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.

• The Brooklyn Investor: So What Is Berkshire Really Worth (Part 1)
• The Brooklyn Investor: So What Is Berkshire Really Worth (Part 2)
• The Brooklyn Investor: So What Is Berkshire Really Worth (Part 3)
• The Brooklyn Investor: So What Is Berkshire Really Worth (Part 4)
• Shookrun.com: Buffett On Insurance.
• Losch Management: Insurance Float.
• Bronstein Report: Estimating Berkshire Hathaway’s Intrinsic Value.

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.

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Floats, Moats, My Plans For This Year, Starting An Investment Partnership, And Looking For Partners

More About Floats And Moats

I am going to be taking another week or so away from researching companies to concentrate on learning more about floats and moats, and then start applying some of the lessons I have learned, especially about float, to the companies I have already written articles about.  Directly below is some of the material I have been learning from.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On Circle of Competence, the Second Essential Filter.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On Management With Talent And Integrity, The Third Essential Filter.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On Margin Of Safety, The Fourth Essential Filter.

Read the book Repeatability and here is the accompanying site.  Would highly recommend the book as well as the site.  I also plan to read the authors other books as well.

NPR-Warren Buffett Explains The Genius Of Float.

Fool.com-Warren Buffett Plays The Float With Blue Chip Stamps And Private Jets….And Wins.

Seeking Alpha-Berkshire Hathaway Worth Its SALT 2012 Update, about float.

Seeking Alpha-Buffett On Insurance And Investing: Its About The Float.

Corner Of Berkshire And Fairfax-Munger On Deferred Tax Liabilities and Intrinsic Value.

These things along with the information on floats and moats that I have previously posted from the Fundoo Professor, are the types of things I have been learning from recently.  Now I am going to go back over all the companies I have written articles on to determine if they had any float and will report back to you sometime in the next week about my findings and then it is on to finding more companies to research.

I also found two fantastic blogs that I highly recommend going back and reading all of their blog postings.

Monte Sol Capital

Sahara Investing

Also Sahara Investing has recently published an article on Strattec, which is a company I own, and he came to a differing conclusion than I did and I wanted to share his fantastic article with you.

Plans For This Year

I am a very simple guy with simple wants and needs so I only have two plans and one goal for this year.

• Continue to learn something new and improve in every aspect of life every single day.
• To get completely healthy.

My one goal for this year is that by this time next year I want to have started my own investment partnership/hedge fund.

If any fellow value investors would like to collaborate on something like this please let me know as I have already started the process of looking into what I legally need to do to start an investment firm, I have already talked to my buddy who is a lawyer who said he will look into what exactly I need to do, and would be very interested to listen to any potential opportunities you may have thought of.

More Holiday Reading Links: Moats, Floats, Company Analysis, and Others

Gannon and Hoang On Investing-Unrepeatable Moats.

Csinvesting-A Reader’s Question On Niche Vs Moat and Greenwald Class Notes.  Make sure to read all the way to the comments as there is a very good discussion going on about moats there.

Fundoo Professor-Presentation on Moats and Floats.  Decided to post this again because it is so important.  Also read the comments section.

Fundoo Professor-All About Floats: Parts 1, 2, and 3.  Make sure to read the comments section as the discussion there goes quite deep into the inner workings of float.

Gannon and Hoang On Investing-Capital Allocation Discount.

ValueInvestingBlog.net-Audika Group: Can You Hear The Call Of Value.

Whopper Investments-$LAKE Update, The Bottom Has Fallen Out.

25iq.com-Charlie Munger On Moats (First Of The Four Essential Filters). Extremely valuable read for people learning about moats as I am right now.  Also contains a bunch of links to other Munger and moat information.

Gopal Gantayat-Evolving Competitive Advantages.

Psychology Today-Why Too Much Data Disables Your Decision Making.

Oddball Stocks-Thinking Like A Bond Investor.

Market Folly-Charlie Munger On The Psychology of Human Misjudgement.

Zenpenny-Here Is To The Downfall Of Micro Managing Portfolio Positions.

SMB Training-What A Star Portfolio Manager Can Teach Us About Improvement.

A Portfolio Update And Two Powerful Insights Every Serious Investor Should Read

Portfolio Update

Yesterday I made some adjustments to my portfolio and the portfolios I manage and I just wanted to update those positions.

Personal Portfolio and Portfolios I Manage:

• Bought Strattec Security Corporation $STRT

Personal Portfolio:

• Sold Altria $MO up 18%.
• Sold Philip Morris $PM up 24%.
• Sold Intel $INTC up < 1%, could have sold a while ago up 30%, doh!

All sold positions are after fees but before taxes.  I never bought any of the above three positions for the portfolios I manage and I bought Altria, Philip Morris, and Intel before doing any kind of valuations or any kind of in depth research so I am a bit fortunate to end up anything in those positions.

I said a couple months ago that I planned to hold the above positions for the foreseeable future because I felt that I could have my results compound well over time in all of the three companies.  I still think that is true for all of the above companies but have still decided to sell them all.  Lately I have been gaining confidence in my abilities to analyze companies, and I now think that I am at the point where I am getting pretty good at analyzing companies and think I can find better opportunities in the smaller mid to nano caps that I am concentrating on now.

Also as Red reminded me of the other day, why would I try to compete with the millions of people who are invested in and analyze those massive companies when I can find less competition, potentially less efficiency, and more upside, in the much smaller companies.

After selling those companies to free up cash for future opportunities, my current portfolio stands as follows, ranked by position size.  Portfolio does not add up to 100% because of rounding:

1. $VIVHY.PK-28% of portfolio.
2. Cash-26% of portfolio.
3. $STRT-16% of portfolio.
4. $MAIN-11% of portfolio.
5. $CMT-8% of portfolio.
6. $DOLE-8% of portfolio.

Two Powerful Insights Every Serious Investor Should Learn From and Reread.

Fundoo Professor-Presentation On Moats And Floats.

The Red Corner Blog-Kfaftwerk; A look at economies of scale and how Wal-Mart changed its industry and made a ton of money.

I hope you enjoy the above links as much as I have.

I have already started researching another company and tomorrow I will post some links and ask your advice on something I have been thinking about quite a bit lately.

Two Hour Buffett Interview, Loss Aversion, Ted Weschler, Toll Bridges, And Amit Wadhwaney on Martin Whitman

I am almost done with Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets and would highly recommend it to everyone.  It covers topics from history, politics, and the financial markets and gives you reasons why you should be skeptical of people in power and especially people who say their ideas will help better the world.

I should finish up the book today and then tomorrow it is off to researching companies again.  While I love learning new things and seeing ideas that I haven’t thought about before, I have become kind of a 10-K junkie and even though I have found the book very interesting and entertaining, my mind has been continually wandering thinking about companies I want to research and how to expand my knowledge about companies.  I think I am sick :).

Anyways on to the links.

Warren Buffet Two Hour Interview On CNBC from Valuewalk.

Selling Stock At A Loss and Our Loss Aversion Bias.  Very important lessons for investors.

Ted Weschler Rise From Grace Leads to Role Advising Buffett.  This is from Bloomberg and profiles Mr. Weschler, one of the people who might take over for Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway after Buffett steps down.

I Don’t Want To Be  A Toll Bridge, I Want To Be Its Meaning.  This is a very interesting article from the Fundoo Professor.  This is about Buffet’s metaphor about how he wants to invest in toll bridges, pay special attention to the discussion in the comments section as well.

Amit Wadhwaney on Martin Whitman.  This is an interview of Mr. Wadhwaney about Third Avenue Funds approach to investing.