First Article Published On Insider Monkey

A few months ago I was approached by an editor at Insider Monkey to start publishing my articles on the site.  Of course I said yes because I love the information that is on the site and have used it regularly in the past when researching my some of my previous articles.

My first article was published on the site today for any of you out there who would like to view it.  The Proposed Going Private Transaction At Dole and Its Shareholders Fighting Back.  The same article that I posted to this blog last week.

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Article Update and Weekend Reading Links

I have finished up all three articles in my now shortened series and will proofread and do some light editing over the weekend and post them as soon as possible after I am able to acquire the shares I want.

Psy Blog-How Long To Form A Habit.

Hardcore value-Amazon, Apple, and The Beauty Of Low Margins.

Distressed Debt Investing-One Of Warren Buffett’s Greatest Trades.

CSInvesting-Video Lecture Course On Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor.

Share Sleuth-Finding Hidden Debt.

Can’t Eat Value’s Blog-What’s Your Investing Edge.

Oddball Stocks-Value Momentum, Speculating On Recovering Net Nets.

The Equity Desk-Benjamin Graham: An Investing Legend.

Ragnar Is A Pirate-Fraud, Bankruptcy, and Ethanex.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On The Psychology of Human Misjudgement.

Basehitinvesting.com

Wexboy-Why I Write…

The Globe and Mail-Article By GreensKeeper Asset Management Principle Michael McCloskey.

Distressed Debt Investing-My Three Favorite Quotes From Baupost’s 2012 Year End Letter.

Graham And Doddsville-Legacy Of Benjamin Graham.

Wexboy-The Great Irish Share Valuation Project Part IV.

GuruFocus-Answers From Tom Gayner’s Interview With Guru Focus.  Thanks for the link Obtuse Investor.

Sahara Investing-Triyards Holdings.

World Financial Review-Repeatability: How Companies Create Enduring Businesses In A World Of Change.

CSInvesting-More Valuation Case Studies.

An Update, New Translation Page, and Links

As you might have noticed at the top of the page is now a translation page where you can translate the entire blog into many different languages.  I found something similar to this a few days ago but could not get it to work on the blog so I enlisted the help of my brother and he got the translation page working, thanks a lot Kev.  This also means that the short-lived Mandarin Value Investing Journey is also not now needed and will be going away.  I am sure the 20 of you who visited the mostly untranslated site will miss it dearly :).

A quick update on where I am at with the process of my article series.  I have now finished up the first two articles of the series and as you know I had planned to write articles on one or two more companies and then do a conclusion article.  Two of the companies I was planning on writing articles on I have been asked not to by the person who recommended them to me because he is planning on writing articles about them.  I am still going to read those companies annual reports and other filings but will not be writing articles about them so this has turned into a three-part series covering the two companies I have already written articles about and the conclusion article where I decide which of them to buy.  I will hopefully have the whole series posted as soon as possible.

“Things do not happen–they are brought about by careful planning, diligence, application, and direction.”George Mecherle, Founder of State Farm Insurance.

Valueprax-This One Is Personal.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On The Importance Of Worldly Wisdom And Consistently Not Being Stupid.

CP-Africa.com-Meet 31 Year Old Ashish Thakkar-Africa’s Youngest Billionaire.

OTC Adventures-International Wire Group Is Cheap, But Is It Safe (ITWG)

Valuewalk-Baupost Group’s Seth Klarman Sees “50 Shades Of Value” In The Market.

Valueinvestingblog.net-CASA Holdings and Fiamma Holdings.

CSinvesting-A Reader’s Question On Case Studies.

Santangel’s Review-Benjamin Graham On Staying Small.

Motley Fool-Charlie Munger Info From A Board Poster.

Valueprax-Notes-Nintendo Back In The Saddle?

CSInvesting-Valuation Case Study HVAC.

OTC Adventures-Value Investing Strategy and Unlisted Securities Part 2.

