oddballstocks

Either go with multiple fills or work with a broker or market maker who can handle the order for you. The other way to go is to contact shareholders yourself and offer to buy shares or do a small tender for shares. How long have you had your order?

I may or may not be 4 triples away from being a billionaire. How will Forbes know? Will Fidelity or Interactive Brokers sell me out, or will I have to call the front desk at Forbes and ask to talk with the 400 list guy? Exactly, I've read stories where people should have been on that list for decades but they are secretive so Forbes was never aware of them. Then there are all the promotional people on that list as well, who knows what their real fortunes are. I hate to admit it, but I will. I subscribed to Forbes years ago, the magazine circled the drain, and the 400 issue was in the drain. I never understood the point except to gawk at rich people. I never got it, the list was 400 people who were workaholics and invested their lives in their business. The list I want to gawk at are the people sitting on the beach who have enough, but realized there are more important things in life than accumulating some giant number.

The article was fascinating, I felt like there was a back story I was missing. The Prince calling the reporter at home, shadowing him for days in the Middle East? Is this common for all the other people on the Forbes 400 list? Does a Forbes reporter live at a Gates guest house for a week, or a Buffett guest house? Maybe Alwaleed is really that vain and wants to get his message out, I can believe it. I just couldn't help but think there was more to the story that we weren't hearing about. That said for how rich the guy is it's amazing how obsessed he is with appearing richer. Maybe I don't have the genes it takes to be ultra-rich, but the fact that this guy has billions and wants billions more is crazy. What could he possibly not buy with $10b that he could suddenly buy for $18b? From the article it appears that this is all just about a wealth number and being at the top. On the Forbes 400 there was a story floating on the internet about the guy who founded the Duty Free empire. The story was cool in that he amassed a fortune, and gave it all away without anyone knowing. Forbes claimed he was a billionaire due to his business holdings yet he'd given away everything but a few million dollars. He said the number he saw in Forbes wasn't connected with any reality he knew, he wasn't sure how they calculated it. Here it is: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/09/18/chuck-feeney-the-billionaire-who-is-trying-to-go-broke/

I had a similar experience paging through the book my first time as well……..safe to say you're hooked! Welcome to the club!!

I just wanted to point out that if you have contributors right now, making and profiting off the book is a bit much unless you reduce their costs further or give them a percentage cut towards their fees. I'm not sure what if any legal agreement you have contributors sign now. Not sure if you have an axe to grind, or just think I'm greedy or something with this project. My hope is to get this information out to the widest audience possible. For some the thought of paying the website cost yearly is too much, but a one time book purchase is more stomachable. In terms of the site I'm satisfied with where it's at, but I'm not exactly rolling in cash. Given the time and effort I've put into this thing it's probably more of a non-profit once you consider my time investment. There really isn't much money in the book, I just want to do this to get information out there. Maybe I'm crazy, it's possible, I also write an investment blog where I give away ideas constantly. Some investors hold all their cards close to the vest, I've gained more value by throwing everything out for free. But I love digging into these unlistedstocks. I first and foremost built a site that I wanted to use and then gathered the information to get it there. There is a charge because this information is valuable, at times very valuable and rare. Yet it's also a very niche thing. There's a reason there have been two publishers of the Walkers Manual, and it's not around, it never made money, the audience just wasn't big enough. By going digital and self-publishing on a book I've eliminated most costs, making this feasible. In terms of contributors the guy typing this post is the biggest by far. I have some, but most subscribers are consumers, which is what I expected. I have some plans with the book, I'm not worried about stepping on toes, I think subscribers will be happy with what they receive.

In the mail, at least I've always received a hard copy of mine.

