txitxo
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Posts posted by txitxo
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Sorry but this whole thread is full of bullshit. Nobody has an interest in going to war, and when nobody has there is no war. Putin is not stupid, there is enough financial pressure that forces him to talk to the other nations and he said already that he has no interest in the eastern ukraine.
Enough pressure? You must be referring to this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/03/us-freezes-putins-netflix-account.html
:D. Its not pressure from the US or EU that i mean, but the pressure from inside. Do you think the oligarchs are amused about their networth crunch and not being able to live their "normal" lifes with holidays abroad? And now think about what their wifes are crying about all day, not being able to go shopping in Milano, Rome, London or New York?
And I don`t think Putin will let the russian economy take a big hit again after the last weeks. That will be food for his russian enemies.
The oligarchs moved their assets to Singapore weeks before Crimea was invaded. There was a piece on the FT about that. I don't think their "normal" lives involve much vacationing on the US or Canada. They prefer Europe, which is not very keen on sanctions, and in any case their families probably have a bunch of citizenships already, EU or UK passports are easy to obtain for people with that kind of money.
If they hit Ukraine hard and fast, blitzkrieg-style, in a few weeks they will have all the targets they want. Then it is a question of giving away something they don't want (e.g. Kiev) to keep the rest, as they did with Georgia. After one or two years of good behaviour and plenty of pressure from all those foreign company CEOs, the US will start talking about a "reset" again. No Western politician is going to wreck the economy or send citizens to be killed for Eastern Ukraine.
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Putin will try to take over the world according to the media, but how much is disinformation and propaganda from Russia, the West, and so on? IMO, he doesn't seem as irrational as the media reports. To me it looks like he wanted to teach Ukraine a lesson and take Crimea back, which isn't very irrational? Invading Afghanistan looks very irrational in comparison.
Why irrational? Putin is not bent on world domination. He may be many things, but he is not stupid, and besides, Russia's GDP won't support something like that. He has very focused goals. He has to make a choice. He can have a pissed-off NATO member with 46M (44M now) inhabitants a few hundred miles from Moscow. Or he can add some 30M people to his country dwindling population, guarantee that the NATO line moves back by hundreds of miles, plus get the largest commercial port on the Black Sea (Odessa), the most advanced tank factory in the former-USSR (Kharkov), the maker of the Antonov planes (Donetsk), thousands of miles of gas pipelines, control the import of Caspian oil into Eastern Europe, and from what we have seen so far in Crimea, risk very little, either militarily on in terms of international sanctions.
He has all the necessary pieces in place for an invasion. So, is he just bluffing? Or waiting for the ground to dry off? We will soon know.
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Sorry but this whole thread is full of bullshit. Nobody has an interest in going to war, and when nobody has there is no war. Putin is not stupid, there is enough financial pressure that forces him to talk to the other nations and he said already that he has no interest in the eastern ukraine.
Enough pressure? You must be referring to this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/03/us-freezes-putins-netflix-account.html
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Here's the background.
During WWII, Khrushchev was In charge of suppressing dissent in Ukraine. This he accomplished by killing millions of people and reinforcing the Soviet government there. When Stalin died, Khrushchev propped up the shaky government of that republic by giving Crimea to the Ukraine, even though it had belonged to Russia for 100 years.
The recent pro Russian government of Ukraine that was recently ousted was an unprecedented cleptocracy even by Russian standards, stealing alike from Ukrainians and even Russian buddies of Putin. The last straw was the Ukraine's revolt, raining on Putin and Russia's Olympics extravaganza that had been carefully planned by Putin to show how modern Russia has become, financed by Oligarchs who are on his team.
The taking back of the Crimea and the impending takeover of Ukraine is payback to the Ukrainians for spoiling Putin's party (and Russia's party too). With 80% approval rating at home, Putin now has a green light from the Obama administration that has publicly announced that they won't do anything to dissuade Putin from taking his revenge other than making self righteous noises.
When Russia sends forces into the Ukraine, don't be surprised if Israel seizes an opportunity to do something about Iran's nukes. This is the way big wars start. One day war is far from everyone's mind. The next day it happens.
I am not sure whether there was any special reason behind Khruschev's "gift". He would often act impulsively, his nickname in Russia was Nikita "Kukuruznik", maize-Nikita, because he decided to plant corn everywhere in the URSS after visiting the USA (with, as expected, disastrous results).
Putin is certainly sore about Sochi. That was his personal project, and he had to sit there alone, without any Western leaders around him, while Victoria ("Nuck the EU") Fuland was supporting nazi groups like Svoboda and the Right Sector at the Maidan. However, there is evidence that Russia has been preparing this militarily for a long time, this is not just an emotional reaction to a slight.
