I thought that I would look back at some of my past investments, before I started my blog and before I began to journal the investment thesis for purchases I make, and document some of my reasons for the purchase, and the outcome. Of course I’m working on an outcome bias here, but I think it’s worth writing out some history lessons that I should keep in mind as I look for future businesses to invest in the future. The first look back will be one of the best investment returns I have made by investing in Marvel Enterprises...
Critical Look at using DCF for Valuations
Professor Damodaran has written a ton of articles about Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis over the years. I don’t think another website has as much information about valuation and DCF as on his blog – so it is a wonderful resource to visit and use for investors. His latest blog post on DCF which defends the use of DCF as a valuation technique is a good topic. Many investors have discredited the use of the DCF technique and Damodaran tries to initially cover some of these myths and focus on the critical use of DCF in valuing companies. It...
Company Turnarounds are Hard
Our conclusion is that, with few exceptions, when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact – Warren Buffett Turnarounds seldom turn. – Warren Buffett I’ll admit that I am interested in finding companies that are in a turnaround. I feel that if I can locate a company that will be successful, it will result in a high return on my investment. However, if you are experienced in the markets, or have worked for a company that is in...
100x The Power of Growth in Wealth Creation
Thanks to Ian Cassel from MicroCapClub for tweeting out a link to a paper produced by Motilal Oswal which is a study on companies that have gone on to become 100 baggers within that past 5 years. A 100 bagger is a company whose share prices as increased 100 times the initial price, or in other words, the company has experienced tremendous growth that has translated into tremendous share price gains. A really great paper analyzing 100-baggers H/T @Anil_Tulsiram http://t.co/Qcoj5cq7Rx Wish someone would do this here in the US #investing — MicroCapClub (@iancassel) December 16, 2014 100x The...
Critical Change within Value Investing?
Last month Barron’s published an article by Brendan Conway named Value Investing goes Back to the Future. In the piece, Conway goes on to try to establish the premise that value investors have changed from using historical prices or backward-looking measures to more risky forward earnings or forward-looking measures. What exactly is value investing? Value investors buy attractively priced stocks, but there are backward-looking measures, as well as forward-looking ones. Lately, the forward measures are winning, and that fact tells an interesting story about what’s driving investors. When value investors start to use forward-looking measures, I immediately begin to...
Are Markets Efficient? – Comments by Howard Marks
Howard Marks’ latest memo is a good read and discusses two very interesting topics 1) Role of luck in investing and 2) Are market efficient? I’m not going to cover the role of luck in investing in this post, but I do believe luck plays a role and luck happens to people who position themselves to take advantage of it. Market Efficiency The theory of efficient markets makes sense, as the more freely and quickly information flows, the market can incorporate that information instantaneously always providing “accurate” pricing using the latest information. However, humans still play a role in the...
Find the Metric
I was first introduced to the idea of finding the one (maybe two) most important metric that means the most for a particular company when I was attending SMU pursuing my MBA. I took a personal investing class that was taught by an adjunct professor and it was one of the top classes that I took. He didn’t cover the standard financial and portfolio theory that you hear in traditional finance classes. Instead, he ran his own investment outfit and used was in the investment group that owned the Texas Rangers with George W Bush. I learned a lot...
Investment Checklist Reading
I’ve collected a list of blog posts related to value investment checklists. I thought I might aggregate all the posts that I have saved and put them in a blog post in case other investors would like to review other investor’s checklists’. Portfolio 14’s Investment Checklist Frank Voisin covers Bruce Berkowitz’s Investment Checklist Guest Post on Old School Value – 40 Point Checklist Ben Graham Investment Checklist ...