I Could Use a Mentor

[bsned2]

Thanks again everyone.

 

I have read "The intelligent Investor."  I am reading the books: when I'm done with one I pick up another.

 

And I'm reading every day online!  The VIC ideas, this forum, etc.  I'm always on the lookout for another website to check out frequently.

 

(I don't doubt that I could learn it all on my own, by reading and doing.  But it will be slow going.  The "mentor" idea was just to find a way to speed up my learning curve somewhat.  This board is great so far, at least in letting me know how much I don't know.)

 

Onward and upward!

 

Brian

[west]

OK -- again thanks everyone.

 

I've read a bunch of 10K's, read a lot on this board, read several books.  I did fairly extensive research on UHAL (because I read about it on some blog), which took me weeks, and I decided to "fake buy" it -- meaning, just noting the price at which I would have bought it and keeping track as if I own it.  (It's something I'm doing before I put real money at stake.)  I bought at 282, and it's now at 296, and my wife is a little impressed.  But I told her, we have to be in these things for the long haul (no pun intended), a jump up or a jump down in price shouldn't faze us.

 

I think you've got the right idea.  Find one good idea and research the hell out of it.  You can worry about just "covering the essentials" of an idea once you've got practicing learning everything about your idea down.

 

So know the company, its industry, and its competitive environment front and back, in and out.  If the stock drops, you'll need to know what's going on.  If you don't, you're flying blind and either might sell out because you're scared and don't know what's going on.  Or you might keep on holding on when you should sell out.  I've experienced both situations, just because I didn't do my due diligence all the way in the beginning.  Lots of money lost.

 

Also, for what it's worth, I would put real money on the table, even if it's just a little bit.  You learn a lot more that way.

 

Anyway I'm a little flummoxed as to what company to research next?  Of course I've got my list, cobbled together from blog discussions, Berkshire ownership, stocks my Dad bought, etc.  But at this point researching a company takes me a long time, because I'm still learning.  I could also use a stock screener to find low P/Es, or yearly lows, etc. but that seems so random

 

I'm a screener nut.  I wrote some software to mine equity data for pretty much all of the developed world.  It's pretty sweet.

 

However, now that I've developed this sweet tool that's way better than any free screener... My best ideas come from other people.

 

So forget screeners.  Look at what smart people are posting and clone them, but only after doing all your due diligence first.

 

Here's the returns for the ideas, by poster, on COBF as of 9/13/2013:

 

http://cobff.chrisdrane.com/

 

Attached to this message is a '|' delimited CSV file for all of the VIC posts from 2000 (when VIC started) to 2013.  It has the beginning price for each recommendation (what the price was stated in the recommendation), the actual split-adjusted price for the idea recommendation date, and the 1 month, 2 month, etc return data.  Look at who has good returns for their ideas, then reverse engineer their thinking in their original post.

 

Enjoy

vic-for-cobf.csv

[PatientCheetah]

west, thank you for sharing.

[bsned2]

West, fantastic, thanks.

 

And thanks everyone!

[peter1234]

west, thank you very much!

:)

[west]

My pleasure, everyone :).

[bsned2]

Today's dumb Newbie Question:

 

Seems like a lot of smart folks on this board use TEV as an important measure, especially P/TEV.

 

But I've seen a lot of different ways to calculate TEV. 

 

Can someone help me with the most common formula?

 

Can't thank you guys enough!  (I'm putting together a little Excel work sheet that helps me take a snapshot of any company I'm researching.  Not a substitute for real thinking, but helps me to put all my pertinent info, both financial and other important info, in one place.  What I am doing so far is simply downloading the most recent 10K in excel form and adding my own worksheet as part of it.  Keeps the info all together.  If necessary, at least while I'm still learning, I'll do it for every 10Q and 10K that comes out.)

 

Drinks on me!

[bookie71]

Can't thank you guys enough!  (I'm putting together a little Excel work sheet that helps me take a snapshot of any company I'm researching.  Not a substitute for real thinking, but helps me to put all my pertinent info, both financial and other important info, in one place.  What I am doing so far is simply downloading the most recent 10K in excel form and adding my own worksheet as part of it.  Keeps the info all together.  If necessary, at least while I'm still learning, I'll do it for every 10Q and 10K that comes out.)

I like the excel w/s but when I really want to analyze a company,  get out my old fashioned 13 column work paper and put in as many years as I can by hand.  It seems to put the data in my old brain better.  But then  am a dinosaur.

 

[marodq]

Today's dumb Newbie Question:

 

Seems like a lot of smart folks on this board use TEV as an important measure, especially P/TEV.

 

But I've seen a lot of different ways to calculate TEV. 

 

Can someone help me with the most common formula?

 

Here you go:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tev.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_value

 

It's basically a much better way to gauge the market value of a business as a whole. It contends what would happen if you took over 100% of a business; since you add long term debts (preferred stock too) and subtract cash or cash equivalents to the equity market cap, it allows for a better understanding of the economics and a much truer starting point to compute financial analysis than just calculating from market cap.

[bsned2]

So, as a newbie Value Investor, I've been looking into some companies.  Most of them are not right for me, which I generally conclude after an only-semi-thorough read of the most recent 10K and some web research.  How I would love a knowledgable friend with whom I could check myself, someone to bounce these companies off of, and say, hey I'm right after only a little research to move on from this company right?  (This board is great, I love it, but it's not really built for discussions (with newbies) of companies NOT worth our time.)

 

For instance (if anyone's still reading), I did a screen:  P/E under 17, P/B between .5 and 1.5, Debt/Equity under 1, ROE 5 yr average over 7. 

 

I got 21 results.  I immediately rejected most of them as companies in businesses that are right now beyond my grasp, like tech or Pharma.  And I ignored pink sheet stocks.  I'm trying to stick to companies that I feel I can understand.

 

Of course my eye is drawn to "Shoe Carnival," a company I had never heard of.  (A discount shoe retailer where each store cultivates a "fun" atmosphere where somebody gets on the mike occasionally to announce temporary sale items.  Yikes.)  Nothing particularly wrong with the company, they make money and one great thing about them is they have no debt. But their earnings seem pretty stagnant or growing very slowly.  They open new stores every year, but per store earnings go down, at least for the last few years.  Management seems to think continuing to open stores will do the trick.  So I move on.  Right?

[west]

West - you're the man - thank you :)

 

From that second file, is there a way to identify posters on the VIC page who have the best track records?

 

Sorry for the delayed response.  I haven't mined the data for the "best poster", but with a little bit of Excel work it wouldn't be difficult to do so.

 

That being said, most people haven't posted that many ideas so I doubt you could determine the "best poster" accurately anyways.  There's not enough data for statistical significance.  I just search for a poster in the list whenever a new ideas pop up myself.

[peter1234]

West - you're the man - thank you :)

 

From that second file, is there a way to identify posters on the VIC page who have the best track records?

 

Sorry for the delayed response.  I haven't mined the data for the "best poster", but with a little bit of Excel work it wouldn't be difficult to do so.

 

That being said, most people haven't posted that many ideas so I doubt you could determine the "best poster" accurately anyways.  There's not enough data for statistical significance.  I just search for a poster in the list whenever a new ideas pop up myself.

 

I would second west. Don't read too much into the numbers, but if someone has posted many good ideas, it might be worthwhile to look at his posts.

 

For example, Greenblatt talked about Charlie479 in his class and his ideas have high returns in this list.

:)