CSInvesting-ValueUncovered Philosophy; Treat Everything As A Case Study.

Wexboy-2013: The Great Irish Share Valuation Project Part 2.

Credit Bubble Stocks-Horizon Kinetics, Owner Operators, and the Predictability Arb.

Fantastic Idea From Valueprax: Mandarin Value Investing Journey. 从Valueprax国语价值投资之旅的奇妙的想法。

As you know I have been learning Mandarin for the past several months and yesterday Valueprax and I were talking on Twitter yesterday and after telling him that I am learning Mandarin he came up with a fantastic idea.  He said that I should translate my blog into Mandarin to get myself out there further.  Up to this point I have not been able to find any Mandarin language value investing blogs so this is another way to get myself out there.  This will also help me learn Mandarin faster, get myself out there to potential value firms in Asia which may lead to potentially getting hired or at the very minimum hopefully gaining a new audience in Asia.

The new Mandarin language version of Value Investing Journey is below and I am currently undertaking the process of translating the entire blog into Mandarin so if you are curious what the blog would look like in Mandarin feel free to take a look.  If you know anyone who reads Mandarin and is interested in investing I would really appreciate if you could pass this link on.  Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

http://mandarinvijourney.wordpress.com/

你知道我一直在学习普通话在过去的数个月,昨天Valueprax和我聊天昨天在Twitter上后,告诉他,我学习普通话,他想出了一个绝妙的想法。他说,我要我的博客翻译成普通话,没想到却在那里进一步。这点我一直没能找到任何的普通话价值投资博客,所以这是另一种方式来让自己有。这也将帮助我更快地学习普通话,让自己有潜在价值,公司在亚洲,这可能会导致潜在的被聘用,或最起码希望在亚洲获得了新的观众。

新的普通话语言版本,以下是价值投资之旅,我目前正在进行的过程中,整个博客翻译成普通话,所以如果你是好奇,到底是什么东西的博客看起来像普通话随时来看看。如果你知道谁读普通话及有兴趣投资,我会很感激,如果你可以通过这个链接上。谢谢你,我希望你能喜欢。

Catching Up On Some More Links

Farnam Street-The World Is Much More Interesting Than Any One Discipline.

Wexboy-Tetragon Ready To Be A Star.

Sahara Investing-The Luxury Goods Market.

Oddball Stocks-Thoughts On Quantative Value Investing.

Valueinvestingblog.net-Investing In Japan: Late To The Party.

Valuewalk-Insurance Companies, Where Buybacks Are Key: Travelers.

Farnam Street-Mastery.

OTC Adventures-Value Investing Strategy And Unlisted Securities Part 1.

Whopper Investments-The Best Values Are Over The Counter Stocks So Is $OTCM A Great Value Too?

Ragnar Is A Pirate-Changing 13D’s At Trinity Place Holdings.

The Aleph Blog-On Insurance Investing Part 2.

Quotations Page-Persistence Quotes, my favorite is the Calvin Coolidge One:

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Absoutely love that quote.

Mises.org-Cartman Shrugged: The Invisible Gnomes and The Invisible Hand In South Park.

CSInvesting-The Secret To Investing Success (Munger Tip).

Valueconferences.com-Adib Motiwala: Your Instructor At Small Cap Investing Summit 2013, hour long interview.

Catching Up On Links

I have just finished up my newest article and just need to edit and proofread a bit more and hope to have it up soon.  Over the next few days I will be posting a bunch of links since I have gotten way behind on this while researching other companies, hope you enjoy.

Yahoo-Business Insider-The Story of a Man Who Outsourced His Work To China So He Could Watch Cat Videos All Day.

Forbes-The Great Baupost Madoff Claim Trade That Made a Big Madoff Feeder Fund a Loser Again.

Oddball Stocks-More is Better? How Much Information is Really Needed To Invest?

