Tidbits

[Sweet]

A thread for things which are interesting but which don’t warrant their own thread.  Might even produce actionable ideas.

 

Here is one - I’ve not verified the data:

 

Some of these companies I’ve never even heard of.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by Sweet

[ValueArb]

Is the list filtered for a minimum market cap?

[Sweet]

It’s limited to the SP-500

[Spekulatius]

I need the list for the next 5 and 10 years.

 

Here is a study on 10 baggers - it shows the importance of starting  multiples and market caps:

https://behindthebalancesheet.substack.com/p/a-blueprint-for-10-baggersy

 

FWIW, I think studies on 10 baggers are more useful than studies on 100 baggers because there are way more datapoints and also because 100 baggers are just 10 baggers that do it two times over.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Spekulatius

[dwy000]

16 hours ago, Sweet said:

A thread for something interesting which might even produce actionable ideas.

 

Here is one - I’ve not verified the data:

 

Some of these companies I’ve never even heard of.

 

It implies consistent long term growth but id suspect a lot of the gains for many of these were in a single 3-5 year span. I'm too lazy to research it but I wonder how many are on the 10 and 20 year list solely based on performance in the past 5 years. 

[Spekulatius]

2 minutes ago, dwy000 said:

It implies consistent long term growth but id suspect a lot of the gains for many of these were in a single 3-5 year span. I'm too lazy to research it but I wonder how many are on the 10 and 20 year list solely based on performance in the past 5 years. 

Yes, the best performers stock charts often look like Hockey sticks. I would like to see a study of how former 10 bagger have performed in a subsequent decade, preferably segregated by valuation buckets.

 

it would be interesting to see if the stocks that were 10 baggers in 2002 still outperformed the market in 2012 or the 10 baggers in 2012 outperformed in 2022 in aggregate.

[Spooky]

16 hours ago, Sweet said:

A thread for something interesting which might even produce actionable ideas.

 

Here is one - I’ve not verified the data:

 

Some of these companies I’ve never even heard of.

 

 

I would love a chart of the worst performing companies in the S&P 500 over the last 3-5 years.

[Saluki]

http://openinsider.com/

 

I check this site every few days.  It's more useful than Dataroma or the other popular sites because it will show which purchases were option exercises and which were bought using their own money. Nothing ground breaking, but if you ignore the small buys and see a large buy with an "M" for multiple next to it, that means that several insiders were buying, or one was buying on multiple days and it may warrant a further look. 

[Saluki]

For those that are interested in Shipping, this is a good channel, with very few followers: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/@CapitalLinkInc

 

You used to have to pay and travel to attend these events, but when the lockdown happened, they just posted them online for free.  Some of the videos have low triple digit views so the sector is underfollowed.  It's probably because they haven't made money in 10 years, but now a lot of money is being made in shipping and people are still having PTSD.  

 

My suggestion is not to binge watch, but pick a sector and then go through the videos of the conference where it's discussed.  VLCCs, Product Tankers, Container Ships, Drybulk, Offshore Wind, Offshore drilling, LNG, etc.

 

[Sweet]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-20-dividend-stocks-have-been-the-best-income-growers-in-the-s-p-500-fd6ccc26?mod=home-page

[Sweet]

buying home builders 

[Spekulatius]

4 hours ago, Sweet said:

buying home builders 

They did own GM for a long time. I bet they sold on the short surge up. I think it was T or T Holding not a Buffett one.

[Sweet]

Probably, I’m not sure much of what Berkshire buys and sells is Warren or Charlie anymore.  Hard to know what to make of the 13Fs now.

[ValueArb]

9 hours ago, Sweet said:

Probably, I’m not sure much of what Berkshire buys and sells is Warren or Charlie anymore.  Hard to know what to make of the 13Fs now.

 

Buffett historically does not want to have more than 10 positions in his portfolio. So my entirely unscientific guesstimate method is to assume anything over 10% is 100% Warren, and anything below has a likelihood of being Warren based on portfolio percentage divided by 10%.  So a 1% position is 90% Ted or Todd, and a 5% position is fifty-fifty. 

 

Because the portfolio is so huge now ($350B?) my theory might not even make sense. OXY is clearly a Buffett position and he started it at well under $10B or 3%. There are almost no stocks big enough for him to put 10% into without going over 10% ownership now that he's just had to change his approach.

[gfp]

18 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

They did own GM for a long time. I bet they sold on the short surge up. I think it was T or T Holding not a Buffett one.

 

They sold the GM on May 10th at $34.41 avg. per share.  Not at the top of the year's price range.

[whatstheofficerproblem]

The more I learn about the hedge fund space, the more I respect the S&P. One good capital allocator I know and admire personally, just throws everything in his retirement account into various indexes with SPY having the highest weightage. Never understood why he did that back then, but now I can't help but want to do the same. I must admit very honestly that the only reason why I wanted to get into the hedge fund business is so that I could become a better investor while leeching off of PnL, while doing risque stunts with my LPs money all the while throwing my bonuses into BRK, FFH and the likes.

 

Edited August 17, 2023 by whatstheofficerproblem

[Ulti]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fidelity-legend-peter-lynch-i-never-said-to-invest-in-the-stock-market-120755736.html

[Sweet]

Peter Lynch is great.

[Sweet]

Surprising:

 

[ValueArb]

 Not a huge sample size.

[Spekulatius]

4 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 Not a huge sample size.

Returns are hugely driven by 2019 and 2020 vintages , perhaps by the SAAS boom.

[Saluki]

I don't know whether that last strategy would fall under "spurious correlation" or the "sharpshooter fallacy". 

 

The Bangladesh Butter Indicator Says Buy! (forbes.com)

 

In a world where datapoints are infinite and now available at your fingertips, you can find correlations that have no predictive value. With infinity, you can eventually find things that match up by chance, like butter production in Bangladesh and SP500 prices.  And the reason that backtesting works flawlessly in theory is because if you shoot at a barn and draw circles around it, it looks like you hit bullseyes every time. 

 

 

My favorite line from the article: 

"Oh, and one more thing about Bangladeshi butter. Leinweber wrote in Forbes a few years ago that he still gets phone calls—20 years later—asking for current butter production figures."

[Saluki]

 

Since this is where tidbits go: 

 

Spurious Correlations (tylervigen.com)

 

My favorite is the number of letters in the winning word in the National Spelling Bee vs the number of people killed by venomous spiders. 

 

[Saluki]

Kurt Vonnegut's son is a doctor and also a writer like his father, but not nearly as well known. This is an essay in one of his books that gives you something to think about.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26lives-t.html

 

The less-toxic mushrooms make you very sick right away. With the ones that kill you, you feel fine at first, and then a few days later your liver dies, and you follow shortly thereafter. Feeling sick as a dog and having sweat pour off me so soon after my meal was a good sign.

 

It reminds me of Munger's quote about wanting to know where he was going to die so he wouldn't go there. I would guess the analogy here would be the less toxic stocks are the ones in secular decay (like Newspapers).  It can look like something good, but end up being a value trap and you will slowly lose money every quarter but will be okay once you figure it out and sell, as long as you didn't eat a huge dose of it. The ones that kill you are the ones like Lehman which look like they are doing okay for years and something inside them is killing them, and when it's obvious, it's already too late. 

[Sweet]

I think the smart glasses so far have been very underwhelming and I wasn’t surprised they didn’t take off.  But these glasses from Meta look like a big improvement and might actually be useful: