Ballinvarosig Investors

I hope so. I've been waiting with the elephant gun poised for the best part of a year and a half now.

You would be a fool to predict timelines, but here is where I think we're at. When compared to the past, the S&P 500 is almost certainly expensive. The problem is that today is not the past. We've had interest rates at historic lows for 7 years, that has driven money out of fixed income into equity, pushing returns down, giving us stock market yields of about 5%, as opposed to the traditional 7-8%. How long can this go on? Who knows. However, it will not go on forever. At some point however, inflation is going to pick up, and when that point comes, it will be the next best buying point investors have. Why? Because there is now trillions of Dollars worth of money out there that is invested in low yielding fixed income with long maturities. There will be a bloodbath when investors rush to the exit doors, and I suspect that across the capital structure, you are going to see a massive amount of forced selling. The bad news is that if the Japanese experience was to be re-produced here, we could be dead of old age by the time this happens. As for what to do today? Well if you think the US is expensive, then look at other markets. Hint - you do not have far at all to look to find one that is cheaper.

I can think of a few. Finland separated from Russia and the gap between the two nations has widened to 3x GDP. Ireland has 25% higher GDP than the United Kingdom today despite being about half the size after independence. The states that emerged from Serbian dominated Yugoslavia like Slovenia and Croatia have been doing very well in comparison to Serbia.

You misunderstand what a ponzi scheme is. A ponzi scheme requires new money into the system to perpetuate the fraud. What Warren is talking about is because Berkshire can always count on new money to replace existing claims, they are able to delivery superior performance. If you are never dipping into float, then it's reasonable to consider using a good proportion of that float to invest with a longer-term in mind. If new premium money was to fall below payout claims, that doesn't make Berkshire a fraud. It would only mean that Berkshire could be forced into selling securities to cover payouts.

I've never understood the IBM thesis, but that has to be a worrying statement if you're invested.

What are you thoughts on Hingham? Why's it the best bank? I like to look at historical ROA, ROE, efficiency ratio, the non-performing loan trend, NIM, price to book, loan book growth (you don't want this too high). I didn't think it was the absolute best bank in its class, but it was in the top 5% of all banks and the cheapest I could find. Looks a little expensive these days though trading at 2x book with stalling growth.

I've been doing the investing thing for ten years now. I first started like Buffett, trying to find the tiny undiscovered needles of gold in the haystack, looking at micro/nano-caps to try and discover the cheapest stocks. I was lucky, because when I started in 2006/2007, the market was ready to go straight into the ditch and very quickly, I was able to discover cheap stocks (on my own, and through here too). A few stocks ended up going to zero, a few went nowhere, a few doubled/tripled, one or two went up 5x. It was a strategy that made money, but in hindsight, it wasn't really necessary to go sifting through so many awful companies to find a few gems. If I had just bought the best insurance company (Beazley Group), the best bank (Hingham Institution), the best conglomerate (Berkshire), the best retailer (Walmart) and a basket of long-term consumer stocks (Coke, J&J, Procter, etc.) I would have probably performed even better with about 10% of the effort. I couldn't be bothered with the first strategy anymore. Too much work, too many headaches, too much stress when you could achieve superior results with less effort by just buying quality when it comes down in price.

I have found this to be a terrible method of investing, even when you filter out frauds and the companies that are losing so much money they will burn through their net working capital with a year.

Nope, Nexpoint only IPO'ed last year and that is on his list. Burry is a natural born investor - I'd say that he was just getting bored sitting on his hands.

You can still get access to his blog through Google cache, if you so wish. I do feel bad for him though. Energy investors have been hit by a perfect storm. However, it does seem to me that investors in that sector have been drinking the Kool-Aid for too long. It seems there was a perception that energy costs could only ever go up, and that led to a heck of a lot of speculation in the market. What I find remarkable is how Buffett seems to have foreseen this trainwreck.

It's been funny watching the several stages of denial that those opposed to Trump have been going through. Stage 1 - "This is obviously a publicity stunt, or something" - at first, political commentators regarded him as nothing more than a joke candidate with no chance whatsoever. He was 100/1 with bookies here in Europe, the kind of odds you would have got for Sarah Palin. Stage 2 - "Oh, so he actually is going for the presidency?" - people acknowledged he actually would be a candidate, but expected him to be one of the first to drop out. Stage 3 - "Ok, so he has some extremist support, but he will never move mainstream" - Trump starts moving up the polls, by no means a front runner, but not without support. Stage 4 - "Sure, he might get the Republican nomination, but why would anyone vote for him over Hilary?" - this is where we're at now, for some reason Hilary is favourite, which is strange given how much she polarizes public opinion. Honestly, I think only Trump can get Trump beat. Only a gaffe or some skeleton in his closet will make him lose.