Four Hour Work Week-How to Travel Through 20+ Countries With Free Room and Board.  Cannot vouch for this yet as I have not tried it and it seems a bit sketchy to me but if it really works and is safe that is a potentially great idea for travelers.

Wexboy-Where Is the Credit Opportunity in 2013?

Shadow Stock-Illiquid Stocks For Outsized Returns.

Old School Value-The Harder You Work The Luckier You Get.

Rodkelly.com-30+ Quotes From Charlie Munger.

Outward Branch-Heart To Heart With Value Investor Theodor Tonca.

Business Insider-China Hard Landing Presentation. What If China Land’s Hard?

Some Links For The Week

Motley Fool-Monish Pabrai’s Lunch With Buffett and Munger.

Value Investing Blog-Alpha Pro Tech And The Value Of Optionality.

Cant Eat Value-Why You’re Undervaluing Good Capital Allocation.

Student Of Value-Investment Analysis Of Quality Products $QPDC The Mysterious.

Zero Hedge-Guest Post: A Short Lesson In Bad Decision Making.

The Daily Beast-Don’t Go To Business School!

Wexboy-The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part 1).

Oddball Stocks-CIBL is Undervalued Again, Is The Valuation Gap Enough?

Business Insider-Vitaliy Katsenelson Presentation On Why The Market Will Move Sideways For Another Decade.

Distressed Debt Investing-The High Yield Market “Is Completely Out Of Control”.

Philip Beeching-Why Companies Fail–The Rise And Fall of HMV.

Value Walk-Charlie Munger And The Art Of Stock Picking.

Sahara Investing-The Hour Glass.

OTC Adventures-Great Lakes Aviation Is Not Your Typical Airline $GLUX.

Grizzly Rock Capital-Why Selling Methodology Differs For Average Versus Great Companies.

Seraphin Group-When Do I Sell Stocks? Drawing Wisdom From Buffett To Zuckerberg.

CS Investing-Reading On Moats And Competitive Advantages.

Whopper Investments-Why Is Buying A Rising Stock So Hard?

Guru Focus-Geoff Gannon On How To Learn Everything You Need To Know About A Stock.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On Investment Concentration Versus Diversification.

How To Value Float, Book Recommendation, And An Update On What I Have Been Doing Including Info About The Potential Investment Firm I Plan To Open

More Float Info and a Book Recommendation

While I was beginning to write my UNAM article I realized that of all the learning I had done about float, I had not learned how to value it.  Below are some more sites that I learned from while I was putting my article together on how to evaluate and value a company’s float.  Some of the information and valuations made it into my UNAM article and a lot of the other stuff made it into my written notes.

Personally I would put these links on about on par with some of the other information on float I have learned about and posted on the blog from the Fundoo Professor and others, and I hope you learn something from them as well.

I cannot recommend The Davis Dynasty highly enough.  I wish I would have known about this book and read it when I had first started learning about investing and would put in on the same level as The Intelligent Investor, Security Analysis, Margin of Safety, and You Can Be a Stock Market Genius as some of my favorite investment books.

The Davis Dynasty is a book about the Davis family starting with the older Shelby Davis who started with $50,000 in investment funds almost at the age of 40 and turned it into approximately $900 million by the time he died.  His son and grandsons are now continuing his investment legacy and have continued to compound portions of that money still to this day, or at least when the book was published.  The book goes over the general family and investment philosophies and how they made so much money.  The older Shelby Davis made his money mostly with insurance stocks.  The younger Shelby Davis made most of his money with a mixture of financial, insurance, and other stocks.  The grandsons have continued the overall philosophy but have expanded out from the so called boring insurance stocks.

Again, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I have started to read The Farmer From Merna about how State Farm Insurance was started to continue gaining knowledge about the insurance industry.  After I finish this up I plan to look for another company to research.

