oddballstocks

Call your broker and pay a $250 conversion fee. You'll eventually be mailed the certificate.

This is the gist of it. You'd also need to know more info about the company (HQ location, # registered shareholders, ect) and even then it would still be case-by-case. Generally, if a company is incorporated in one of the 24 adherents to the Model Business Corporation Act, you will probably be treated fairly. If they are in Delaware or Nevada, stick with larger companies. Otherwise, it's case-by-case (CA and NY tend to be friendlier, but it depends on what is important to you). Here's the best overview I could find for your situation: http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2016/04/should-close-corporations-have-a-duty-to-disclose-financial-information-to-their-shareholders.html Basically, your company is probably being nice to you, given their rights. They could certainly ignore your request altogether if you are not registered on the shareholder roll. I should add, you also need to be willing to defend whatever rights you may have. The *most* friendly state is Alabama. I've come to learn that they are required to respond to ANY shareholder request for information within 10 days. If they don't they owe you 10% of the value of your holding as a payment for not responding in a timely manner.

If you don't have the data it would be good to have a message to that effect, otherwise the user will just assume its broken like I did. The density I would not sweat....its a general problem across the entire internet. I don't think its that easy to fix. For Sharadar, how much are you paying? Not OP, but you can go to Quandl.com and see all datasets available. Pricing depends on your application. If it's commercial and your company makes more than $1m in revenue per year the pricing is fairly high. They have developer plans and startup plans that are cheap, but once you're out of that zone it adds up.

Drop the ads, it cheapens the site. Where'd you pull your tickers from?

I hope you got to see some of it, what did you end up doing? I took my wife and kids up to Menan, Idaho along with a big group of neighbor friends (we drove around 4 hours to get there) Camped out Sunday night, then played sun / moon / eclipse songs all morning while we waited. I took a few videos: one with a DJI drone to see the 360 degree sunset, and one from a small camcorder on a tripod. When C2 hit and there was a big black disc where the sun had been... my brain blew a fuse, and all I could do was scream like I was at a cosmic rock concert. I saw the 2012 annular eclipse in Saint George, Utah, but it was nothing compared to a total. We didn't go. :( The weather prediction was pretty bad (although ultimately it seems there were some openings in the clouds). We saw the partial (63%), which is of course not comparable to total. Well, another time... 8) Glad that you guys had a great time. 8) Next one is in seven years! The path of totality crosses my parent's house, so it seems like I'll get to see a full one. I've already started to invite friends up there to join us.

Peer comps work because psychology works. An executive goes to sell his company. He isn't a valuation guru like those on here. Some underlying says "All of our competitors have sold for 15x EBITDA" and now he thinks "We should get at least 15x EBITDA, we're better than our competitors." Comps are literally how the entire world works. When you go to a garage sale and look at a vase do you think "I wonder how much cash flow can be generated from this?" No, you think "I've seen similar vases sell for $45 and this one is $25, it's a deal." Same with clothes, same with cars, same with literally everything that is for sale. Comps are like technical analysis. Yes, there are 'true believers' who think that a DCF is the only true way to value something. But if the rest of the market values on comps then that means comps will work. I used them as a first pass filter. If everyone in the industry is 15x EBITDA and some company is at 5x EBITDA then what skeletons are hiding? Why is it cheap? If everyone is at 15x and a company is at 15x is there a potential for hidden value? Sure maybe, but you're digging deep into a haystack at that point.

Have been going to Ft Pickens for the last few years as our beach vacation. Love that area.

If 5-10 years to tipping point, from an investment point of view, is now the time to get in? Take a broad perspective (i.e. ETF) whilst still on the ground floor? In 5-10 years, the industry will be much more mature. There will be good companies in the space - i.e.: the Apples of today - but valuations much steeper. I was looking at putting it on my house, not investing in it in the market.

Why are you buying shares in a company in terrible industry heading towards cyclical bottom? Just kidding and teasing oddball. 8) HA!! Although that argument could be made for some of BRK's holdings.