You have to be careful with making any conclusions about the careers of outstanding investors, because you are just looking at the surviving outliers. The important thing when you are beginning is: what career path offers more a priori chances of success in the investing world? Going to Harvard? Or working for a phone company? My experience in science is that, unless you have very strong reasons to work or study at a particular institution (some project, person or even family reasons) it pays off to go to the place with the highest possible "prestige". It will not do anything special to you, it won't make you smarter or more competent, it is just more convenient from a practical point of view. Good points. I agree if someone knows they want to invest they should go to the best school that gives them that chance. I'm saying that going to the best school doesn't mean one will become a good/great investor. If one only wants a job in finance the best school will do it. Becoming a great investor doesn't require a degree from HBS or Columbia. I don't put too much value in how people acheived success, it varies for each person and has such a large element of luck involved it's not usually replicated. I prefer to look at failure, failure is common and can be avoided by avoiding certain patterns. So as west said above, if you go to Columbia and then try to get a job as a VP of Sales you won't have much luck, whereas if you go to HBS, work in finance then decide to go VP of Sales route you'll still get the calls.

The french banks are even more attractive then the stats make them out to be. They're essentially MHC's so you need to strip out those shares to get the true value, equity is understated. A few have been acquired at 80% of BV over the past five years which would be a 4x return from here. I have debated endlessly on buying these. I've read the statements, gone back and forth on it, talked to people in France yet never pulled the trigger. A few things got in the way. The first is I have no idea if they're making good loans or not. The banks appear conservative yet out of no where they'll suddenly do a giant loan markdown. The detail on loans isn't that great, and I believe lending is fairly concentrated. A number of years back the Bordeaux branch took a giant hit when the wine industry hit the skids. The second factor and more important factor is beyond the local lending. Local lending can only soak up a portion of the deposit base at these regional banks, so the banks in turn lend out their balance sheets to the main Credit Agricole bank. Credit Agricole's cheap funding comes from the regional banks. It's worth reading the financial statements of CA, and once you do that this looks a lot less rosy. Credit Agricole has both feet on banana peels and losses could be sizable. Would that mean a hit to the regional banks if CA couldn't raise equity to fill the gap? Could CA be in a situation where they couldn't fully pay back the regional deposits? Once I started to haircut the money lent to CA and look at the loss potential for French real estate these things drop in attractiveness. I came to the conclusion that I'd rather just buy US banks, where the French ones could return 2-4x they were hard to decipher and not as transparent as US banks. I can also read English better than French, and nuances are important in banking. The caisse regionalles seem to be a very popular idea with the French value bloggers. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the French investors on this board have shares as well.

I would disagree, investing unlike anything else is based on performance, real tangible performance. Have an Art History degree and can compound money at 25% a year? You will find a job anywhere you want. Worked as a line man at a telephone company but are a good investor (Chou) you can have your own fund. I find it interesting how many "great" investors don't have a conventional background. I haven't seen many interviews where a guru says "I graduated top of my class, then I went to HBS, then I worked as a sell-side analyst for two years, then buyside and worked my way up." Sure there might be some, but usually the story is more along the lines of "I don't have a typical story.." Top performers can do whatever they want without a formal pedigree. I don't work in finance, but my company specializes in hiring the top people in my field and less than 10% of employees have a degree that relates to what they excel in. Most have unconventional backgrounds, but often those backgrounds shape them. The scary thing about this is there is no certainty like taking a well formed career path. If you are truly excellent you might start in finance and end up owning and running a fleet of container ships.

On the book, I realize that online is superior, that's why I went online first. All the stats on the database are updated every 30m, prices update from Yahoo! and are "fresh", or as fresh as they might be given the illiquidity in these stocks. Watsa, I agree with you on the book and time spent, the thing is I realized it would take almost no time. My site is already digital and there's a simple script I could use to extract the information and autogenerate the PDF's. It might take an hour or two of programming and the book would be generated. I could create it once a month or whenever I wanted by just clicking a button going forward. The simple thing is to just grab the data I already have, put it in print and dump it on Amazon using self-publish. It doesn't cost me anything, Amazon prints a book on demand when someone purchases it. I also considered writing up an analyst note per stock as a way to enhance value in a book form. The problem is not everyone sees the world the way I do, and something that might be attractive to me might not be attractive to someone else. I get the distinct sense that there is a subset of investors who like these unlisted stocks who are oldschool. A book might appeal to them, and as a bonus I could sell this thing to libraries too.

