Parsad Posted October 4 Posted October 4 4 hours ago, Ver said: Hah the skepticism! I have no reason to make any of this up. Anyway the original person mentioned is Duan Yongping. Of course he's known, he's even Buffett and Li Lu's friend. That was without leverage, and the number is being conservative based on public data. Naturally the returns fall over time once assets grow into the billions. But to keep it simple, when you start with $2-3M and grow into a few tens of billions in 22 years of your own money, even with injecting some new cash in between you're still going get a very big annual return number. Nor is it such an outlandish figure either. Buffett beat the Dow by 35-40% before he started managing other's money, though he did use a large bank loan. We'll never know what his real returns would have been if he never managed outside money. Reece Duca did significantly better than that, albeit with leverage, and he's only done one public interview ever. There are assuredly many more who stay below the radar and only manage their own money. The top 0.1% or whatever of investors will have outstanding results, this should hardly be surprising. The question is how to best use and learn from this with limited time and attention. The extreme answer being like the mother mentioned in the OP, trusting and rigidly copying them. That's the interesting part, like what Gregmal shared. Buffett is one of one. Most people who would have said the same thing about a young Buffett, that you said about Duan, would have received the same response. Buffett also did it over decades at such a high level in various market conditions that it is a record that probably will never be matched. Entrepreneurs who start a business and become the richest in the world...sure. But to create an investing framework that could be easily emulated, albeit with less success than Buffett for most, is something we will probably not see again. One of one! Cheers!
villainx Posted October 4 Posted October 4 8 hours ago, Ver said: Hah the skepticism! I have no reason to make any of this up. Anyway the original person mentioned is Duan Yongping. Of course he's known, he's even Buffett and Li Lu's friend. That was without leverage, and the number is being conservative based on public data. Naturally the returns fall over time once assets grow into the billions. But to keep it simple, when you start with $2-3M and grow into a few tens of billions in 22 years of your own money, even with injecting some new cash in between you're still going get a very big annual return number. Nor is it such an outlandish figure either. Buffett beat the Dow by 35-40% before he started managing other's money, though he did use a large bank loan. We'll never know what his real returns would have been if he never managed outside money. Reece Duca did significantly better than that, albeit with leverage, and he's only done one public interview ever. There are assuredly many more who stay below the radar and only manage their own money. The top 0.1% or whatever of investors will have outstanding results, this should hardly be surprising. The question is how to best use and learn from this with limited time and attention. The extreme answer being like the mother mentioned in the OP, trusting and rigidly copying them. That's the interesting part, like what Gregmal shared. This is EXACTLY what a scam Nigerian email would say.
BG2008 Posted October 4 Posted October 4 9 hours ago, Gregmal said: Related in a way to this subject, there are people I am very familiar with, who if they’ve done the work on something and it’s new to me, I will give that a lot of weight in terms of how quickly I can put an idea in the actionable category. For instance, GRIF was a @BG2008 special. It’s a microcap real estate name which is my bread and butter, so when my man was getting a hard on for it, I was able to do minimal work to verify on my own, and then largely jump in aggressively knowing BG is an animal on the due diligence front and if it passed his inspection, I would be good. And it turned out how I expected it to, almost to a T. So I’d say you need to have personal thresholds, but also go with instinct and find shortcuts, especially if you’re a one man/small operation type of investor. Conversely there are people who if they own something I just immediately write it off lol. I think awhile ago someone joked if @thepupil, @BG2008, @Williams406, and @Gregmal all were involved in a name, it was money. I think that criteria is still batting a thousand. Greg, Extremely kind of you to call us out on this. Seems like the large cap MF REITs also worked this time around. Although, I have not been as vocal about MAA and CPT on COB during this time. But I do remember us talking and just felt that it was a obvious 15-20% IRR over 4 years. I want to mention @realassetsvalue who has also contributed a ton to real estate/hard asset research. I love comparing notes with him. Any name in his portfolio is worth my attention. I can be a bit autistic with my deep dives. I don't do it on every company, just don't have that kind of bandwidth. But when I do find a name, I can get really autistic with my DD. For shits and giggles this is what I know about some of the RE names that I've talked about JW Mays - This is a life insurance policy on the CEO, he likes horses and is rarely in the company. They don't give a rats ass about shareholders. I made a lot of money on it, but they don't give a F. Objectively, I