Valuebo
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(3) I am interested in individual or perhaps small shop investors who have had success over a reasonable period of time. Someone like Packer would fit the bill. I am just interested in hearing the person's record, how they achieved it, how they've adapted, and what they are doing today.
(4) I've always thought that concentration versus diversification is an interesting topic. How many stocks should you own? Is it possible to outperform with 30+ significant position? Should you cap a single position at 20%? Higher, lower? Has your weighting changed over time (more or less concentrated)? Why?
Enjoy the shows. Keep up the good work.
Agreed!
In fact, you might find a bull and bear on a stock somewhere here who are both willing to discuss the investment on your podcast. Would be great to listen to!
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Thanks. Got the pdf but will buy this one for the holidays.
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E&P in N-A as said above. Agree with Russia too. Some value in Southern-Europe and Asia. EM in general will likely outperform US/EU over 10 year time frame imo.
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Thanks. Have read 5 of those books this year alone. Good list.
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Parames ex-Bestinver with a new startup Cobas - his numbers are incredible.
I'm considering the Spanish/Portuguese fund (considering they are among the cheapest countries around) and the international one. Has anyone already invested with them here? Think it should be doable through their website like with Bestinver.
For anyone interested, I just had a call with them. Can't buy through intermediaries (was possible with Bestinver) but easily doable through the website. Plus: no extra costs.
No minimum amount required either which is helpful for me as I shift more from active to passive investing over time. I was also surprised to learn they already have many clients in Belgium.
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Parames ex-Bestinver with a new startup Cobas - his numbers are incredible.
I'm considering the Spanish/Portuguese fund (considering they are among the cheapest countries around) and the international one. Has anyone already invested with them here? Think it should be doable through their website like with Bestinver.
I also like Vector (both Navigator and Flexible) in Belgium fwiw.
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Works great, thanks!
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Read it as well. A lot of it is recycled from previous posts but still good.
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Bought more GCM yesterday at C$3.05, today GXE at C$1.11
Sold some CRC at $37.5 I bought back at $31.5 last week. ???
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You are both correct, over the long run BRK BV goes up when markets do poorly for a while. :) Just wanted to state BV is not something set in stone. On the other hand, BV has become less and less relevant for BRK as operating businesses are a bigger piece of the pie than before.
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Don't forget that BRK's BV drops strongly when the stock market plummets. So if stocks are overvalued, BRK's BV is likely overstated. In other words, you get a leveraged effect when stock markets and BRK's BV is low.
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I've read this in February for the first time myself. Definitely a book you can benefit from reading once every few years or even yearly. One of the few books I gave 5/5 on Goodreads.
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1) What I learned Losing A Million Dollars (great for mindset / psychology)
2) The Halo Effect (also for business in general)
3) The Great Depression (also for history aspect and great read)
4) The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy
And obviously anything from WEB (letters etc)/Graham etc. Leaving plenty out, no need to repeat those already listed before me. I'd have to reevaluate to make an accurate list of the best. I've generally found books strongly linked to psychology far better than most other investing books. We truly are our own worst enemy.
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One of the best books I've read in recent years.
I just bought it a second time together with Homo Deus. Some books I have lying around a few times just to be able to give copies away. Sapiens is this kind of book. Others are Thinking fast and slow and The Intelligent Investor. I prefer not to lend out my personal editions but also want to let friends and family read them so buying some extra for a few bucks doesn't hurt.
I have found "loaning" books is essentially giving them away; they usually don't get returned. So your's is a good policy of accepting that and giving them the book.
Definitely one of the main drivers for just giving them. ;)
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One of the best books I've read in recent years.
I just bought it a second time together with Homo Deus. Some books I have lying around a few times just to be able to give copies away. Sapiens is this kind of book. Others are Thinking fast and slow and The Intelligent Investor. I prefer not to lend out my personal editions but also want to let friends and family read them so buying some extra for a few bucks doesn't hurt.