The connection with Israel actually makes a lot of sense. They have been awfully quiet about the whole thing, one of the few countries which did not support the US against Russia at the UN. They may have to act fast, because one of the main levers Russia has against the US is providing Iran with advanced weapons systems, like the S300, which would make an Israeli attack much more costly. Another window of opportunity which may be closing soon.
And it's going to catch me fully invested.
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What is it they would gain by doing this? The articles I saw stated that Crimea was the strategically important part. If he wanted the eastern half then why didn't he take it a few weeks ago when they took Crimea?
First, most people in Russia do feel Eastern Ukraine and even Kiev as part of their country, Putin's ratings are sky high after taking Crimea. Second, there are plenty of juicy economic targets. They would go for the Black Sea coast and all of Ukraine East of the Dnieper. That means getting all the heavy and military industries in Eastern Ukraine, the Odessa port, retaking control of a good portion of the gas pipeline system and removing a thorn on their side, the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline which right now is being used to import Caspian Oil into Eastern Europe. Also most of the electricity and water for Crimea come from the mainland, so that would solve a big logistics problem for them.
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that's right, finland. i've been trying to get rid of that skepticism i got breast fed as a baby for 28 years now, but after georgia i started thinking maybe the old people had it right.
they built a new gas pipeline in our water in 2011-2012. that was just about the time people were talking how ukraine and belarus had the fate of europe in their hands. our ex prime minister started a consulting company and lobbied it through. made ~1million euros in consulting fees.
it just feels like the script has been written a long time ago. let's hope they're done for now.
As you say, border provocations and the like come so easily to the Russian army (they were also common during the Cold War) that it makes no sense to spend a fortune deploying and specially *concealing* a full invasion army, with tanks, supply depots, communication lines to the middle of nowhere, etc. just to impress the Ukrainian politicians. You could get a few jets flying close to Kiev, some tank columns warming motors in plain sight, provoke some fight at a border post, etc. There are much cheaper ways to make the presence of the Russian army felt. Besides, the Russian media are keeping really quiet about the troop deployment, which means that they are not trying to use this as propaganda.
Don't worry about Finland. They would never mess with the Finns again, they are the only people on Earth who can outdrink Russians.
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The more I read about it, the more convinced I get that the Russians are going to invade Eastern Ukraine in the next couple weeks.
- There is no doubt that they are accumulating troops and supplies all over the border, and actively trying to conceal this deployment. The soviet army was a master at doing that, "maskirovka", and I tend to believe more the Ukrainian estimates of the number of troops (100k), since they have people on the ground, that the US, satellite-based ones (50k). A full scale deployment, including armour, building supply depots, laying communication lines in the middle of nowhere, infrastructure, etc. is hellishly expensive and disruptive. They don't need something like that just to scare their neighbours. It would be enough to ship some VDV troops into Transnistria, etc.
- April 1st marks the beginning of the 2014 recruitment season, and new conscripts will start arriving to military units on that date. Armies have used that timing before to start conflicts, since it is an easy way of boosting your troop numbers without showing your hand too early. Also the terrain will be right for an attack soon, after the spring "rasputitsa".
- The Ukraine military are in a pitiful state. Apart from equipment issues, deployment (in the West border, as in Soviet times), the professional soldiers, "kontratniki", which form the backbone of the army, are allowed to serve near the regions where they originate from. That means that most of the soldiers in Eastern Ukraine have their families there, as it happened in Crimea. Also the senior officers of both armies studied and served together. It is not the same thing to negotiate a surrender with some foreign enemy through a translator, than while drinking vodka with your Military Academy roommate. That explains much of what happened in Crimea, where apparently only 2000 of 18000 soldiers went back to the Ukrainian Army. And I guess that's the reason why Kiev is trying to scramble together a National Guard whom they can trust.
If the Russians wait a few months, there will be a new government in Ukraine backed by elections (May 25th), the military will be purged and reorganised, Western aid will have an effect, etc. They also know that right now, Western Countries are in no position to do something serious about it and that the BIC in BRIC don't care or even support Russia. So, either they go now, or they won't have another chance in decades. I hope I'm wrong, but in a few days we may see the largest war in Europe since WWII.
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Hi
I am from Singapore.
As mentioned, one has to be careful of SG-listed PRC companies. Especially those with too much cash, yet dont pay dividends.
Many companies listed Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) are majority-owned and managed by founding families. So the incentive to pay
out cash is lesser.
For those interested in SGX listed shares, can see
http://valuebuddies.com/ - local value investing forum
Thanks a lot, also to xxx1313. I do avoid PRC companies, no matter where they are listed. My investment system is quantitatively-based, so you need to be able to trust the numbers. I am sure there are wonderful Chinese companies out there, but it would take too much time for me to figure out which ones are good and which ones aren't. In any case I combine almost 20 different parameters, so a company needs to have good indicators in many areas, not only cash, P/B, or P/E to get to the top of the list.
