king888

Bangkok,Thailand

Value investors are usually sell early in bull market because price and IV gap closes rather quick. And they tend to hold on stock in bear turn beause the gap keep expanding . That makes turnover for value fund to be high in bull and low in bear. Isn't it?

Not directly related to investing but their business concept works out really well. The brothers sold CityDeal to Groupon for £750 million and remains active in Groupon's international expansion. Inside the clone factory- Germany's Samwer brothers http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/inside-the-clone-factory?page=all They are spreading their concept worldwide. Rocket internet is starting two new ecommerce websites in my country and it is on hiring spree for local people (300 people per website)

From 2010 AR . They are Personal Accident, Health,Engineering, and Burglary . And from what I heard from thai message board. Air transport related insurance also falls into this category. I believe PA & Health attribute to grow in this portion because Bancassurance channel that has just begun in Thailand for 4-5 years. And Air transport should be a large part also due to low-cost airlines massive expansion .

Here is ThaiRe's latest investor presentation(English) http://www.thaire.co.th/news.asp?News_ID=341 ThaiRe would go bankrupt without Fairfax capital injection due to massive loss from Thai Flood.

I recently watched an interview with one investor in my country ( for those who doesn't know ,I live in Thailand) . He was famous in value investment webboard in Thailand. He is Thai and will be 31 year old this year. This guy started investing in 2003 with a borrow money from his father at around 500K baht (about $16K) . And last year his investment achieved 100 million baht mark($3.5 million).He made 200x gain during his eight years in stock market. His investment approach made me somewhat intrigued. In Thailand ,we don't have single stock option.So the leverage choices is limited. 1. He bought only one stock at a time. 2. He use margin account at extreme. 3. He expects 2-3x upside for one stock only. 4. He uses EV/FCF as a criteria to enter long position. When the market was in panic mode in 2008 , he bought one stock at 3 baht and then stock plunged down to 2 baht , he got a margin call. So he asked his mother to mortgage her their house to compensate the margin call. He came from middle class family so house is only asset his family got. He believed this security is massively undervalued and at 2 baht it would soar eventually. Finally, he was able to exit at 11.5 baht because this security received tender-offer in 2009. His portfolio grew to around 20 million baht from this position .He continued to use his strategy to pickup stock and using margin to buy only one stock. And 2 year later he grew it 5 times more to reach 100 million mark. He read many value investing book. He said he has not been wrong in stock picking because he choose only the stock that is in his circle of competent (easy to understand FS,etc) and and has cheap EV/FCF multiple. He is willing to take risk by holding only one stock and buy as much as possible. He did make a loan with loan-shark once. He believe this is best way to accumulate wealth for individual investor. He said if he only expect 20% return a year,it will not worth his time because his initial investment is low. But now when he has enough money (100 million baht), he became less aggressive using less margin. I think his approach is very risky. For me ,it looks like gamble more than investing. In the last financial crisis, if the market was not picking up fast. That mortgage would kill him and brought his entire family down. But he is right that if you want to get rich by being individual investor and not having large initial capital ,you have to be very aggressive. Or else you have to manage other people money (like Buffett formed his partnership). This guy was very lucky to avoid many pitfall until reaching his financial goal.If he picked any wrong stock ,he would get wiped out. And he is lucky that Thailand stock market has the greatest bull run in previous 3 years. What do you guy on the board think ? Any of you using the same aggressive strategy like this guy.

Didn't know that he tried to buy NHL team before. In the book, he that he had 100 times more money than he expected in childhood after he was fired from the last HF firm. It might be around $100 million. Not bad for working in HF for just only 10 years.

[amazonsearch]Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager[/amazonsearch] The main topic is McCullough's rise and fall in Hedge fund industry. A former hockey player turned into hedgefund manager. It provides some insight how hedgefund works.McCulloguh thinks that Hedgefund is a flawed system.Most fund manager just follow the herd ,taking excessive risk to gain huge incentive. And the later part of the book is kind of promoting McCullough's research firm. Not much about value investing but it is good read for novices (only in the first part) . Good to read it to get a clear view in HF industry and then read the "The most important things" from Howard Mark which has a chapter explaining why he focus on absolute return rather than relative return.

Here is historical chart of freight rate from 4,000 BC . I got it from shipping executive last year.

Article from Martin Shkreli. The one that was blamed for MannKind's failure. I think he was reported to CREW by unhappy longs in MNKD. http://seekingalpha.com/article/320572-mannkind-is-simply-running-out-of-cash

Focus Media Shares Crater; Analyst Alleges Fraud http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/11/21/focus-media-shares-crater-analyst-alleges-fraud/

I was outbid. Too bad that I forgot the auction and placed my bid at only $720. $730 is a steal .It still cheaper than Margin of Safety book.

Correct me if I am wrong. I think FRO and many Tanker operator are foreign companies(bermuda-based) except OSG. So the insiders do not have to file a transaction report.