was right about the asset value, but I was totally wrong about the people. That's probably why the real estate god decided that I was not going to make much money in Laaco. GRIF/INDT - Great capital allocator, great operator in the CEO Michael Gamzon, that was a big delta in info. Every capital allocation decision by him has been a homerun. Selling land in CT to 1031 into Lehigh in 2009, what a genius move. I spoke with Mario Gabelli at Liberty Investor day one time and he's not happy with them. Mario just wants more buybacks. This is the best example of when letting a competent CEO build warehouses and 1031 the land into new markets is a home run. Gamzon even asked his father-in-law to step down and put Gordon Dugan on as Chairman. What a legendary CEO that did the right thing for shareholders. I spoke with Gordon and he's a special cat. He can command attention from institutional allocators with a snap of a finger. That's the kind of halo you build when you 6 bagger returns for shareholders. MNPP - the board is a mess, the board meetings is hilarious and the amount of tension and infighting is crazy FRPH - Just solid people with the best hard assets that you can own. They will return capital to shareholders one day. That aggregate biz is awesome. No they don't need share buyback for this to work. Stop asking me. If you are so inclined, join the earnings call and ask them for a buyback or a dividend. I would prefer a dividend. CPT - Probably the most rational large cap MF management team. I always get incredible insights talking with them at NAREIT every year CLPR - Universally unliked by REIT mafia types, leverage too high etc. David is well known as tough. There are some real haters out there. But they were smart to lock in 10 year fixed rate mortgages, not collateralized. We'll see what rates are in 2-3 years when they have to refi. But they did not get blown up unlike a lot of RE GPs doing value add deals in the Sunbelt. I think JJ, the son and CFO, is really smart and competent. They have also changed their business model to do ground up development in Brooklyn. The 2 recent projects have been homeruns expected to stabilized to 7% cap rate. If they can keep doing that I will keep owning the stock. Also, the Griffin family used to own 20% of Altria IIRC but a playwright uncle thought they were way too diversified and told them to sell the stake. They used to own one of the brand that was sold in a stock deal and wind up with that large position in the company. There was a 300 page book on Amazon that I read and actually a decent history of the cigar biz vs tobacco. It is incredible how different the long term (decades) return of cigars vs cigs. Cigars are celebratory and cigs are daily doses that you need. They winded up with all that land in CT because they used to grow Connecticut shade tobacco on it and I've been up there with my pregnant wife at the time to see the old leaf drying barns. OMG, I am so autistic as I type this out. Anyway, I was tracking Gamzon's track record and I noticed that every time they build a warehouse and leased it up, they were getting crazy returns in the equity deployed. It works like this. Buy land for $3mm (200ks sqft @ $15) in LeHigh, build for $12mm ($60/sqft) and lease up and the property became worth $120/sqft or $24. All the cost was financed with construction loans or maybe just 10% equity. Equity pre construction is either $1.5 mm or $0. Post stabilization, equity is worth $9mm. It was kind of insane in 2019 when Blackstone was buying up portfolios everywhere and were seeing deals getting done at $100 almost every month. Yet, $GRIF was trading at 60% of that. It was pretty crazy. Ahh, the good old days. Rant over. Anyway, I keep pounding the table. $FRPH is really cheap right now and you have the Fed cutting rates which will act as a boost. The Verge and Chelsea warehouse will be near term catalyst as they add $7mm of pro-forma NOI to the company in the next 1-3 quarters. They have not really talked about Fort Myers and Brooksville. Part of the reason is because the current CFO was at the trucking business so they weren't showing comps. Now that he's back and they are starting to price out the infrastructure for Fort Myers, it will get talked about on the calls. All a sudden something that was not in their $38 bullish NAV model will be talked about and you heard here, I think it's worth about $5.5 dollar in NPVs that was not in their model at all. P.S. My best real estate ideas are usually the ones where I've owned it for 4 years, by which I am fairly exhausted and most COB members are probably thinking "here we go again, BG2008 is again talking about this RE idea that isn't working" That's usually when the spring is loaded and the best returns will be coming from. Come to think of it, this was the case for Laaco (the one that got away), GRIF was around 3-4 years, CLPR did well, then got down to mid $3 (I bought in 2020), so there comes an exhaustion point where I'm tired of owning a name and the COB members are probably tired of hearing me talk about a name, that's a pretty good entry point FWIW, I bought FRPH in 2020 at about $20 per share, great performance in the 21, but 22, 23, and 24 have been relatively flat. Again that 4 year mark and little bit frustrated. But there's usually when the discount between NAV and price widens out and it's great entry point. Basically, "My pain and exhaustion is your pleasure" Have fun with it ladies and gents.