I'll have a look at valuebuddies forum…I see threads on some of the companies I'm interested in…
kwong, why do you think stocks in Singapore are so cheap? HK is more dependent on China and it is significantly more expensive.
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3) Sorry, but you probably won’t compound at 41% annual for the next 10 years (let’s say your portfolio is worth 500k Euros, while probably it is worth a lot more!, compounding at 41% annual for the next 10 years would bring your net worth to around 15.5 million Euros! In my experience, that’s something even a very good business won’t be able to do for you…). Of course, I hope for you that I am dead wrong!!
Of course I won't get 41%/year :) …that's why I am trying to express by spending some of my 20 emoticon punches...
I have just done the numbers, out of curiosity, and our net worth has compounded at 14.5% for the last ~20 years. Not impressive, compared with many people in the forum, but not so bad, specially taking into account that I only started reading seriously about investing in 2005 and we had to go through a housing bubble and two stock crashes.
Anyway, if we are still around , I will tell you how we are doing in 2024... :) (there goes another smiley)
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There are people lamenting 20% and 30% returns like their world has come to an end and they might as well hang up their investing spikes forever.
Not me! Actually, I have said I am very happy with my returns in 2013! ;D ;D
Gio, you certainly should be happy. If the US market had blown up last year, your relative position in the rankings would have been very different. And it may be very different next year. If you look at all the world markets with CAPE>~ 20, the only one which didn't tank, and actually went up significantly, was the US market. Nowadays the market consensus, even among the bears (very scary!) is that it will keep going up…well, good luck. It'll be needed. Even if one accepts Siegel's corrections, it is still one of the highest CAPE markets in the world.
In my case I didn't want to run the risk of investing in the US market but still managed 41% in the European-only stock portfolio vs 21% + dividend for the BE500. I used no leverage and owned about 50 stocks selected almost blindly using my screens. All the markets I invested in had CAPE < 15, what made very unlikely a major crash and let me be fully invested. I don't need 150% returns, I just ask for 10 more years like this…:)
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If you just look at the numbers, one the cheapest oil companies in the world is probably Calvalley Petroleum. But it gets its oil in Yemen, so there is a very large country risk there.
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Singapore seems quite attractive according to its CAPE (11.78 vs a median 21.48), and there are many cheap, solid companies showing up in my screener, in fact more than 50% of the top companies in CAPE<15 countries belong to Singapore.
Anything non-obvious to take into account when investing there? Hidden macro risks? Idiosyncratic accounting?
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37%, mostly european stocks.
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Cobalt International Energy
Theravance
MannKind
Opko Health
Qlik Technologies
Sprouts Farmers Market
Advanced Micro Devices
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When you look at the greenbackd`s portfolio you see that the outperformance comes only from 1 or 2 stocks, where one was a 4 fold and another an 8 fold. I know that i couldn`t stand the psychologic pressure to hold onto them after they have doubled. But doing so will drive down returns to normal market levels. But when you really can avoid touching these stocks for one year, its possible that you are outperforming the market by wide margins. I can only imagine myself doing that by not looking at the portfolio for one year. (But really who is able to do this?)
I think it is always like that with net-nets. The overperformance comes from a few "rockets". Very difficult to base a whole portfolio on that. If you want to do a Grahamite mechanical portfolio I would combine the three approaches he developed: enterprising investor, the one for more conservative investors and net-nets.
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Yup. He managed to keep just a little ahead of the market averages by being a basic , but not outstanding value investor while adding a few idiosyncratic positions with inflated present values that captured what the market was doing at the time. As value investing tailed off in popularity in the late 90's his small number of tech favorites like AOL and Dell caught the wave and kept him above the S&P average while other value investors trailed the averages. Then, with a little rebalancing reducing his tech exposure, the majority of value stocks in his portfolio caught the value surge post Y2K.
It was easy to see the writing on the wall predicting his demise as his idiosyncratic positions became crappy value traps like Kodak and Financials or cyclicals ready to go bust as the credit cycle ran out of gas and turned south.
I am pretty sure that you can show that Buffett's returns are almost impossible to generate by chance. But not Miller's.
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;) +1 That's exactly why I recommended Gio to read 'Everything is Obvious". I've stopped reading "basic" investing books that basically rehash old wisdom. All you need is 1-2 good foundation books and then focus on books on behavioral finance, psychology, ...
I gave a quick look at "Everything is Obvious", in particular the section where he talks about Bill Miller, and I think the analysis there is quite wrong...he seems to say that everything is very noisy and subject to chance and therefore we will never know what depends on luck and what on skill. He recommends studying how people do things everyday and not trusting quantitative measurements. That's the anti-"Moneyball" approach: if the player moves right, walks right, has the right face, etc. hire him and damn the statistics. That does not work in practice. Humans are too gullible without quantitative measures.