Not the most crappy. You forgot boats. 8) And this board is like boat owners too. Read any site on buying a boat and they'll dismiss the claim that boats are money pits, just like investors on here will dismiss claims that terrible industries heading towards their cyclical bottoms are bad buys...

Oddball, do you guys have SolarCity or some other "install their panels for cheaper electricity but don't pay upfront" option in your area? Would that work for you? I haven't looked at residential solar much, since I don't like panels on the roof. I think Tesla tiles on the roof are gonna be gamechanger if/when I get to roof replacement. Unfortunately, I changed the roof about 9 years ago, so it's gonna be long time. I've had both SolarCity and Vivint Solar pitch me. Both have the $0 upfront, but it's really a loan. SolarCity you never own anything, you just pay a little bit less. The value for SolarCity isn't there. You have panels placed on your roof and they say you'll pay a few cents less per kwH forever. The problem is you still pay distribution and other electric charges, so you save a little, not much. The Vivint Solar guys are selling the system, it's a no upfront payment thing. You just get a loan for the amount and the loan payment is roughly your electric bill payment for ~10 years. I'm all about solar. I love the idea of it. The cost just needs to drop. Where it's getting cost effective is for a small space. I've looked at solar for our RV in the past. That's a interesting idea. There are less demands on the system and the batteries needed aren't terrible. You can be 100% self sufficient with solar on an RV. Plus you can move the trailer to where the sun is best to get the highest efficiency. I think within 5-10 years we're going to hit the tipping point on solar where the ROI finally makes sense.

I had someone come and pitch me on residential solar. It's a really tough sell. You buy this expensive system upfront with a loan. You pay down the loan for 10 years. In year 10 you finally reap the benefit of your system as it makes your electric bill 'free'. You have 20 years of free electric with the system. The problem for me was that I am investing in an asset with a terminal value of zero. Given the prices they quoted if I put the exact same amount of money into a corporate bond fund the yield would pay my electric bill today, and I'd have my original principle back in 30 years. The other problem is I have to commit to a costly purchase with no benefit for a decade. How do I know I'll be here then? I hope I am, but who knows. How do I know rates, or what the future will hold? You pay a lot upfront for something that you don't get to use in 10 years. There was also some gotcha they tried to explain with selling power back. I would be selling it back, but the power company only credits on a per year basis. So I'd have to have the system running for 1-2 years before they'd credit the electric I'd send. So that first year or two I'd have power bills that were double the usual amount. And lastly one thing I thought would be cool is to have backup if power went off. He said the only way to get that is to buy a separate $7k battery pack. His recommendation was to not waste my time and buy a generator instead. I agree with LC, the ultimate beneficiary of this arrangement is the utility. They are getting customers to finance power generation infrastructure needs. The utility gets the power and pays a wholesale rate for something they didn't have to build. I've looked at this on and off over the last 15 years. The good news is things are going in the right direction. Fifteen years ago it was going to take me 30+ years before I had a payoff. Now it's down to 10 years. In another five years or so the panel cost might finally be low enough where I can get a return in 2-3 years. For me that's the tipping point, I'd jump then.

Create a corporation, invest in shares of said corporation. In most states it's very easy to file incorporation papers. Companies have a build in advisor role too, Directors. Your friend will nominate people with investor approval to be Directors who advise them on the company and business prospects. With that said toys are tough. The key to a toy is getting mass appeal. If the toy is excellent I'd incorporate then work your butt off trying to license or sell it to a larger company. If it's truly novel then patent it and license that.

That's my guess, most of the world uses a comma instead of a decimal whereas in the US we use a decimal and not a comma.