Spekulatius Posted October 4 Posted October 4 (edited) 9 hours ago, UK said: https://13f.info/13f/000108514624003861-h-h-international-investment-llc-q2-2024 US holdings: AAPL:) Is there any way to know how his total portfolio looks like? Roughly 90% of the portfolio is in Apple and Berkshire. This won’t outperform the SP500 by 30% without changes. I want to thank the @Ver for posting. Yeah, seems a bit scamy first, but this fellow Duan Yongping seems worth tracking. Looks like he made a boatload of money in Apple and Kweichow Moutai. Edited October 4 by Spekulatius
BG2008 Posted October 4 Posted October 4 On 10/2/2024 at 6:27 PM, Ver said: One of the best investors in the world has publicly posted his moves in real time for the last 10-15 years, while also candidly chatting about companies. This is someone who's beaten the SPX by over 30% annually for a couple decades. Would you be willing to abandon your own investing and simply copy his (few) moves? This isn't cloning one position each from a variety of above average or well-marketed investors, but genuinely outsourcing all thinking to one exceptional person, including portfolio allocation. The combination of abandoning decision making but retaining the execution is a different phenomenon than handing over the money to a fund manager, which is entirely passive. If no, would your answer change if your mother or wife — smart but without experience in business or finance — precisely copied his moves and killed your returns year after year? The above is a real-life example. Not saying there's a right or wrong answer but psychologically it is interesting, in addition to the greater environmental factors that make this even possible. That being investing is a game where amateurs can beat professionals beyond indexes, where a housewife can outperform 99% of fund managers with minimal effort and stress. *Before anyone brings up buying Berkshire, this is different: a) Buffett is managing other people's money, causing him to be extremely risk averse and less focused on maximizing long term returns than if he was managing his own b) Significant age and AUM difference c) Buffett's moves are 13f delayed and he doesn't talk candidly about companies I will inject a little nuance into this conversation. If the investor only invest in nanocaps, no. Absolutely no. I don't want to call out any one. But there are a few investors with very impressive long term track records. Some of them even write a paid substack. A lot of those companies are cigar butts. I suspect a lot of the performances come from writing them up and getting the readers to buy it. Categorically, I don't think the nanocap stuff should be followed. I talk about mostly subscale RE companies. Come to think of it By contrast here are the illiquid RE names and what happened to them 1) Blackstone bought FRPH's warehouse portfolio for $359mm, original EV was sub $300mm when the thread was created. But FRPH kept another $300-350mm of assets. 2) GRIF/INDT was bought out at $67 per share plus divvies along the way 3) Laaco was bought out at a stupide price 4) Preferred apartments was bought out at a huge premium by Blackstone again thank you @Gregmal 5) Blackstone is rumored to be buying ROIC, that's a pretty good one. Probably make 15-20% IRR over 3 years just on its own even at today's price. If it gets bought out, I think it gets done at over $20 very $15.50 today. By my own admission, I think MAYS fits into that cigar butt category for me. I talked about it and in hindsight, the mgt was total crap. I think someone like Ian Cassel and Jason Hirschman are doing great work. Yes, they invest in nanocaps. But they are specifically looking for nanocaps that has the potential to grow into $500mm to even over $1 billion businesses. They are not looking for an one time rerate. I have a lot of respect for them. Chris Hohn is really good. He did sell out of Univar which I bought at about $12 and then it got bought out by Apollo for $36 IIRC all 1 or 2 years. I'll always have that story to tell. But he's really really good.