What's the interest level in an actual physical book? I say this because with the help of a board member I realized its very easy to publish my site in book form. I could get the data and have it available on Amazon pretty easily, is there any interest in this?

While you wait on Andrew and David (which might be forever) I already put together an online version of the Walkers with updated information on many of these companies. I hesitated to post this on here because the site is a pay site, and I wanted to be mindful of the site's solicitation rules. Yet at the same time it would be useful to know considering Sanjeev is suggesting people request an online version be built, why wait, one already exists.

Hellsten, Good links, I've read some of that through Google Cache before, there are a number of other articles about unlisted stocks from the 1990s, they were somewhat popular then. Anyone who digs in this area will quickly find that out of the 3000 unlisted stocks there are about 200 that most unlisted investors are familiar with, and about 40-50 worth investment consideration at any given time. I liked the reference to Benjamin Moore paints, they wouldn't pick up the phone, had decent earnings and eventually sold to Buffett. Going private or selling is the end game for most of these companies. I recognized almost all of the names in the articles, but I also have a few editions of Walkers that I've marched through. Morgan, The books are useful as a starting point, overcapitalized firms in most cases then are still overcapitalized now. Some firms have completely destroyed themselves. If you're a DIY person buy the book and go through one by one, marking companies that are around vs gone. You'll find about 30% of the penny stocks are still around whereas about 60% of the unlisted ones are still trading. Then go about buying a share of each that looks interesting to get the annual report. The most famous of these is Paul Sonkin who holds over 400 shares in an account to get reports. He doesn't own 400 unlisted stocks, some publish to OTC markets, but many are unlisted. You'll also find many companies that refuse to give out reports. I called Thermwood a few months back and was told "we don't have an annual report or give anything away", that's patently false, but for a $3 investment it was worth a shot. I might still press for something there, who knows.

Man you're really going to pull me out of the cave for this one… Here's the simple answer, research them no differently than you would any other stock. Everything seems daunting if you don't have familiarity with it. The first time I looked at a Portuguese stock it felt strange, same with France, same with Canada. But now they're familiar, same with micro-caps. Some file with the SEC, so you could read their filings on EDGAR. Some file with OTC markets so you can read their filings on there. Some are "dark", if you buy a share and call the CFO you might get a copy of the annual report. I talked to a CFO last week, seemed like the nicest guy promised to send an annual report right away, guess what, nothing, blowing smoke, happens a LOT, deal with it. So you call sometimes verify ownership and then they email or mail you an annual report, make a decision from there. I've been greedy and asked for multiple years, if the person I speak to is nice, and it's towards the end of the week they usually oblige, some states (hint Southern) have better luck. Some really dark companies won't give out anything, here's the tip, this is very good or very bad. Usually bad, management robbing from shareholders etc. Or extremely good and they don't want shareholder to know how good it is, I've seen both. If you pester you can usually get an annual report, sometimes with an NDA. The NDA thing frustrates me, legally shareholders have so many rights that they just ignore. You can sue a company to examine records (except if the company is a Nevada company, Nevada sucks…I digress) and literally look at anything you want. You can go on company grounds and examine the premise, the company might call the cops, but it's impossible to trespass on something you own. With computers we're so detached, just looking at these statements online. We own pieces of companies, real living breathing companies with people working for us, don't lose sight of that. There's a site where some of this information is available for a fee, a modern Walkers Manual, I won't mention because I'm affiliated. You can buy the Walkers when they become available, but I think I pee-ed in that pool, I mentioned Walkers on my blog and the used price went from $1.27 a copy to $50 and $100, it's not worth that much, I have three copies here, I'd pay $5-10 max. Maybe it's a micro-cap investor sin but I've considered offering my Walkers books out on Amazon for $100, I purchased all of them for $1 or less, if I ran that racket it'd probably be the three best returns I'd ever have, 100 baggers... You can be creative, this is where these companies are fun. Start digging into local records, talk to people, do exotic internet searches for anything related to the company. I've been able to triangulate sales and income for places that won't talk. Some companies like insurance companies have to publish to the NAIC, banks publish to the FDIC. The craziest was a dark company selling for .1x sales that had a Belgian subsidiary. Through the help of a board member I came to find that all companies in Belgium have to file reports public or private, so I hacked my way through a Dutch site and found this company's local sub filing then translated it. This company wouldn't give out anything, it's because the company sucked, not worth the time. For tiny stocks you really need to enjoy the process, I know I do. There's an aspect that's fun finding this strange stuff about little companies. I like the local nature too, I drive past hundreds of local companies and think that some of the stuff I own is like that, with real people working hard each day where I benefit. Not some giant bland office park in the exurbs with half the people surfing Facebook all day where when employees show up and work book value is destroyed (my experience working at a mid-cap a few years back, pathetic, and I've worked for a few more since, the story is always the same). I've worked at startups, small companies, medium and large cap companies, and hands down the people at the startups and small caps work the hardest and care the most. At bigger companies up to 40% of the workforce could be fired and business would continue as usual. My working experience has shaped my investing experience, I'd rather invest in a small hungry organization where jobs are on the line rather than one where half the people don't matter and are just sucking up a paycheck until retirement. Here's the bottom line, I love microcap stocks and tiny stocks, but for the time I'd suggest learning enough French and investing in French small caps. They're more liquid, they trade on an exchange, and they publish regulatory filings (in French). If you just limited your portfolio to those French stocks you'd do well, and it's easier to learn French than dig for information on some of these tiny companies. There's a bunch of other areas that have easier returns for now as well, but a magician doesn't tell all their secrets.

Just be there, that's what matters. Knowing they have friends around who they can lean on and talk to is important. We had an incident where we almost lost one of our sons, it was absolutely terrible, but faith and friends are what got us through. Thankfully our son is fine now, but there are no guarantees in life. It made my wife and I appreciate how fragile life really is, and what really matters.

There's a video on neatvalue.com about this, and Buffett answers the question, he said if he were managing less than $10m he would be buying the classic Graham stocks, the low book value and less than working value stocks. http://www.neatvalue.com/2012/05/one-of-best-bargains-i-stumbled-upon-in.html So from the mouth of the man himself, buy enough really cheap stocks and it's almost impossible to go wrong. He's obviously changed as his assets have grown, which he states himself. I appreciate the shout-out OP, and I want to say that micro-caps aren't the only area of opportunity. Small caps abroad are priced strangely as well, and often times foreign small caps have much bigger market caps than the US stocks. So if market cap makes you comfortable I'd say go abroad. As for bad corporate governance you find that in all sized companies. Yes there is egregious pay at small companies, but there's gross egregious pay practices at large companies as well. As yourself, does any CEO deserve $10m a year, or $100m a year in pay? Forget market cap, most management will steal from shareholders when given the opportunity. Maybe this is my American always watch out for being back stabbed sense talking, but it's been my observation. There are many micro-caps where management treats shareholders like fellow partners, and in some cases like family, at a level I've never seen in a bigger company.

That's a decent list if you're just starting out. Morningstar is also a good resource for larger companies (also available for free through most libraries). But as you get more comfortable with investing, you'll want to spend nearly all of your time reading the Ks and Qs; there's no better way to learn how to invest than to read the filings of as many companies you can possibly squeeze into each year. Focus on figuring out what makes a company special -- why it's different than most companies and can earn outsized profits. If it isn't special, then move on. I could care less if a company is special or earning outsized returns, I'd rather buy cheap and sell dear. It's nice that most value investors these days are really growth investors in value clothes, a lot less competition for the real cheapies…to each his own! As for what to look for when reading an annual report? I'm looking for a reason to not invest, deepValue is looking to see why a company is special, others are looking at different aspects I'm sure. The bottom line is to figure out the purpose for your reading before you start to read. If you are just reading reports to read them you won't gain anything, read with a purpose.

Newsflash, how many value investors at the top of the Forbes 500 list too? Some will claim Buffett, but I'd argue he got there by building a business not pure investing. I think this sort of video is infuriating to investors on this board because most put in so much work for returns far less then her. I don't get the technical stuff, but if it really is as easy to watch squiggles and make money for some people why learn any more? It's not like knowing depreciation schedules or pension accounting is helpful in getting a significant other. Can you imagine someone saying "Once I brought up LIFO at dinner she said I was the one…" I invest this way because it makes sense to me, not because it's the best. I think there are far better and quicker ways to make money, unfortunately that's not what comes natural to me. What she is doing is not investing, and I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume the board members here aren't earning adequate returns. Even if it did work, her style is inferior because of frictional costs from trading (short term capital gains and commissions) and day trading has a proven track record of being a loser over time. Value investing - at least some forms of it - has been proven to outperform the market over time. I would suggest that this girl will not have any substantial winners so long as she keeps this style - she wouldn't have held AAPL, GGP in bankruptcy, BAC recently, AIG, etc. long enough to benefit from the lion's share of their returns. In the case of GGP, I doubt she'd even be able to analyze it properly because of a lack of understanding of corporate bankruptcy law. That being the case, she wouldn't have been able to generate the multi-hundred or thousand percent returns that at least a few people here did. I also don't think most people here find her infuriating so much as amusing, or they may - as I do - feel bad for her and the inevitable sorrow that will come from her strategy. Your comment about significant others is odd. Can you explain what you mean by that to me, or the relevance of it to the discussion? Most people who are interested in such things would probably be better off if they weren't, though that seems irrelevant to the topic in general. Good comments Scott. To your last question, I read a sense of superiority into some of the other posts, like value investing is the noble way to invest, and there's some sense of pride to it. Sometimes when I read these posts I get this feeling that there are some on the board who feel that since they're a Buffett groupie they'll get girls, just like guys in high school think if they play guitar they'll get girls. I would argue she is investing as people use the term today. How many times have you heard someone talk about how a certain crib is an "investment" or their TV was a "great investment". Investing is an ambiguous term nowadays, so I'm not surprised to see it in the context of a day trader. I agree most traders wash out, but there are a non-significant amount of people who have made money investing with technicals. Technicals work because there are so many people using them, it's a self fulfilling thing, heck a lot of value investors use technicals in addition to fundamental research, Michael Burry comes to mind in that regard. I'm not a value investor because of research or it's proven. If someone told me value investing wouldn't out perform I'd still probably invest this way. The reason is to me it seems like the only prudent way to manage capital. Buy something for less than it's worth and sell it when it becomes overpriced, focus on not losing money.

I think there's a mirage of value with some of these things. What value do you really get from the WSJ or CNBC? Have you ever made money from those things? Maybe corporate announcements, but for a lot of those announcements you can setup a RSS and get the same information for free. My concern with your list is that you might read all that stuff but not end up with a better thesis. Try to start with only what you need then build from there instead of getting swamped with information.

Newsflash, how many value investors at the top of the Forbes 500 list too? Some will claim Buffett, but I'd argue he got there by building a business not pure investing. I think this sort of video is infuriating to investors on this board because most put in so much work for returns far less then her. I don't get the technical stuff, but if it really is as easy to watch squiggles and make money for some people why learn any more? It's not like knowing depreciation schedules or pension accounting is helpful in getting a significant other. Can you imagine someone saying "Once I brought up LIFO at dinner she said I was the one…" I invest this way because it makes sense to me, not because it's the best. I think there are far better and quicker ways to make money, unfortunately that's not what comes natural to me.

I'm guessing the area this hotel in isn't $100 per night average rate, not that it matters much. If it were $75 per night we'd be talking maybe 1/3 occupied, and for $75 unless this is an extremely rural area I'd be worried about damages from guests. To someone else's point maybe you're not looking at the right books? The real world investments are fascinating. Ultimately the price is 9x cash flow on this thing for a private illiquid deal. This speaks volumes, especially when I see a stock trading at 3x FCF and someone tells me the price is appropriate because the stock is illiquid.

