Your 2014 portfolio return

[kab60]

I started investing 1st of august and have added cash to my account monthly, with the biggest chunk in the beginning of december, so it doesn't make much sense to look at my "results", but I'm up 3-5 percent - most of it due to currency effects. It's very apparent, however, that I've done too much trading in and out of positions and initiated too small positions (way too high frictional costs), so I'll need to have more discipline and patience (swing harder but less loften). It's very helpful to read about the experience of you guys, thanks a lot for sharing.

[giofranchi]

In the last few days BH’s stock price has brought the increase in BV for my company in 2014 to +32.42%.

 

A prosperous 2015 to all! :)

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

 

20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

[Liberty]

In the last few days BH’s stock price has brought the increase in BV for my company in 2014 to +32.42%.

 

A prosperous 2015 to all! :)

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

 

20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very good, thanks.

 

And don't feel you need to explain yourself compared to others, especially at 20% which is excellent by any standard. It's not a competition, we're all working together to get better art this and learning from each other. One year is too short to judge anything much anyway, some years I had bad results while you probably had very good ones (but I feel I learned a tremendous amount from my mistakes so they were still worth a lot)...

[txlaw]

In the last few days BH’s stock price has brought the increase in BV for my company in 2014 to +32.42%.

 

A prosperous 2015 to all! :)

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

 

20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Nice job, Gio.  Although I disagree with you on a lot of your posts/views re: intelligent investing and macro matters, I contend that your rock solid approach to investing will likely have you returning well above the average investor for a long time.

 

And 20% is a great return, btw.  The average person would kill for such a return.

[ourkid8]

Does your 20% include forex gains/losses? 

 

In the last few days BH’s stock price has brought the increase in BV for my company in 2014 to +32.42%.

 

A prosperous 2015 to all! :)

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

 

20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

[VersaillesinNY]

2014: 8% 

2013: 25% 

2012: 32% 

2011: (12%) 

2010: 21% 

2009: 45%

2008: (33%)

 

I like this tread since it allows me to revisit my mistakes and challenge some ideas.

This amateur portfolio’s performance is quite disappointing in 2014. Too many losers are offsetting too many winners.

I need to protect the downside in order to improve returns.

BRK, WFC, WMT & MDLZ are passive investments representing 50% of my portfolio with a concentration on BRK (30%).

 

Winners: Idenix, BRK, WFC, BBRY, MSFT, VRX, FB, AAPL, POST & ZTS.

 

Losers: DGI, LUK, BYD, AU, Tesco, SNY, Mittal, LUKOY, BP & XCO.

 

DigitalGlobe – The lost orbit: Poorly managed since the Geoeye merger. The company has been overselling their future earnings to analysts. A buyback program is driving the stock up. Hold and see.

 

Leucadia - The sleeping beauty: More upside than downside. Management is trying hard and time will tell if they can match expectations. A lot has been discussed on LUK by board members; I remain on the optimist side.

 

BYD - The green dragon: Exceptional CEO, top 5 patent Chinese award, a bet on Munger & Li Lu’s Chinese electric cars in a competitive environment. I briefly met Li Lu at a BRK meeting, he is humble and brilliant, how can he be wrong on BYD?

 

AngloGold – The gold bug: I once had a good chat with value maestro Jean-Marie Eveillard who pitched me “Invest in gold to protect your portfolio against extreme outcomes”. Ray Dalio preaches the same, but I should have paid more attention to Jim Rogers: “Buy gold, not miners, because miners can go bankrupt…”. Then came South Africans workers strikes, lower gold and uranium prices & the Ebola epidemic. AU is not the low cost gold producer; I was dead wrong on this one. 

 

Tesco – The fake moat: I believed at Tesco’s moat. It was a perpetual bond paying a stable dividend like WMT. I couldn’t see the downside, eroding market shares & margins caused by aggressive hard discounters. Then came profit warnings, management changes & accounting fraud; Terrible and probably oversold…

 

Sanofi – The arrogant frog: With the board ousting the CEO, shareholders value was temporarily destroyed. Time and a future CEO will tell if they can grow the business.

 

Mittal - Dhandho: I’ve been blinded by their CEO/founder’s success story. However, over recent years Lakshmi Mittal and his son have accumulated mistakes: expensive acquisitions & buybacks, high leverage followed by share dilution. Even Mohnish who pitched Mittal in his book ended up buying Posco. As a long term bet on global steel demand, I just swapped the position with the low cost Korean producer.

 

Lukoil - Nasderovia: One of the best managed Russian companies. Privately owned (so far!), insiders buying, shares repurchases, dividend increases, operating cost in Rubles/sales in USD, Mark Mobius on the board of directors; even cheap under Professor Damodaran’s filter. I recently met Jim Grant and his classic bow tie, he told me: "Russian Oil & Gas companies are cheap even after stealing!" At least this time our opinions converge Mr Grant.

I’ve been averaging down on Lukoil at $34. I will hold as long as I can keep up with the relative pain and the long term political risk.