BG2008 Posted October 4 Posted October 4 8 minutes ago, Spekulatius said: Roughly 90% of the portfolio is in Apple and Berkshire. This won’t outperform the SP500 by 30% without changes. I want to thank the @Ver for posting. Yeah, seems a bit scamy first, but this fellow Duan Yongping seems with tracking. Looks like he made a boatload of money in Apple and Kweichow Moutai. Kind of funny that I knew about Duan like 15 years ago
Spekulatius Posted October 4 Posted October 4 55 minutes ago, BG2008 said: Kind of funny that I knew about Duan like 15 years ago That’s a participation trophy in investing. A potentially valuable piece of information that one doesn’t use and makes no money with. I have plenty of those.
thowed Posted October 4 Posted October 4 10 hours ago, Ver said: Hah the skepticism! I have no reason to make any of this up. Fair dos! It was just funny that you didn't give a name, and then seemed to have disappeared! To answer the OG question, I mean, no, I wouldn't copy someone else completely. But as per Greg's answer, I have certainly been influenced by a small number of people, a few of whom are on this board. Sometimes it's investor letters. Sometimes it's Twitter. And it takes some time, for me anyway, to really feel confident in a person, and even then I won't follow them blindly, but if they mention something, I'll take a look at it and work out if I want to look at it in more depth. And sometimes where there's a triangulation i.e. it's liked by a few different people I respect, ideally who have different styles, then that's a good sign. Everyone has their own research style - for me, I like as many different data points as possible, Qual and Quant. Anyway, thanks for mentioning this guy, he is an interesting character (though given the others who have done it, I am not a big fan of people who lunch with Buffett, which is probably unfair!). Interesting that he chose to retire in the US too. Fascinating that he posts on social media - and I note that he was talking about going hard into Tencent in the Summer, which was a pretty good call (as of now, and it remains my benchmark China company in terms of decent governance, though this comes from others, I'm not an expert). n.b. It seems as though his early record was from a few big bets? i.e. he was at college with the Net Ease founder, so knew him & backed him, and then through him met the PDD founder. Maybe I'm being churlish, but this is not the sort of investor I'd generally follow, as there is arguably an element of luck in knowing the right people and leaning in, rather than having a repeatable analytical investment process. But still, kudos to him.
BG2008 Posted October 4 Posted October 4 34 minutes ago, Spekulatius said: That’s a participation trophy in investing. A potentially valuable piece of information that one doesn’t use and makes no money with. I have plenty of those. Spek, I love you and your direct talk. But man, that was a gut punch! LOL Is this your way of showing brotherly love? FYI, you're like the Asian dad/mom who says it like it is!
UK Posted October 4 Posted October 4 1 hour ago, BG2008 said: Spek, I love you and your direct talk. But man, that was a gut punch! LOL Is this your way of showing brotherly love? FYI, you're like the Asian dad/mom who says it like it is! I like this/his style of talk:))
Spekulatius Posted October 4 Posted October 4 I think most investor who make a lot of money make it with a a few great bets. @BG2008 Now that I read my post again, it comes across a bit more acidic than I intended. I hope you won’t hold it against me. i will buy you a beer or two, if we ever meet face to face. My post does contain a morsel of truth.I have some participation trophies in investing I can brag about too, like looking at HANS before it became a MONSTER. I even tested out their product at that time, which were natural fruit juices in cans. I did nothing and knowing this stock doesn’t even buy me a drink. That was in 2002 just before they launched the Monster energy drink. There is hoping I am going to be better next time I find a similar situation, but quite frankly, I am not sure. Investing is hard.
