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Case studies of great investors


jawn619

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Recently got my site up where I share case studies of investments made by successful investors. I originally did it for myself and looking at these companies with the benefit of hindsight has helped me immensely.

 

www.raritancapital.com/casestudy

 

I try to break down what some see as hard to understand companies such as MU, SUNE, and IDIX. All comments and thoughts are appreciated.

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I'd like to keep the writing of them to myself but I would appreciate any suggestions of interesting ideas that would make for good case studies. I'm thinking of looking at Valeant and the Liberty companies as I don't understand them at all right now. Would love obscure/smaller companies and the lesson learned is more important than the result. I actually prefer looking at losing investments more so know what to avoid in the future.

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Have you thought about creating a website where people can share their own case studys. So you can add it to the website including your own. Obviously you would approve it to ensure quality standards.

 

haven't thought about that. Will PM you about it though.

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I'd like to keep the writing of them to myself but I would appreciate any suggestions of interesting ideas that would make for good case studies. I'm thinking of looking at Valeant and the Liberty companies as I don't understand them at all right now. Would love obscure/smaller companies and the lesson learned is more important than the result. I actually prefer looking at losing investments more so know what to avoid in the future.

 

do you want to look at Bombardier Inc ? I've looked at it a few weeks ago because of the cheap preferred shares. I keep getting a back a envelope valuation of zero for the equity.

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Uploaded a case study for GGP. It really helped me get a general picture of how bankruptcies work. Ackman and Pershing probably made 50x their money. Thanks to Dougishere for the suggestion!

 

www.raritancapital.com/casestudy/ggp/

 

The GGP case study was really great. I read it over the weekend.

 

I think Ackman said his investors made about 130x on the GGP investment. I think it was from a Charlie Rose interview after the JcPenny debacle. Either way, 50x or 130x, it's hard to complain.

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It was really something to be a part of. Just re-read the Joint Plan of Reorganization like 2 months ago. Still have the documents they sent me.

 

I remember in the middle of the blow up of 09 going down to one of the malls and watching all the people still shopping their hearts out. Just thinking they had a dozen others like this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Uploaded case study on NVR homes. It was used by Greenblatt in his class to show an example of a good writeup/pitch.

 

http://raritancapital.com/casestudy/

 

Any ideas for case studies would be appreciated! Anything interesting that can be learned from a past investment will be considered.

 

I have learnt more from what seemed like "good" writeups made by "great" investors, but turned out to be disasters.

 

Here is an interesting exercise - download all writeups from VIC, sort them from highest to lowest rating and then from lowest to highest performance. You will see that high ratings are in many cases inversely related to performance.

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Uploaded case study on NVR homes. It was used by Greenblatt in his class to show an example of a good writeup/pitch.

 

http://raritancapital.com/casestudy/

 

Any ideas for case studies would be appreciated! Anything interesting that can be learned from a past investment will be considered.

 

I have learnt more from what seemed like "good" writeups made by "great" investors, but turned out to be disasters.

 

Here is an interesting exercise - download all writeups from VIC, sort them from highest to lowest rating and then from lowest to highest performance. You will see that high ratings are in many cases inversely related to performance.

 

Another interesting observation I've had in VIC is that the longer the write-up, the less likely it is that the author is likely to be right. It seems to me that Buffett's and Munger's advise on simple and clear thesis is true- if you can't condense and explain your thesis in a minute, there's a chance that you're missing the forest for the trees

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I have a lot of respect for VIC write ups. It was started by someone who has arguably the best track record of all time. 50% a year for 10 years is out of this world.

 

A lot of members on the site are real hedge fund managers, managing real millions of dollars, with real audited track records of outperformance. While this doesn't automatically lead better writeups, generally it does.

 

It might not be the best place if you're looking for ideas to clone just based on number of comments but I've learned more from the winning VIC write ups than any other resource on investing.

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  • 5 months later...

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