Interesting piece. I would argue that we did have brands in the 19th century. Go back and read old newspapers, there were definitely brands, but they were different. They were established with advertising. Ever see a Mail Pouch barn? That was branding at its best. They paid farmers to paint the brand on their barns. It's very common in the Midwest, the barns are still painted although faded. I don't think brands are going away. I think in a sense they're actually stronger than ever, but different. The old guard brands built their reputation by blasting us with ads on TV and in magazines. Do you remember seeing TV ads that'd say "For more information see our ad in Family Circle magazine." Brands established themselves regardless of the quality of the product. This new paradigm is very consumer driven. Consumers are finding the best brands and then telling each other about them via the Internet. One of my hobbies is backpacking and there's a Reddit sub I frequent devoted to lightweight backpacking. There are 'blessed' brands that have been trail tested that provide the best product at the best price. They're all niche brands, but they can all be purchased online. People write about products they love in blogs and give extensive reviews. Finding an extensive review about anything in 1987 was difficult. There were magazine articles, but that was it, and discoverability was tough. There's also a backlash against big brands. I know a lot of people who's rather buy "Dr Organic Wholesome Made From Angel Feathers Detergent" and pay 3x the price of Tide just because it's not Tide. Even if the item sits on the same shelf and has 99.9% the same components, the branding making it unique sells. This is an opportunity for P&G if they can produce and sell these sorts of products. Amazon isn't going to eliminate every store either. I find for myself that I've been moving back to brick and mortar with a number of things. In general if I can find an item and it's within ~15% of Amazon's price I will buy it in person verses buying online. B&M needs to focus on niche items though, that's where the value and markup are. Amazon needs to get their bots under control too. For example I was looking for a cheap pool float this weekend. I looked on Amazon for the one that had broken. One seller had it for $238. Yes, someone wanted $238 for a float, it was probably driven by supply and demand and inventory, but the price was insane. I wanted it for that day to use in the pool. Went to a pool store (for something unrelated) they had a sale, and sale prices were usurious. Went to Target, floats were all $19.99, about $10 more than they should have been. Found one at Target for $5, purchased on the spot. The problem with Amazon is my mind is tainted from that. I know it was a wrong price, but it was so far wrong that I probably won't look there again. Anchoring on price is important. Amazon would have done themselves a favor by having a simple "Out of Stock" message. This is what retail stores do. You don't see an empty shelf at WalMart with an item sign for $200.

How do I buy a pickup truck full of lumber and insulation on Amazon? How do I take pieces of an in progress project and physically fit them to what's for sale to see what I need to purchase? Can't wait to order a pallet of Portland Cement and get free shipping on that.. Same with Autozone. If I am replacing rotors and notice my pads are bad I'm not going to leave my car jacked up for two days (if things actually arrive on time) until the pads arrive. Do I Uber my kids to school or to work?

His letters are about as public as you can make them. The SEC requires/required accredited funds to have a separate log-in to access information from advertising (newsletters, performance numbers, etc). If you are accredited and contact Pabrai Funds to access the letters, I'm pretty sure they would grant access. This rule was loosened up a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure why most funds still use the password protection. Cheers! Agreed, and beyond that once they're leaked they're emailed around like crazy.