UK Posted October 5 Posted October 5 5 hours ago, Spekulatius said: I think most investor who make a lot of money make it with a a few great bets. @BG2008 Now that I read my post again, it comes across a bit more acidic than I intended. I hope you won’t hold it against me. i will buy you a beer or two, if we ever meet face to face. My post does contain a morsel of truth.I have some participation trophies in investing I can brag about too, like looking at HANS before it became a MONSTER. I even tested out their product at that time, which were natural fruit juices in cans. I did nothing and knowing this stock doesn’t even buy me a drink. That was in 2002 just before they launched the Monster energy drink. There is hoping I am going to be better next time I find a similar situation, but quite frankly, I am not sure. Investing is hard. I did the same with this company some 15-20 x ago, when it was still called Hansen, but Monster was already an obvious hit:). I owned some KO at the time and was quite familliar with the soft drink/beer industries...but generally at anytime by looking back some 5 years I realise how stupid I was in one thing or another (and not only in investing). Somebody said that this is great as it a sign of progress and continues improvement, but then I can not stop thinking, what future stupid things I am doing presently:)))
Ver Posted October 6 Author Posted October 6 On 10/3/2024 at 6:35 PM, UK said: https://13f.info/13f/000108514624003861-h-h-international-investment-llc-q2-2024 US holdings: AAPL:) Is there any way to know how his total portfolio looks like? It should be Apple, PDD, Maotai for the rmb assets (capital controls), Tencent. He mentioned last month before the China surge that he tried to buy PDD and Tencent heavily. He does sell puts/covered calls with Apple at specific times. There's a lot outside of H&H, as that is just one holding vehicle. In 2018 he said Apple was 90% of his assets, I presume not including the PDD angel ownership which was 3.77% in 2020, minus dilution. Anyway the reason I made this was I recently heard about the scenario I alluded to the OP: a successful entrepreneur/investor's mother copied Duan rigidly for many years and has killed the former's own good returns. That got me thinking, both for myself and what I recommend to friends who ask for advice. On 10/4/2024 at 3:57 AM, thowed said: Fair dos! It was just funny that you didn't give a name, and then seemed to have disappeared! To answer the OG question, I mean, no, I wouldn't copy someone else completely. But as per Greg's answer, I have certainly been influenced by a small number of people, a few of whom are on this board. Sometimes it's investor letters. Sometimes it's Twitter. And it takes some time, for me anyway, to really feel confident in a person, and even then I won't follow them blindly, but if they mention something, I'll take a look at it and work out if I want to look at it in more depth. And sometimes where there's a triangulation i.e. it's liked by a few different people I respect, ideally who have different styles, then that's a good sign. Everyone has their own research style - for me, I like as many different data points as possible, Qual and Quant. Anyway, thanks for mentioning this guy, he is an interesting character (though given the others who have done it, I am not a big fan of people who lunch with Buffett, which is probably unfair!). Interesting that he chose to retire in the US too. Fascinating that he posts on social media - and I note that he was talking about going hard into Tencent in the Summer, which was a pretty good call (as of now, and it remains my benchmark China company in terms of decent governance, though this comes from others, I'm not an expert). n.b. It seems as though his early record was from a few big bets? i.e. he was at college with the Net Ease founder, so knew him & backed him, and then through him met the PDD founder. Maybe I'm being churlish, but this is not the sort of investor I'd generally follow, as there is arguably an element of luck in knowing the right people and leaning in, rather than having a repeatable analytical investment process. But still, kudos to him. Fair, guess I need to be more active! He was an extremely famous Chinese entrepreneur before investing so he was able to meet with Ding Lei through that. A young Colin Huang was introduced to him after that, but Duan basically handpicked, mentored and invested in Huang, even giving him key access to his own company (BBK's) resources long before PDD. That kind of selection and mentoring is a huge avenue for value-add. Kind of like what Charlie did with Li Lu, but ideally earlier on before they even had a chance to prove themselves.