Seriously? Can you provide any substantive evidence of your claim? I can't provide any proof of that, but it certainly appears that way from the things they say and support. I tend to agree more with republicans than democrats when it comes to taxes and social programs, but the racism, homophobia, hatred of foreigners/immigrants, war mongering (although Obama seems to be trying to outdo them in this regard), religious intolerance (for any religion other than extreme Jesus worship), really gets to me. I have nothing to go on except what I hear Republicans I know saying and their presidential candidates, etc. Democrats are a bunch of utopian socialists with an unrealistic view of what problems government is capable of solving, but in general they are decent people not likely to look at you funny or treat you differently because you're white and your adopted son is black, or you're a gay male who is walking hand in hand down the street with the love of your life, or you're a Muslim, or you don't speak English. Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc,........ The third route is what I take, I disregard labels. I have some strong personal views that neither party supports, so I don't have a strong political affiliation. I don't look at people with political affiliations either, just as people. Maybe some of their views are both conservative and liberal like mine. The people I stay away from are the ones with very strong political views who view the world through a republican/democrat lens. There is more to life than politics, and while national politics is a great party topic I've found it doesn't really solve much, and brings a lot of division. I had a boss who refused to leave the city because the country was filled with inbred republicans. A friend's wife won't leave the US because the rest of the world is so socialist they might as well be communists. I'd hate to live like either of those, they're both prisoners to a political philosophy. I've found great people who are both liberals and conservatives, and likewise I've found terrible people with both viewpoints as well.

I think the idea is to find a niche area and write software for it, of course I've worked in software so I'm biased but follow the logic. The key to software isn't the coding, it's really the business-domain knowledge. As JSArbitrage noted anyone can code, but someone needs to have the vision, and know how to direct the code into products. For anyone who's never worked in the software industry all those brilliant developers are incredible executioners but terrible visionaries. Once software has been written once it can be resold over and over with almost no additional marginal cost. Prices for software are often arbitrary and based on what a consumer will pay, not a fixed profit margin over cost. Whatever you do avoid a business model that is built on you or people selling their time. Time is limited, and while you can bill high hourly rates you need to continually find quality employees to grow the business, this is harder than it might appear.

Interesting sector that I have some professional experience in. Insurers are great, they are unscathed from ObamaCare. Some are using it as an excuse to raise prices and re-jigger plans to be more profitable. There is a lot of waste at insurance companies, a lot of waste. So for investors this means a lot of fat could be cut if needed, I don't see significant losses in the future here. The worrying trend is this, insurers buying hospital systems to control costs. This is big in my area but the result is profitable insurers buying unprofitable, or marginally profitable hospitals. The hospitals are a real millstone for some of these companies. Most hospital systems are run by doctors not business people, and there is a BIG difference.

I didn't vote, but I invest primarily in smaller companies, usually $200m or less in market cap. T-bone really hit the nail on the head, very small and very large companies are cheap, the middle isn't. As someone who's deep in the mud with a lot of the tiny companies it's worth mentioning that some are cheap in name only. By this I mean if you want a non-family controlled company with liquidity it's simply not happening. If you're willing to buy into someone else's business (and most on this board are..BRK..FFH) and accept some level of illiquidity there are cheap companies. Probably the cheapest area of the US market right now is in community banks. I know a lot of investors shy away from banks, but this is a cheap sector, and they're easy to research. If you can understand banks it's very easy to compare First Bank of Wichita to First Bank of Peoria. Community banking is classic banking, take in deposits, make loans, pay employees and rent, earn a spread. I invest in smaller stocks because my time is limited. I have a non-investment job, a family, and other hobbies. While investing takes up a disproportionate amount of my time I don't have the time to sit and read the AIG or BAC annual reports. Many of these small companies have very simple annual reports, I can read Logan Clay Products' annual report in 15 minutes or less, and their quarterly reports are one printed page. I also like the local aspect of the companies I invest in. I've talked to numerous executives at small companies, as a small investor I'd never get the time of day if I tried to talk to the CFO of JNJ or INTC. Of course all of this suites my personality, trying to invest contrary to that is recipe for failure.