Getting ready to do this myself. Self-publishing is the way to go. You write the book in Word and then a few clicks later it's published. I have an editor who I work with on other material, he's working with me on this material. I also have a following that has indicated interest in the subject matter. There aren't any books targeting what I wrote about either. With that said I have zero delusions that I can make any serious money on this. My goal is to sell a few thousand copies, if I were to even sell 1,000 that'd be successful. Something like 80% or 90% of self-published authors fail to sell more than a few hundred books. I look at a book as the best business card you can have. Createspace allows the author to buy the book essentially at Amazon's cut. Amazon still gets their pound of flesh, but that's it. My plan is to buy boxes of books and hand them out like candy. Another long-game idea is to work with colleges. I read about this strategy and I am thinking of trying it. What you do is advertise to college professors. You tell them that if they have their class read it you'll speak (via skype or in person if it's local) for free. This is a long game because you're making yourself known to people who aren't professionals yet. But it's the same reason that Microsoft gave out (gives) Office to college kids for $10. They become hooked for life. Have you written the book yet? It's quite the undertaking. I write a lot. I have a blog (username.com) where I've written over 2,000 pages of material. I have a newsletter that's another 600 pages. And yet writing 200 specific and focused pages about a single topic was difficult. It's difficult because you need to be mindful of the flow over the entire book. You can't write it at once, you need to write it in pieces. It's hard to build the flow, cross reference other things and move the narrative forward. This is where an editor is excellent, they help with this. What do you plan on writing about? I'll end with a fun publishing story. I was on a plane a few months back sitting on the aisle row. There was a man at the window engrossed in some book. The book didn't seem to fit him, i.e. it was a pop-ish looking book, and he looked like a 50 yr old engineer. A woman sat in the middle seat. About halfway through the flight she took out some book, started to read it. The man at the window kept looking over at her. Once the flight landed and we were waiting to exit he said "Do you like that book?" She responded "I do, surprisingly." And he said "I'm the publisher. I didn't think it would sell but we took a chance on it. It's surprised me." They talked about some story line point that was iffy for him and that was it. It made sense why the book he was reading didn't fit him, he wasn't reading for pleasure, but likely evaluating new material. It was a fun encounter.

SPIN Selling is good The Ultimate Sales Machine Pricing with Confidence Marketing High Technology Tested Advertising Methods The Ultimate Book of Phone Scripts - Title is misleading, guy walks you through exactly how to move a sale from prospect to close all on the phone Ogilvy on Advertising How To Sell Anything The Boron Letters - classic, possibly true, possibly fake, don't matter Ca$hvertising Just finished: Just F*ing Demo and Product Demos that Sell Upcoming: Pitch Anything Demonstrating to Win

There is already an industry around this, it's called "Alternative Data". Check out a company like Quandl. Hedge funds will pay a lot of money for these alternative sets. They integrate them together and look for indicators. The value isn't in building an app, it's in finding some sort of alternative data, building a structure out of it and selling it. For example, if you could build a network of webcams that read license plates and then leased spots on busy roads or around busy banks you could then buy DMV data and track movement. This would be valuable because you could track who comes and goes to certain destinations at what time and that could be correlated with other data. That would be valuable.

The conversation is off the rails, let's keep going, this is fascinating. rukawa - I agree and disagree. In terms of actual learning material, yes, I feel you could network, learn etc and never need to spend $5k. BUT... spending $5k to say that "xyz guru taught you" is invaluable. This is why Pabrai and Spier spend the $1m on that lunch. It wasn't because they were trying to learn to be better investors, Pabrai had already written a book and had a good record. It was the association and opening the door that was worth the cost. Jurgis - I had a light bulb moment about this probably 6-8mo ago. I had always wondered how people were finding these 5x-10x-50x growth stocks that had zero revenue. There are a few people that can do this. As I mulled it over I realized that the people doing it had sales backgrounds, and they were effectively sizing up the selling strategy and methods. This is why you meet with management. Not to hear how they allocate capital when there isn't revenue, it's to talk in a private room about how they sell. My feeling on this is you'd find a lot of bad companies but eventually find one with a solid process that you know will work with time and effort. At that point it's simply a waiting game. Thinking this way changed how I looked at small companies. I love asset bargains, and love barely profitable companies. One rule I'd always held myself to was a company needed to be cash flow positive, unless they were in the process of unlocking value. I was stumbling upon this idea but didn't realize it. Once this crystalized I started to look at falling sales differently. If a company's sales were falling then either their process stopped working, or the value proposition for the product has changed. Correcting that is extremely difficult, and unless they've shifted products and worked with something like that in the past it will be hard to recover. At the same time a company who's sales fall off due to structural demand (recession) is in much better shape. An example of this would be an oil services company. The industry is hurting so people aren't buying as many rigs, when things recover sales will recover too. This is a better purchase as long as the company can stay alive until the recovery. Bonkers - If you live by performance you die by performance. If your clients are only with you because of performance what happens when you hit an underperforming stretch of time? While you're outperforming try to develop a unique selling proposition or a niche and pitch that to them. You're right that investors don't invest for the actual ideas, but it's because you're probably likeable and your performance is good. You're framing the story wrong. You don't need extraordinary sales to pitch a bad record, you skip the record. You sell why you're unique and why they need you regardless of track record. Speaking from experience, I have met investors with excellent track records, money doesn't come flowing in the door. You always need to sell, you always need to market. Selling and marketing are simply letting the world know about your product. A great first step is sharing annual letters. Second step is asking your current clients if they know people who might be interested. Then call those people. If you do that you just sold, and selling to existing customers and getting referrals from existing customers is the most powerful method of selling. It's also the easiest. You did the hard work of getting it started. Now just reach into your client network and grow it. Poor Charlie - Yes running money is regulated, but at the end of the day its still a business. I have a younger brother who was a professional bass player for a while. He claimed that "music is different" that "sales doesn't work" and that I didn't understand music. Long story short, one person in the band's father understood it wasn't, and that person hired a manager for the band. The manager get them into everything by simple selling. They toured the US, Europe, played on Letterman etc. So fairly successful. My brother has since moved onto being a computer programmer (crazy story itself, guy is insanely smart, talked his way into the job...oh he'd done sales in the past..wonder if there's a connection?..) but he told me last year "Nate, you were right, music is just a business like everything else." You have a fiduciary duty to clients. I have clients who've signed contracts where the penalties would probably make a fiduciary blush. The difference is investors expect to lose money or possibly expect it. Clients don't expect failure, but if failure does happen there are contractual consequences, and they can be significant. ----- Look, Buffett gets this. The guy is a sales machine. He could have retired and stayed in the dark spending his money on model trains. Instead he has been in the news constantly since the 1960s and 1970s. He let myths grow about him. Now you might ask "why?" Berkshire's investment performance doesn't hinge on how investors perceive him, he's a public company. But he's marketing FOR his company. He's working to attract deals to himself, and it works. He worked himself to a place where investors call him with opportunities. When you have a lot of money this is where you want to be. His visibility also helps his own companies. People associate Geico with Buffett, and Berkshire RE with him. He is successful and when you think of these subsidiary companies you associate them with someone successful. It's no coincidence. Notice that he talks up BRK's investments and cash, but never the $1b in personal wealth or investments he has. He doesn't need to bring visibility to those, there's no purpose. ------ I'm not an expert in this, but a quick jaunt down sales lane. Sales is a process of qualifying prospects, discovering their pain point and showing you have a solution for that. It isn't selling ice to Eskimos. In sales you want to find out as quick as possible that a person isn't a qualified prospect. This scares a lot of people. But you want to find out quickly that a product isn't for someone. That way you don't waste your time. This is the same as how I conduct investment research, disqualify an investment quickly and move on. Once someone is qualified, that means they have the problem even if they don't realize it, and they have a budget to pay for a solution you talk to them about the problem. Maybe they recognize they have a problem but it isn't a big deal at this time. Move on. Or maybe they have dealt with this problem but never spent any time trying to solve it. You explain your solution, how it will solve it, the money it will make/save etc. Then you ask if they want to buy. That's it. Now granted sometimes this process might take 6mo-18mo, but that's the high level. If someone is looking to buy something you're selling: 1) Return phone calls and emails 2) Continue to follow-up with them. What is important to you isn't important to them, it's up to you to keep things moving 3) If they're qualified, if they have a pain, if you solve that pain, if they have a budget ask for the deal. Clients rarely buy on their own, especially high dollar items (thousands to millions). You need to ask. ------------------ With all of this you can do it in person OR you can do it in writing. If you do it in writing you're in ScottHall's ring. This is what Scott excels at. He can write a letter that qualifies a prospect, that unearths their pain, and then asks them to buy all at once. There is a skill to this, and most copy sucks, but good copy sells like crazy. So if you've made it this far then I have a seminar you can sign up for on sales for.... I kid, but that's the next logical step for something like this. If you wrote something long, and someone read the entire thing then they have interest. You'd take them to the next level whatever that is. My advice is free, hopefully someone can glean something and use this. I learned by asking and reading myself.