UK Posted October 6 Posted October 6 (edited) 50 minutes ago, Ver said: It should be Apple, PDD, Maotai for the rmb assets (capital controls), Tencent. He mentioned last month before the China surge that he tried to buy PDD and Tencent heavily. He does sell puts/covered calls with Apple at specific times. There's a lot outside of H&H, as that is just one holding vehicle. In 2018 he said Apple was 90% of his assets, I presume not including the PDD angel ownership which was 3.77% in 2020, minus dilution. Anyway the reason I made this was I recently heard about the scenario I alluded to the OP: a successful entrepreneur/investor's mother copied Duan rigidly for many years and has killed the former's own good returns. That got me thinking, both for myself and what I recommend to friends who ask for advice. Fair, guess I need to be more active! He was an extremely famous Chinese entrepreneur before investing so he was able to meet with Ding Lei through that. A young Colin Huang was introduced to him after that, but Duan basically handpicked, mentored and invested in Huang, even giving him key access to his own company (BBK's) resources long before PDD. That kind of selection and mentoring is a huge avenue for value-add. Kind of like what Charlie did with Li Lu, but ideally earlier on before they even had a chance to prove themselves. My goal is to make money and to have a great time, rather than to be very original, contrarian or what not, so personally I do not have shame or ego problems to copy or borrow an idea from anyone, but I use this (perhaps stupid sometimes:)) extra filter: I must understand it myself and it should make sense for me in the first place. I had some expensive lessons (IBM or even small position in ZINC:)), from copying more blindly:). I used to look for a new ideas from managers I would not be very afraid to give my money to manage. They should have a good long track record, most of their personal wealth in the same portfolio and their process should make sense to me. The list is getting shorter and shorter though (not least because of the performance criteria) and these days I also find more of either good cross confirmations or even initial ideas here on COBF. Viking and FFH 2022. Parsad and META 2022 Greg and JOE 2022. And so on. Or just recently, ERF idea was brought up in this board, but I think I heard about it from Sequoia initially and also our beloved MW participated:). Or I think Greg first wrote about RTO recently, while Peltz, whom I follow from the old days, was already on board. I also know a few good investors personally and I am ready to dig for their next big idea at any time. But I think everyone should find what works for him and what he is comfortable with. Edited October 6 by UK
villainx Posted October 6 Posted October 6 1 hour ago, Ver said: He mentioned last month before the China surge that he tried to buy PDD and Tencent heavily. Copying Duan Yongping? Sounds more like he's been lurking around this board! Amirite?
BG2008 Posted October 7 Posted October 7 On 10/4/2024 at 5:57 PM, Spekulatius said: I think most investor who make a lot of money make it with a a few great bets. @BG2008 Now that I read my post again, it comes across a bit more acidic than I intended. I hope you won’t hold it against me. i will buy you a beer or two, if we ever meet face to face. My post does contain a morsel of truth.I have some participation trophies in investing I can brag about too, like looking at HANS before it became a MONSTER. I even tested out their product at that time, which were natural fruit juices in cans. I did nothing and knowing this stock doesn’t even buy me a drink. That was in 2002 just before they launched the Monster energy drink. There is hoping I am going to be better next time I find a similar situation, but quite frankly, I am not sure. Investing is hard. Spek, You're a great guy. Hope to get a few drinks in the near future! I've come to appreciate your "cut to the chase" comments. Yes, investing is hard and yes that was a participation trophy for me.
Paarslaars Posted October 8 Posted October 8 (edited) On 10/4/2024 at 4:09 AM, Gregmal said: I think awhile ago someone joked if @thepupil, @BG2008, @Williams406, and @Gregmal all were involved in a name, it was money. I think that criteria is still batting a thousand. Fine, I'll give in and buy FRPH. Edited October 8 by Paarslaars
Longnose Posted October 8 Posted October 8 On 10/3/2024 at 8:09 PM, Gregmal said: Related in a way to this subject, there are people I am very familiar with, who if they’ve done the work on something and it’s new to me, I will give that a lot of weight in terms of how quickly I can put an idea in the actionable category. This is how I view copying. For people on this forum, other forums, and 13F's, and personal friends. I have mental profiles of people who I respect. I profile their risk tolerances, specialties, valuation methods, style of investing, and holding periods. Then this allows me to short cut the vetting process on companies that these people own. One of the things I love about investing is it's a lot like poker. You can have the same winning hand and how you play the hand really dictates your returns. Even our shameless cloning friend Mohnish, that everyone on this board LOVES lol, acknowledges this. Listen to his things about him and Spier with the Fiat Chrysler investment and holding periods and such. Spier got a much better return because he didnt sell when Mohnish did. In one of the other threads. I dont remember who it was that was lamenting on another thread on COBF. But they talked about how they had been regularly trading in and out of apple over the past 10-15+ years and if they had just bought and held it they would have had substantially better returns.
rogermunibond Posted October 8 Posted October 8 Has anyone looked at Chris Hohn's latest add of FER (Ferrovial)? Pricing power on major toll road projects thesis?
WFF Posted October 9 Posted October 9 Since y’all are talking about Duan Yongping, an msn article (in Chinese) he shares his thoughts on Moutai, Tencent and PDD. He uses call and puts to lower his basis. overall I think the temperament part, the people in this forum is above average. I don’t think is anything that this forum doesn’t know, but in case anyone is interested
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