Up mid-single digits, 80% of that was Dollar appreciation. Had to write a letter to clients just a week ago explaining that in the entire year of 2015, I didn't make a single investment. Intellectually speaking, it's been a testing year. You have central banks still doing everything they can to increase asset prices and force bond yields negative - the temptation to buckle and buy something is immense. The market still looks moderately overvalued, so I won't be buying anything unless prices decline by 10%.

I caught this on the news and I had to do several double takes to get the gist of the story. The United States and Turkey (allied through NATO) have been sponsoring ethnic Turkish terrorists operating in Northern Syria. The Russian warplane in support of the current Syrian government was shot down in Syria after briefly crossing into Turkish airspace. The two Russian pilots who successfully parachuted from the plane were then killed by the US-backed terrorists and a Russian rescue helicopter was then destroyed by the same terrorists using US weapons. I think it's pretty clear that Turkey has an interest in Syria (ethnic Turks) and used the incursion of their airspace as a pretext to attack the Russian plane. It seems to me that Turkey are making use of the crisis in Syria as an attempt to secure the territory in Syria were the Turkmen live. They will argue that the natural home for the Turkmen people is within Turkey - but what about the Kurds in Turkey, a people who have been totally oppressed in Iraq, Turkey and Syria and have no one supporting them?

Are you sure? I could have sworn I saw him wearing an eye patch and standing on a peg-leg ;D Seriously though, well done, Jeff.

Parsad likes companies with a lot of free cash flow, so I would be expecting the price/FCF multiple to be pretty low. As suggested by someone else, a small cap natural resources stock seems unlikely to me - this kind of stock would be too risky for Parsad to make it a 25% position in my eyes. I don't think it's BAM either. The financials on it look ok, but certainly nowhere near good enough to make it a 25% position. I am guessing the company has a long history of stable earnings, has lots of free cash flow, but maybe has some quirk that is preventing the full value of the stock being realised.... Put me out of my misery Parsad - am I way off?

Just one quarter of bad numbers? The collapse in subscriber numbers is accelerating. 2012 Q3 - lost 1M subscribers. 2012 Q4 - lost 3M subscribers. 2013 Q1 - lost 4M subscribers. The launch of BB10 and the Z10 in particular looks like it has been a disaster. The fact that more people are buying BB7 devices (a platform that is all but dead) says it all. Even the diehards on Crackberry sound utterly gutted and demoralized. BB10 not being ported to the Playbook looks like the final kick in the teeth for many of them. If the Q10 or the Q5 don't gain any traction in the next quarter, then the best thing Blackberry could do is just kill off BB10 rather just burning through cash.

I see that that their website (www.chanticleeradvisors.com) no longer works. Would be a shame if these guys went out of business, they always had great ideas and made money pretty consistently (from what I saw at least!).

That is worse than what I expected. If it was just a bone-headed accounting error, then perhaps you could forgive management. The fact that Chanticleer did business with someone who subsequently robbed from the company is pretty damning.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/93859/000092189512002178/sc13d07428029_11122012.htm Trading at about book value, have posted some very good underwriting numbers in recent years. You'd get expect a takeout at about 17 bucks. Interesting.

$10 is very reasonable, just don't go getting ideas and end up doing a Biglari on it by jacking up the fee later on ;D Since you have a few bucks to play around with, why not run a competition in the Investment Ideas board? To make things interesting, you can use all that registration cash to put up a token prize ($20 or something similar) for the best idea. Just a thought to maybe generate some more discussion.

It's nearly $900 sim-free here in Europe. Personally, I think I will stick with my $200 Nokia that pretty much does everything that the iPhone does ;D

I don't see a problem in what he did (anyone dumb enough to buy based on his analysis deserves to be parted with their money), but I do think he is hurting his reputation.

Dell to buy Quest Software for $28 a share. http://www.nasdaq.com/article/dell-to-acquire-quest-software-for-236-billion-following-bidding-war-20120702-00542 Looks expensive to me.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0619/ryanair-makes-all-cash-offer-for-aer-lingus.html I believe Francis Chou has a few share in Aer Lingus (it's trading below net cash) and am sure there are a few value investors around these parts that might hold some Ryanair stock. I don't think O'Leary will actually succeed in getting Aer Lingus at €1.30, but if he gets it at anywhere near that price, I think it will be an extremely canny move. Aer Lingus have one of the youngest fleets of all the carriers and there is plenty of room in the former state-owned company for cost cutting!