Swizzled

A look at Canadian house prices relative to income and rent: http://valueinvestorcanada.blogspot.com/2011/11/canadian-home-price-likely-considerably.html

One thing I'm sure we can all agree on is that with the amount of marketing of himself that he does he had better be prepared for criticism.

Moore-Cap, "[Our fund declined 13.7% in August vs. -5.4% for the S&P 500, -4.0% for the Dow and -6.4% for the Nasdaq. Year to date, it’s down 22.1% vs. -1.8% for the S&P 500, +2.1% for the Dow and -2.2% for the Nasdaq." So you are more interested in a one year lag than a decade plus of outperformance through various investment climates ? Personally, I'm more interested in the process. And when I look through his portfolio and his reasoning, I think he is doing the right things. Of course it could well be that Tilson and I both suck, as my performance over the past 6 months has sucked HARD. Strangely the companies underlying my bad performance aren't doing so bad. Mr. Market just seems to have changed his thinking on them.

I couldn't disagree more. http://www.cfanebraska.org/Lists/Events%20Calendar/Attachments/42/T2%20Partners%20Investor%20Presentation-CFA%20Society%20of%20Nebraska-4-28-11.pdf Page 5 has his track record since inception. Looks pretty good to me. He has underperformed for a year. He was positioned perfectly for the financial crisis. Invested very well during the tech bubble. I find him to be thoughtful in his investing process, and willing to talk about mistakes.

I think that is right. I wouldn't block out time in my day to watch them, but for me they beat watching pretty much anything on TV these days.

For some casual viewing while you work: http://valueinvestorcanada.blogspot.com/2011/09/bass-loeb-cooperman-video.html http://valueinvestorcanada.blogspot.com/2011/09/ackmanzell-video-on-real-estate.html http://valueinvestorcanada.blogspot.com/2011/09/bill-ackman-43-minute-video-on-hk-trade.html

"I'm not a fan of Dell at this point. Their business centers on providing machines for enterprise use." I'm not really a fan either, but how bad does a business have to be to justify a 25% free cash flow yield ? Four years and they could retire all outstanding shares.

I've been looking at Dell for months. Started here and was confused why they weren't buying back shares more aggressively http://seekingalpha.com/article/259197-dell-is-dirt-cheap-what-happened-to-the-share-repurchases Not much happened to I circled back again after the started buying back shares again http://seekingalpha.com/article/288019-dell-is-ripe-for-a-leveraged-buyout Now I see Tilson has been buying, suggesting it could be worth 2x plus the current share price. http://seekingalpha.com/article/291381-whitney-tilson-agrees-with-me-dell-is-dirt-cheap Now here is my issue and what I would like input on. This has been cheap for a long, long time. My concern is that a catalyst never arises and eventually something does come along to kill the business. Does anyone have any thoughts on what could get the stock price up in the next two years ? I'm not unwilling to by cheap even with no catalyst on the horizon, but this one strikes me as having potential to stay cheap for an exceedingly long time.

I hadn't seen what they were up to until I quickly reviewed their first report for their new fund: http://seekingalpha.com/article/280768-former-fairholme-fund-managers-don-t-share-old-boss-bullish-view-on-financial-sector Doesn't anyone have any detail on why they left Fairholme ? I wonder if the big move into the financial sector was a point of contention ? Personally I would love to have the ability to pick up BAC today and know 4 years from now it could be operating profitably. But how do you get your head around a balance sheet like that ?

"The top chief of Leucadia Energy also believes shale gas production economics are over-blown and believes natural gas could be in the $6-$7/mmbtu range over time." I don't think anyone including McClendon dispute that at $4 the economics on the shale plays suck. But the Times is basically implying that the production curves used to book reserves are bogus. In time as the large landholders get all of their acreage positions held by production a lot of the forced drilling will cease, and more capital will move to oil. I would think that this should at least get prices up to a reasonable IRR for these plays. I think the most important transaction was Exxon by XTO. This was purely for their shale position and you just can't convince me that XOM would make such a long term investment if there was ANY doubt about the production curves.

Thought I'd pick the brain of a few folks around here. I wrote the following trying to get my head around the issue: http://seekingalpha.com/article/277306-who-should-an-investor-believe-the-natural-gas-industry-or-the-new-york-times I have no exposure to shale gas producers or much natural gas period. Mainly because there is so much of the damn stuff. Point being I have no agenda. So is it just me, or does that Times article consist of virtually no substance ? Because it sure got a lot of coverage.

"like Jim rogers and Jeremy Grantham a lot, I'm terribly under-qualified to formulate my own opinions on the subjects they often talk about... But it's hard to ignore them. " I hear you and pretty much think the same way. But if you have some time dig into some books on peak oil. Once you see the math involved I don't think it takes a big brain to see what is coming - all of the big oil fields were found prior to 1970 despite much better technology available to find it - every year those big fields produce less oil - we use more oil than we find every year - the amount of oil we use grows every year and that isn't going to change when India and China have less than 10% per capita car use that the States does - the oil we do find now is either deep under the sea, in the oil sands, basically somewhere more difficult and expensive to retrieve it from It isn't that there is no oil, it is just that we are right up against the fastest rate we are ever going to be able to get it out of the ground on a daily basis.

"Swizzled, why would you say this? "I just can't make myself invest in oil companies when I see $100 oil prices" given the conclusions you outline it seems contradictory..." If we take a quick trip back to $80 oil (which is still a high oil price really) the companies I'm looking at are likely going to be available at much better prices. So I'm trying to be patient and wait for a better opportunity. I can't recall any instance with any company where I didn't get an opportunity for a much better entry price than I expected I would. So new policy. Buy slowly because a better price is right around the corner.

Thought I'd post this one to stimulate some discussion. Pretty much any time someone goes away and actually crunches the numbers on decline rates on existing fields, rate of exploration success and demand growth there really is only one conclusion..... http://seekingalpha.com/article/264989-penn-west-a-low-risk-way-of-protecting-your-portfolio-against-high-oil-prices I just can't make myself invest in oil companies when I see $100 oil prices

This is a bit of a work in progress but I thought I'd post here with the hope of drawing out some intelligence from those in the know. http://seekingalpha.com/article/262251-8-stock-ideas-for-canada-s-4-big-tight-oil-plays Petrobakken I know pretty well. The rest I'm learning. The general premise is twofold. These companies have a lot of leasehold in resource plays on which they have no production and little booked reserves. The market doesn't seem to value that leasehold until the production starts. I think there is a lot less risk of there not being value in the land than the market does. The second part is who EOR (waterflooding/gas injection) may radically change the amount of oil recoverable and thus the value of these companies. Of course the third part would be oil prices and over the long term I want exposure to oil (although afraid to buy much these days).