 

BP – Where the sun never sets: A long term bet on a beaten oil & gas producer. A cannibal repurchasing shares and delivering a stable dividend. The 20% Rosneft holding, the oil prices crash and the 2010 Gulf oil spill trial are not helping. Good things happen to cheap stocks.

 

Exco – An illusion of resources: My wrong bet on US shale gas & oil and its value shareholders. Where is the moat? I never understood why they were burning cash by paying a dividend. A big mistake and limited carnage with a 2% initial position.

 

Happy New Year to the board and many thanks to Sanjeev for creating this corner of value!

 

[physdude]

20% -- not bad if looked at in isolation but I am very disappointed in that it was over 30% in September and my main holdings (BRK DITM LEAPs and QCOR which got merged into MNK) at that time did nicely in Q4. So how did I end up with only 20%? Well, I sold off a significant amount of those holdings to take profits and put them into beaten down (only slightly beaten down in retrospect) energy companies and OCN/ASPS. I was also market neutral bringing down my return by about 13% over the year due to overvaluation concerns (this doesn't bother me as I do think the market will reach normal valuations at some time in the next couple of years).

[rmitz]

10.3% for the year in my primary account, with 13.74% annualized since the beginning of 2006.  A great deal of volatility comes from my very large position in ATSG, so a few days either way can affect the yearly results dramatically.

[KCLarkin]

Winners: Idenix, BRK, WFC, BBRY, MSFT, VRX, FB, AAPL, POST & ZTS.

 

Losers: DGI, LUK, BYD, AU, Tesco, SNY, Mittal, LUKOY, BP & XCO.

 

Interesting that:

1 - All of your winners are North American and IP or brands.

2 - Most of your losers are foreign or commodity-based

 

This might suggest one of two options:

1 - Foreign and resource-based companies are outside your circle of competence

2 - Your losers just reflect that it was a bad year for commodities and international stocks

[locatevalue]

One of the worst year from absolute returns perspective

-10% on return this year and compounded returned(IRR) dropped to 22.4% over 8 year holding  period.

Oil is my biggest drag this year, Legacy small positions from 2013 of SD and Lukoil, Added PWE in Jan but stupidly did a big portfolio bet when oil was in 70's on PWE ad LTS together.

(On hindsight you can never be sure about commodity prices too late to learn now I am just holding and waiting (and hoping this crash wont be too long))

If BAC is not a big part of my portfolio it would have be much worse with Oil and other looses like Oi and Sears.

My total Portfolio was up more than 10% around April end and September end but never cashed out.

Hope this year will be good and I wont repeat my mistakes.

 

 

[Guest Schwab711]

Winners: Idenix, BRK, WFC, BBRY, MSFT, VRX, FB, AAPL, POST & ZTS.

 

Losers: DGI, LUK, BYD, AU, Tesco, SNY, Mittal, LUKOY, BP & XCO.

 

Interesting that:

1 - All of your winners are North American and IP or brands.

2 - Most of your losers are foreign or commodity-based

 

This might suggest one of two options:

1 - Foreign and resource-based companies are outside your circle of competence

2 - Your losers just reflect that it was a bad year for commodities and international stocks

 

It's funny you point this out because I experienced this exact revelation a few years ago and now I refuse to invest in int'l or commodity companies (among many other "No's"). It's too hard to predict commodity prices and unless you are in the low-cost producer, bankruptcy is always an option (US Energy will be interesting to watch un-fold; although, POSCO can certainly go belly-up as well). There's a few int'l companies I'm really interested (L'Oreal is really shareholder friendly) in but with so much available in the US why take the chance with currencies, laws I don't know or understand, and lots of other factors I don't need to consider with US companies. I was pretty royally screwed by accounting fraud by a Chinese RTO company in 2010 and I realized how valuable the basic protections the US provides shareholders are. This is extremely uncommon but investing in the UK or any other country (maybe ex-Canada) leads to a LOT of small, hidden risks that are ignored when picking US stocks.

[namo]

I voted too soon: I was <0 but I ended up the year at +3%.

 

Not great, but since I started investing in June... I'm still firmly in the "learning" part of it all, and I've already learned from several mistakes.

 

Tops: QLGC, several Malone stocks (LINTA/QVCA, LBTYK), Gévelot (French)

 

Flops: ASPS, ARCP, WPX, SHOS

 

I'm holding on to all of them.

[CorpRaider]

Winners: Idenix, BRK, WFC, BBRY, MSFT, VRX, FB, AAPL, POST & ZTS.

 

Losers: DGI, LUK, BYD, AU, Tesco, SNY, Mittal, LUKOY, BP & XCO.

 

Interesting that:

1 - All of your winners are North American and IP or brands.