Anyone here follow this industry ? The shipping industry are all facing the strong headwind due to oversupply. But the tanker are being hit hardest .The share of the tanker companies are making a new low everyday. Supertanker are operating at loss. Due to poor outlook in both demand and supply side. Newbuild are coming online but demand for Oil is not growing strong enough. All of the news are negative. Crude Oil-Tanker Losses Continue as Vessel Surplus Persists http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-26/crude-oil-tanker-losses-continue-as-vessel-surplus-persists.html High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/099c4870-d58a-11e0-9133-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1ZRr37fKZ “We could see bigger players than [the ones that have already collapsed] disappearing,” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/099c4870-d58a-11e0-9133-00144feab49a.html#axzz1ZRqJkPBG And many bad news if you just search on Google news. Here is good paper in 2004 from MIT graduate student who worked in the industry also http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/17807/56556995.pdf?sequence=1 Another interesting presentation by Precious Line Shipping .One of the largest Dry Bulk operator in Asia. Mr. Khald ,CEO , is well regarded as the shipping guru. He describe the nature of this industry very well. And Dry Bulk is similar industry to Tanker. He expects the 2011-2012 should be the bottom of the industry. And the good sign of bottom is bankruptcy of another companies .His company plans to add more ships during the consolidation period. But also said that it is very hard to make a prediction in this industry. And most of the predictions in this sector are wrong in most time ( 0:59:00 in the video below) . Here is the link for the call -> http://www.dcs-digital.com/setweb/ondemandnew.php?onid=683&&size=b Slide - http://www.preciousshipping.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=QiW%2fHqEhQXc%3d&tabid=243&mid=722&forcedownload=true My point is we might be very close to bottom of the industry (6-12 month). Because the dynamic of the industry . If the outlook is very pessimistic ,the operator has to do something to improve the freight rate .For example, lay-up ship or delay the newbuild coming online. Here is one positive analyst interview I can find about Tankers. http://www.tradewindsnews.com/tankers/ You can scroll down to video section and watch "Tankers should take cover" video from Head of Research of Gibsons. He said in the interview that while the outlook is very bad. The real outcome could be better due to the "manipulative function" from the operators. . He expects next 12 month that rate for VLCC can improve to $30,000 -$50,000/day comparing to negative rate today. Wilbur Ross and Prem also started an private equity to invest in Tanker http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904292504576480523786445958.html

Wilbur Ross on Dealmakers Summit on Sept. 27 http://www.bloomberg.com/video/76206552/ It is the same as value investing principle. Investing only in your circle of competency is the way to determine what business has the staying power or what not . Yes,it is. Buying when the crowd are pessimistic and the price of equities are depressed. But you have to make sure that the company has staying power in both their business model and balance sheet (and not a fraud to add to these days financial market) . In case of Wilbur, he has a lot of capital to inject to the company .So he can invest in the company that even has a mediocre balance sheet. That is his advantage against the average Joe.

No problem Hester. I didn't buy any share so I didn't get burnt. I just looked into it because it was very cheap that time if it turn out to be legit. It just happens time to time that investors got trapped in some opportunities that turn out to be a fraud. When valuation looks too cheap ,it is likely to be a fraud or in some other trouble. That's why we need a second thought when it comes to investing. Mr Market is very smart these days. Talking about SA, the article quality is deteriorating. I have not read any good article for a while. Dr Clemens who wrote Chaoda's article is one of my favorite contributor in SA but he doesn't has any activity (comment ,blogging) for quite sometimes. He might be gone as well. It is hard to keep publishing your investment idea when you failed badly in one idea. I will be sad to see him goes.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/259053-chaoda-modern-agriculture-a-green-giant-for-the-price-of-a-dwarf Chaoda have been added to my watch list after I read this article back in March. There was a fraud allegation by Next magazine before this anonymous group . Information is very hard to obtain and verified so I didn't buy any . It is very hard to find an information about HK stocks in English .And the company financial report is only half-year basis.

One of the most successful retailer in the last decade might be ZARA. The store in my city has people lining up to the cashier like they get freebie. And I heard that they spend almost nothing in advertising.No tv commercial,etc.

[amazonsearch]Investing Against the Tide: Lessons From a Life Running Money - Anthony Bolton[/amazonsearch] An investment book by Anthony Bolton,a British fund manger for about 25 years and still counting. He delivered a return of 20% annually. The book got a foreword by Peter Lynch who called Bolton to be one of greatest investor. This book is easy to read and I finished reading the book within a couple of day. It doesn't have much in-depth detail but it has a lot of rules that Bolton used for himself. I would suggest this book to my friend who just started investing because it is not hard to read by newbie and what said in the book is from real experience of him.And it is also worth the time for seasoned investors as well.

http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/short_interest.asp http://www.amex.com/amextrader/tradingData/amexShortInt/AmexShortInterest.jsp

Thank You Sanjeev for clarifying me. I still do not buy this stock.But I was curious about the ethical line. The practices in my country (Thailand) and US are very different. In Thailand, most of investors will not take sizable position in any companies unless they have talked/visited the management. In Thai investment forum, there was also some big retail investor posted he got a phone call from CEO noticing that company just bought a nice land for new development project and this news is not out the public release until end of quarter.And he posts this kind of news regularly because he is very big retail investor and got tips from many sources. It is thin line between scatter-butt and insider information.

As I am not based in USA so I am curious about the SEC regulation on the insider information. Thanks

Does the strike price adjusted when the banks has a share dilution from capital increase ?

Sanjeev, Any ideas about his position in MannKind? Thanks

Here is the note from Marshall Delano, who met Graham one year before he died . http://groups.google.com/group/misc.invest.stocks/browse_thread/thread/e7c72118b26b5580/c5cabe7a80208f9c?qc