To fight randomness you have to devise measurements which are robust with respect to the noise, that's what scientists do all day long when planning observations or experiments (and what value investors do when trying to estimate intrinsic value). For instance in the case of Bill Miller the relevant statistics should not whether he beats the market 18 years straight (the odds of doing that by chance are 2^-18, about 1/262144; if you multiply that by the number of managers in the US, which is certainly at least 10,000, there is a 4% chance somebody will do it, which is not such a rare event), but something like e.g. his accumulated over-performance over that same 18 year period (which I seem to remember was not so outstanding).
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I would go with Hugh Hendry's observation that we are nearing a profound "Market Clearing" event (i.e. another crash) a la 1932/1982. However he opines that following this event a secular bull market is bound to begin - at which point you don't need to be smart, you just need to be long.
Well, Hugh Hendry has officially thrown the towel:
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Ireland exits the bailout program:
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I also own Ascopiave, La Doria, Adveo, Sonaecom. I try to buy near 52-w highs too.
Interesting. txitxo, do you buy near 52-week highs because statistics has shown that it's best to buy value stocks then (i.e. momentum)? My first thought was to avoid the stocks that have gone up 100%+ in a year.
Also, do you filter the list the screener gives you based on your own criteria (e.g. quality), or do you invest in what the screener gives you?
I basically try to use criteria which improve performance in backtesting, and for which I understand the reason. I was very reluctant to add momentum to the value+quality mix, but it seems to work very well eliminating value traps. The best parameter I've found for momentum is the 52-w high. Note that does not tell you how much the stock went up in the last year, just that it is close to the maximum. The rationale behind that parameter is that when something has had a bad press for a long time (as cheap stocks do) usually it pauses for a while, or even rebounds down a little when it breaks the previous 52-w high. I generate my own rankings from the screener output.
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I also own Ascopiave, La Doria, Adveo, Sonaecom. I try to buy near 52-w highs too.
If you think that the eurozone won't split apart, this is a secular opportunity to buy European stocks. I am pretty sure we will still have some hiccups along the way, but this is not a Japanese-like crisis as most people fear. For instance, in Japan the CAPE was over 80 at the peak of the Japanese bubble, and stayed over 20-something until recently. Only now is getting to reasonable valuations, around 16.
That's why I started selling FFH after Merkel won the election again and I'm putting that money into Europe. We have what value investors look for: fear and cheap stocks.
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An italian asking for dating advice? Ma che cosa è questo? ;)
Well, just don't forget that I was born in Canada!! ;D ;D ;D
Gio
OK, that explains everything...
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right I agree 100%. Nobody knows when it is going to happen. That makes it Unpredictable. Right? So those "indicators" are useless as predictors of market crashes.
I don't think they are useless. You cannot use them for accurate market timing within a single market, but I think they are very valuable as a way of choosing which market to be invested in.
The last times the EU Shiller P/E clearly punctured the current level (15) going upwards were in 1983 and 2009. Very good years to be long. On the other hand, the last two times the US Shiller P/E broke this level (24.4) going upwards were 1928 and 1996. Very good years to be hedged.
So the way I use the Shiller PE (and other indicators) is by trying to avoid the US market (although couldn't stop myself from picking up some SHLD in late August when it was below 40$) and putting most of our money in Europe. In Italy, for instance, the Shiller PE is about 66% below its long term average. In Spain it is 50% below. If the Euro didn't break up last year, it will never break up. So at some point Europe will have to do QE with a vengeance.
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Hi guys! This has nothing to do with investments… But in time I have come to reckon all of you on the board truly as “second family”… and now I need some words of wisdom from you!
Tonight I am dating a woman for the first time in… years!! And right now I am simply… terrified!! ;D ;D ;D
I guess I need a little help from my friends! :)
Cheers,
giofranchi
An italian asking for dating advice? Ma che cosa è questo? ;) You sound like a very nice guy even across the keyboard, so I am sure you won't have any problems. Just don't talk to her about owner-operators...
Cheers
War in Ukraine?
in General Discussion
Posted
Russia could achieve Ukraine incursion in 3-5 days
Reuters) - Russia has massed all the forces it needs on Ukraine's border if it were to decide to carry out an "incursion" into the country, and it could achieve its objective in three to five days, NATO's top military commander said on Wednesday.
Calling the situation "incredibly concerning", NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said NATO had spotted signs of movement by a very small part of the Russian force overnight but had no indication that this was part of a withdrawal to barracks.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-ukraine-crisis-breedlove-idUSBREA310PP20140402