atleast 80 dollar oil. well after taking pain all week, atleast I will feel good when filling up the tank on the weekend. lose in dollars, benefit in cents !

so this is what I understand from the replies - figure out post tax expenses and keep withdrawal rates around 3-4% or lesser for a margin of safety - kids college : this is a one time expense. add this to the total (assuming I am going to pay for it - which is likely). this I can estimate. - medical : this is my key concern. as this could be the black swan and cause a huge outflow if something were to go wrong, I should look at the best options in terms of insurance which caps my maximum payout ? better to keep paying a high fixed premium but cap the total liability in worst case scenario ? does this summarize how much I need to have assuming I will not drive myself crazy in early retirement reading 10Ks :)

thanks SD. maybe I did not state it clearly in my post. I plan to be a full time investor, managing my own capital. with 25 yrs to go for traditional retirement, how should I look at this ? I think I can do a 3-5% better than the market - not 30%+ levels some others on this board can achieve. so how have others gone about in terms of the math ?

I think some of the board members have retired quite early (from traditional jobs) and have become full time investors. can you share how you have worked out the math ? the standard retirement calculators assume an average return (Which most of boards members will do better) and are not very helpful for planning. also have you taken into account one off expenses such as college fees, unexpected medical expenses ? any pointers, suggestions would be welcome

Where are they giving monthly updates? I don't see it on the site. They did till last month. After the latest quarter update, the presentation has disappeared.

alertmeipp - don't get me wrong. I am long MEI too and was quite optimistic till the recent quarter update. Even after the downgrade the company could grow average boe by 20% which is good What has me concerned is that the management was publishing the higher numbers every till august, whereas they would have been aware of the early shut ins. If they are going to give monthly updates and can see the hit coming, why wait till the quarter end ? why not let the market know this and reduce the expectations also on the cc, they mentioned that this started happening roughly after june and they should have it resolved by sept/ oct. in addition, there is issue of shutin to maintain reservoir pressure. I am not an engineer to understand enough on this , but this look worrying ? does this mean that the initial well estimates were too optimistic or the engineering was done poorly and this shutin is happening to fix that ?

Its concerning to see that the management kept the same guidance till early august and then suddenly came out with a 20% drop in averge BOE/d and exit numbers. would they not be aware of the earlier shut in issues or chose not to disclose it ? what do you make of it ?