Some Other Things I Have Been Up To

  • I am still learning Mandarin and at this point I have learned probably somewhere north of 2000 words or close to that.  Still amazing and I think this will definitely help me at some point down the road.
  • Nate (Oddball Stocks) and I were having a conversation a while back about how he read French value investing blogs to help him learn French faster so I decided to try to find some investing blogs that are in Mandarin to help me learn faster.  However, up to this point I have had only minimal luck so I have instead turned my latest article on UNAM into completely Mandarin text and thought I would try this out to see how this works.
  • I got some pretty good news from my lawyer friend about opening up the potential investment firm that I mentioned almost a month ago.  So far no concrete updates and I still have some more calls to make and digging to do, but at this point it looks like nothing should prohibit me from opening up a small investment firm.
  • I have started some work on an investor’s presentation so that when I do figure out things for sure I am ready to start contacting friends, family, and local wealthy people to see if they would like to invest.
  • I have been trying to get myself out there more still in the hopes of getting some kind of job offer, even if it is just someone who wants to pay me for my investment ideas until I open up the investment firm, so I have reapplied to the Value Investors Club.  Last time I applied I had to wait a few weeks to see my rejection letter.  Applied to SumZero and have already gotten an email back from them saying that because I do not have hedge fund/investment firm experience that I cannot join their site.  Started putting my articles on Guru Focus and my Brazil Fast Food article, the first article I have posted to GF, was named an Editor’s Pick.  So far nothing in the way of job offers but people generally say that they like my work a lot and that I do a really good job of laying out my analysis. I have a couple ideas that I may share in the coming weeks about some other ideas I have in this area as well.

Right now I am going to be finishing up The Farmer From Merna, then find another company to research, and keep doing the stuff above.  I will also probably post some more links here shortly.

Weekend Reading Links

I have just finished up my latest article and only need to proofread a bit more and I plan on posting it on Monday.  Until then I hope you enjoy the links.

Oddball Stocks: Argo, an Undervalued Asset Manager With Potential Catalysts.

Wexboy: Another Assault on Fortress.

Theodor Tonca: Bank Analysis Template.

Whopper Investments: Do Bullish Bloggers Have Negative Consequences?

Wexboy: Heading Into 2013.

OTC Adventures: Quality Products Inc, QPDC.

Walrus Value: Lance Armstrong And Why Superior Corporate Results Deserve Skepticism.

Ragnar Is A Pirate: Where Food Comes From, WFCF.

Hardcore Value: Vintage Buffett On Mistakes.

Charlotte Observer: Charlotte Student Launches Hedge Fund.

Sahara Investing: Kingsmen Creatives.

The Globe and Mail: Scary Beats Safe In Realm of Cheap Stocks.

Motiwala Capital: Q4 2012 Letter to Clients.

Oddball Stocks: How I Passed On Costar.

OTC Adventures: Tropicana Entertainment Is The Cheapest US Casino Operator.

Weekend Reading Links

Oddball Stocks-What’s Your Real Business? The National Stockyard Story.

Geoff Gannon Guru Focus-Always Use Normal Numbers.

Shares and Stock Markets-How To Value A Business Like A Professional Money Manager.

The Aleph Blog-If You Want To Be Well Off In Life.

The Meta Picture-Learn To Read Korean In 15 Minutes.

Geoff Gannon Guru Focus-What Is The Best Way To Learn Accounting?

Oddball Stocks-Investing Like A Lender.

Graham And Doddsville-The Value Investing Gene-Buffett, Klarman, and Evolution.

The Guru Investing-Small, Illiquid, and Cheap: A Winning Combo.

Greenbackd-Quantative Value: A Practitioner’s Guide To Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors.  Have not read the book yet but plan to.

Micro Cap Club-Alter NRG Corp: Disposition Case Study With Ending Unknown.

Businessweek-Ryan Morris, 28-year-old Activist Investor.

Gannon And Hoang On Investing-My Investment Process.

OTC Adventures-Calloway’s Nursery $CLWY.

Aswath Damodaran Musings On Markets-Acquisition Accounting II: Goodwill, More Plug Than Asset.