2 - Most of your losers are foreign or commodity-based

 

This might suggest one of two options:

1 - Foreign and resource-based companies are outside your circle of competence

2 - Your losers just reflect that it was a bad year for commodities and international stocks

 

It's funny you point this out because I experienced this exact revelation a few years ago and now I refuse to invest in int'l or commodity companies (among many other "No's"). It's too hard to predict commodity prices and unless you are in the low-cost producer, bankruptcy is always an option (US Energy will be interesting to watch un-fold; although, POSCO can certainly go belly-up as well). There's a few int'l companies I'm really interested (L'Oreal is really shareholder friendly) in but with so much available in the US why take the chance with currencies, laws I don't know or understand, and lots of other factors I don't need to consider with US companies. I was pretty royally screwed by accounting fraud by a Chinese RTO company in 2010 and I realized how valuable the basic protections the US provides shareholders are. This is extremely uncommon but investing in the UK or any other country (maybe ex-Canada) leads to a LOT of small, hidden risks that are ignored when picking US stocks.

 

Yeah, I prefer to stick to countries with several hundred years of experience with the rule of law/capitalism.  Sooo, the Netherlands, UK, US, Canada, Australia, etc...

[one-foot-hurdles]

5% for 2014, but I'm mostly flat if you remove currency effects. My biggest detractors have been my investments in Russia (around 10% of portfolio), O&G (another 8%) and Mining (5-6%). Positives have been diversifying away from Australian equities (this used to be the bulk of my portfolio) into US and Europe (hence +ve ccy effect), Fiat, GNCMA(thanks Packer!) and investments in Indian equities (thanks Modi!).

[giofranchi]

In the last few days BH’s stock price has brought the increase in BV for my company in 2014 to +32.42%.

 

A prosperous 2015 to all! :)

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

 

20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

 

Nice job, Gio.  Although I disagree with you on a lot of your posts/views re: intelligent investing and macro matters, I contend that your rock solid approach to investing will likely have you returning well above the average investor for a long time.

 

And 20% is a great return, btw.  The average person would kill for such a return.

 

Thank you, txlaw! :)

Two things:

 

1) Regarding macro: my only "macro" idea is that debt matters. It cannot grow to the sky, and sooner or later must be dealt with. If this idea is wrong, I guess neither Fairfax nor Oaktree (by far my two largest investments!) will do better than the overall market... Instead, if this idea is right, they both have a very real chance to do significantly better than the market in coming years.

 

2) About intelligent investing, please feel free to tell me anything you don't agree with what I am trying to do: I respect your point of view very much, and I am here most of all to listen to people who are investment savvy and disagree with me!

 

Cheers,

 

Gio

[giofranchi]

Does your 20% include forex gains/losses?

 

Yes, it does... But, as far as I am concerned, only two things matter:

 

1) Purchasing power

 

2) Business performance

 

If you are interested in 1), forex gains/losses definitely matter to you and should be included in your results.

 

If you are interested in 2), yearly stock market returns are not meaningful... You should just take yearly EPS of your companies and divide that number for your average cost.

 

Therefore, when someone asks yearly results... I always think he/she is referring to purchasing power! ;)

 

Gio

[snowball82]

 

+ 116 % annual return this year and that followed 88 % last year. I have enought experience to know results can be volatile over years, so I continue to work hard and be very fortunate to collaborate with exceptionals investors.

 

My largest position still Biosyent, so with the current valuation my return should be lower this year. Rene Goehrum continue to show us how good can be this business model to compound capital.

 

A very good year to all.

[muscleman]

 

+ 116 % annual return this year and that followed 88 % last year. I have enought experience to know results can be volatile over years, so I continue to work hard and be very fortunate to collaborate with exceptionals investors.

 

My largest position still Biosyent, so with the current valuation my return should be lower this year. Rene Goehrum continue to show us how good can be this business model to compound capital.

 

A very good year to all.

 

That's amazing! Which sectors do you focus on?

[snowball82]

I don't look specifics sectors but I don't invest in ressources, miners, big pharma and low margin businesses.

 

As I'm not a full time investor for now ... my strategic capital allocation plan is simple !  I make my opinion on companies one after one.

 

I hope to have more time over next year and work with new dedicated analysts/investors to look my ideas deeper.

[roughlyright]

snoball82, do you post at the valueinvestor's club as "DEVO791"? I notice that you also talk about Parkit similar to that author...

[snowball82]

I'm not a member.

[Uccmal]

As I expected: 1 yr, pretax:  -2.9%

 

10 year after tax: 37% cagr

10 year after tax tossing best and worst year, after tax = 26% cagr

 

Would have been better had I stayed away from Pennwest - slightly positive instead of slightly negative.  Seaspan is down too, but that is only temporary. 

[jeffmori7]

1-years return: 25.81% this year.

 

Pretty happy with that, I had help from the exchange rate between $US and $CAD as most of my stocks are in $US. Big contributors were BRK, ATD.B, APPL,AIG-WT. No leverage used.

 

I stayed away from the O&G and will continue to do so.

[Hielko]

10 year after tax: 37%

10 year after tax tossing best and worst year, after tax = 26%

Total, geometric, average?

[Uccmal]

10 year after tax: 37%

10 year after tax tossing best and worst year, after tax = 26%

Total, geometric, average?

 

cagr edited.