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Absolutely correct on the "not losing 10%" part, I was too quick to post that. Also agreed on the tax benefits. Even if you don't need the loan, you'd be stupid not to take it. But you still incur notary costs, redecoration costs and a sizeable purchase tax (you don't recup fully) unless you don't care where you live or buy something very small. I'm also looking at a timeline of 3-5 years after which one would buy a new property. Obviously when you buy one after 20 years, even a 10% tax and 10% redecoration costs / fixes wouldn't matter much.
As an aside, I'm also not looking to buy a 200k appartment, even as a starter home. Most homes I'd look for as a starter home start at 300k, so that is 30k in taxes (because at 10%) plus notary costs and small redecorations. Living in an expensive city I'm afraid! (I'd rather keep my investing going and buy my "forever" home in a few years. But that is just my situation.) Sure, the tax is dropping to 7% in Flanders but is still 12.5% in Brussels and Wallonia if I'm not mistaken so for Belgium as a whole it evens out.
Anyway, my general point was: Watch out for all costs and likely events when considering a starter home. If OP meets the love of his life in 2-3 years time, buying a starter home might be a bad deal depending on the tax situation in his country and the specific state of the property. I'm sure you agree with this general sentiment.
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Second part of the book (including the new extra chapters) is weaker. It seems that the author had a single "Halo Effect" idea and then just fillered to get to the book length. Some of the company analysis seems to suffer from the same Halo Effect that was the topic of the book. ::)
Almost finished it and am agreeing with your post. I've read the same thing worded slightly differently too many times.
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Although I do like my area and could see myself spending the next decade here. Although if I did get married in the next 5-10 years realistically I would have to upgrade to a bigger place. But that would be easier to do if I had some equity in an existing property.
Don't forget you are incurring some non-recoupable costs by buying a starter home and selling a few years later. In Belgium this is around 10% + redecorating costs etc. so look at your own situation and odds of finding someone / wanting a bigger place.
putting cost (both direct and opportunity) considerations aside, some people really want to be owners, and some people are just fine being renters, psychologically. which are you?
And some people are idiots. :P Why is owning (read: renting money) never seen as the riskier commitment in the short and medium term? You'd think 2006-2009 would have learned people something. You are making serious investments (costs, upgrades, redecorations, ...) into something that is collateral for some serious debt overhang. You better make sure you can pay it off. Obviously over the long and very long term, renting a home is generally riskier for your financial well-being.
Buy versus rent is not a numbers decision, and it will be decided by your significant other.
Put aside the spreadsheets.
Hmm, let's make the biggest financial decision of our lives all about emotions, why not. Happy wife, happy life; right? :P Bit tongue-in-cheeck as you raised some good points, SD. Sadly some people would throw all rationality overboard to be able to say they are home-owners.
Been together with my SO for 5 years and she understands the math behind renting vs owning. No need to brush these things aside because you have a SO or even a family. But obviously the feeling of stability has it's value for many as well. I can understand that but it can't come at all costs.
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I also understand the case against renting. The money basically goes down the drain. Whereas when you buy you would hope to recoup any principal repayments when you sell the house and
probably a good portion of the interest paid as well.
Obviously you can compare what you'd pay to rent each month versus what you'd pay to buy (i.e. principal repayments + mortgage interest ). But this seems oversimplistic given as mentioned above you'd hope to recoup mortgage repayments and even interest when you sell whereas the money you pay in rent is lost forever. And also you'd want to factor in that any excess of monthly principal repayments + interest payments over rent could be invested by a renter in the stock market and earn returns of say 7-10%. Also this analysis does not factor in leverage which amplifies returns in most instances.
This is probably the conventional wisdow. But I do not agree. Living is a very real expense regardless of whether you rent or buy. You either "rent" a home or money. And if you buy outright you still incur opportunity costs (and a combination of opp. costs and loan costs when not buying without loan of course). Few seem to understand this.
As the NY Times calculator shows, renting can be beneficial. The added bonus of liquidity and flexibility are also worth something while renting. Not to mention you can't face sudden unexpected costs. Finally, people don't adjust for expenses made for repairs, upgrades (take isolation, barely a thing a few decades ago).