This is an interesting discussion topic. There are investors I would literally pass up a dinner date with Heidi Klum to sit down with. These people, however, would not be members of the marketing machine Oddball describes. The people I admire are capitalists—people who’ve built up fortunes using their own balance sheet. Guys like Jay Pritzker, Ian Cumming, Herb Allen Jr., Herb Siegel, Charles Koch, Sid Bass, George Ohrstrom Sr., Thomas Mellon Evans, George Baker, Byron Smith, Rales brothers, etc. Because they had no need for outside capital, they never marketed. Most of them, in fact, went out of their way to avoid publicity. They built their fortunes by being very, very good capitalists (and maybe a little nepotism, too). I tend to discount the New York 'value' money manager crowd. Some of them are talented, but most of them are more marketing guru than investment guru. To give you an example of the marketing involved in professional money management, consider this. A while ago we were selling a small business. Most of the prospective buyers were private equity types, and they would all talk about their amazing records—20%- and 30%-range. They were all impressive characters and had a wonderful pitch. Yet when I looked up their audited numbers, very few of their funds had even managed to double. These were 10-year funds that leveraged up a lot, and they couldn't even double their investors' money (a 7% compounded return)! These people aren't skillful capitalists—they're salesman. I agree on your names, and while they didn't build themselves up sales/marketing was absolutely vital to the companies they ran. In my experience successful people fall into two general buckets. They either downplay their success as something that wasn't a big deal and gloss over important points. Or they speak of themselves in god-like terms as if the world revolved around themselves. I've found it very hard from these two archetypes. I think the personality guru thing is a non-scalable business that carries a lot of risk. If you hit a bad market patch you're in trouble, the business tanks and your reputation tanks. On a larger point I think it's ironic that the most critical function of any business (sales) isn't understood and completely disregarded by supposed outside business experts (investors, analysts). Investors/analysts want to move the pile of chips around, but successful business people realize it's sales and healthy margins that ultimately matter, now how the chips are placed once the sale is made. Capital allocation can have a significant impact on a business, but if the business can't sell then all of the capital allocation in the world won't save the business. I think most investors would do themselves an enormous favor and buy a few books on sales and marketing. If this is the most important thing to the companies they're investing it then they should understand it themselves.

Penn State college library has it

My guess is you're going to have to go microfiche on these things. Maybe you could be the one to microfiche it, print then digitize? There's a lot of value investing karma out there for you if you do!

This is such a great point and something SO MANY minor league hedge fund managers simply don't understand! Which is quite amusing, when you consider that they analyze opportunity cost for a living. It's not that people don't understand it. It's that people don't want to do it. It's likely a lost opportunity, but you can't force people to do it. To pick on oddball ;), he doesn't do it either... where is his $10B fund? 8) ;D Explored this route in 2013, spoke to a few PM's about what it takes to run a fund, what makes a strategy successful. I was given the same advice I'm giving, strategy doesn't matter, but ability to raise funds and sell does. I was told my strategy doesn't scale and won't sell, but no problem, adopt a new one that's scalable and I'd be golden. To Scott's point understanding marketing and sales has taken me much further with my software business and my newsletter than I ever thought. I have a book coming out in a few months. The groundwork has been laid for that as well. There's an email list that's received updates, I've posted about it, I've tweeted about it. And as it gets closer a more dedicated post stream will appear. This is simply marketing and sales for a new product. Sales is 100% the lifeblood of ANY business. You either understand sales and succeed, or you fail. Sales is usually a one on one process, you are selling to a single customer at a time. Marketing is selling to a lot of people at once. Same function, different implementation. If marketing isn't selling then marketing isn't working. There are a few products, maybe a dozen or two that sell themselves. They solve such a fundamental problem that everyone wants them. For everything else you need marketing and sales.