Personally I pay 870€ rent for a newly built house (2016) worth nearly 400.000€. (For comparison: I've seen appartments being sold for +-220.000€ for 800€ rent/month.) So you can see my situation seems like a better renting proposition than your studio with a 4.2% rental yield for the owner. So might be a good idea to buy something similar if you have no decent investment opportunities. Personally I'm wary of putting most of my net worth in my home with intrest rates at all time lows when I can make very attractive investment returns. But at some time I'll diversify and take a small loan only to optimalize income taxes.
This article by Ken Fisher is recommended as well: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/02/18/why-your-home-lousy-investment-when-you-think-its-great/340516002/
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- Time horizon arbitrage: something like BAC in 2012 was a nice example: the thesis basically being: buy it, forget it, don't watch NBC, the storm will blow over in five years.
- Tax arbitrage: PFIC's are a bitch for US investors, maybe you can reclaim dividend taxes in some situations, get tax credits, etc. Research your tax situation and make the best of it. For me personally, Sapec was a great example. KMG was a nice example this year.
- Boredom arbitrage: somewhat related: basically buying cheap stuff without a catalyst: PD-RX was a nice example.
- Liquidity arbitrage: as a small fish it's relatively easy to boost returns if you can do a few good trades, i.e. put some lowball bids in several cheap stocks or try buying a microcap merger on the bid for a 20% IRR. CKTM was a great example this year.
- Gross stuff arbitrage: buying stuff that's so disgusting that no fund manager wants to own it. Chinese companies going private, Halal real estate in Dubai listed on the AIM exchange, microcap Canadian mining mergers, etc.
- Work harder and be smarter arbitrage: my least favorite option. Work harder and be smarter than other market participants.
I like this list. The only way to beat the market is to do things that other market participants are not doing. And the question then is why is it that market participants are not doing it. The above list provides a bunch of reasons:
1) Its gross
2) its boring
3) it takes too long
4) its too small
This list of reasons also extends to other areas of life ;D
Agreed. Too many so called value investors don't dare to step away from large caps and/or North American borders. They refuse to invest in the temporarily ugly and dismissed stocks/markets. There are sectors and markets currently offering attractive bargains. They might hold slightly more risks, but they are often also potential multibaggers because everyone acts as if those risks have already played out. Investing in good, large and known US/CAN stocks isn't always an option if you want to outperform.
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At this size and without a huge engine of organic growth (like FB/AMZN/GOOG), beating the market will be hard, but I think risk is also much lower than with the market, so keeping up with the market while providing better sleep at night looks pretty much like a win on a risk-adjusted basis.
Correct. I wouldn't sleep well putting 100% of my assets in the S&P500 currently. Would have no issues with BRK.
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RB summed it up nicely. I was in my early 20's in 2011-2012 and completely new to investing but even I could see BRK and MSFT were at a decade low valuation. In another thread I've said we will see this valuation gap for BRK again. Maybe as often as once every 10 or 15 years and despite the fact that BRK may have a $1T market cap by then. Human flaws don't go away completely because of the wisdom of the crowd, no matter how many people look at the problem at hand.
Prices aren't only adjusted by rational arguments (and sentiment) of market participants. Often, arguments are also made up to correspond with the current price. Positive and negative feedback loops then feed on themselves, sometimes driving valuations to extremes. As RB stated in the case of MSFT: "This can't be right. Better change my discount rate to make this work."
Look at oil today. Silly how the narrative changes.
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This is pretty cool:
https://www.principles.com/principles-for-success/
Edit: Didn't find it especially good. Aimed at teenagers / young adults it seems like.
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Better to be lucky than good sometimes. Bought back quite a bit of CRC common stock at average of $30.35 today on the Iran deal fears. Back to $32.75 again. Enough for a 0.6% portfolio return in a few hours. Then sold some of my CRC calls again around $32.5 to lower leverage.
Also bought some extra GXE at $1.00.
(I feel like a fool buying and selling so much. Especially considering I can go months without trading anything. But atm I don't have much of a choice as I want to slowly move from calls to common stock and from one opportunity to another.)
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Read it with the smartphone app. No issues then for me.