CSInvesting Update, Checklist Presentation By Mohnish Pabrai, How To Win In Investing, Leon Cooperman On How To Get Better, and The Benefits of Stress

I have finally found another company to do a full research article on and will have it up as soon as possible.  I am still doing research and waiting for its next quarterly results to come out this week so I can value the company with updated numbers so it will probably a little while until I write the article up.  Up to this point the company looks promising and as of its last quarterly results that came out in June, it is selling for less than the reproduction value of its assets, with about 50% of its value coming from cash and short term investments, and no debt.

CSinvesting update as John has now moved the blog over to csinvesting.org and the blog is up and running.  It also looks like the blog is going to become more focused on investing as well.

Checklist Presentation By Mohnish Pabrai from Hardcore Value where Mr. Pabrai uses examples from Graham, Buffett, Munger, and others to build a checklist.

“You Don’t Win By Predicting The Future, You Win By Getting The Odds Right” is another article from Farnam Street on how to win in investing.

Leon Cooperman On Hedge Funds, Investment Outlook, and Life, includes an hour long presentation.  Page is from Market Folly.

The Surprising Benefits Of Stress

Until next time.

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My Plan for Deliberate Practice, fixing a problem, and free books

I first mentioned a problem I have been having about how to budget my time in this post at the beginning of August.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading lately and I wanted to share my thoughts here to see if anyone has any input.

After my post on Aceto, which is now an article on Seeking Alpha for those who want to follow the discussion in the comments section, I went straight into evaluating another company.  It has been my first time in truly trying to evaluate a bank, and about half way through its annual report, I quickly realized that I did not know enough about banks or the banking industry to fully evaluate its prospects properly.

I finished up reading its most recent annual and quarterly reports, did a P/B valuation where I found the company to be fairly priced, and was going to do a full valuation and analysis write up like I have been doing. However, my evaluation up to this point is pretty poor, and I realized I need to learn more about banks and the banking industry before I do the write up.

I have been seeing a lot of sites lately talking about deliberate practice and how to constantly get better, and I have been trying to figure out how best to personally accomplish my goals, and here is what I have come up with so far.

My Plan For Deliberate Practice and How to Fix My Time Budgeting Problem

Here are my ideas so far.

1. I look at multiple companies as potential investment ideas on a daily basis, but I am fully committing myself to completely evaluating at least one new company every two weeks.  By fully evaluating I mean researching the company and its competitors, valuing the companies, evaluating its investment potential at this time, and writing an article about the company.  I think this will help me become a better investor on several levels: Thinking about and bettering my investment process, becoming better at putting my ideas into writing, better and more thorough investment write ups, and this will enable me to learn more about new industries and companies. Originally I wanted to fully evaluate a new company every week but that left little time for learning new things, which gets me to my second idea.
2. I have known for a while now that I have a lot to learn still but after my foray into the banking industry, I realized I needed to set up some more time where I would specifically be learning, instead of trying to write an article or research another company.  The remainder of the two week period after I have finished up my article(s), I will spend learning: New techniques, new industries, reading books, finding better ways to think, etc.
3. While I am researching and learning, I will again be posting more links that I think we all could learn from.
4. I would also really encourage you the readers to post some ideas on The Readers Investment Ideas and Analysis Page.  If you are not comfortable doing an entire write up, I would be fine with your stating which company you have researched and giving a few points on why they are a buy or sell at this time in your opinion.  Again, I do not care if you are a beginner or have advanced knowledge, all ideas are welcome.  Also the free book giveaway is still in tact so the first person to put an idea on the page will receive a free book from my collection, and I will also continue to give free books away to other investment ideas that are put on the page as well. That page is also for any questions anyone might have.  I want us to all learn from each other, and since I am relatively new to investing I hope some of the more experienced viewers give some of their advice.
5. I am giving you my email here as well if you would like to contact me for any reason.  I would be extremely excited to meet new people and discuss ideas or address any questions you might have in the privacy of email if you are not comfortable posting them on the site.  JMRiv1986@gmail.com

So far these are my ideas and I would like to hear your feedback on them.  I will be adding to, and tweaking the list periodically when I come across something that I think will help this process.  I will stick to the time frame as best as I possibly can, but will allow for some flexibility if some kind of issue, good or bad arises.

I am excited to see what kind of feedback I get as lately I have felt that my investment process has been lacking something that I cannot quite put my finger on.  I do feel that I have been getting better with every article I write and I am hopeful that I will find whatever it is that I think I am missing though my version of deliberate practice.

In the meantime I cannot wait to hear from you and to discuss your ideas and thoughts.

What I am learning, and need to learn to become better in the short term.

Over the past several days I have been reading annual and quarterly reports for a couple companies I am researching.  Tonight I am going to start reading some of the competitors annuals, and hopefully when I am done I will have enough information to value the companies and see where that takes us.

With the information in my previous post, and the experience I gained from that, I have gotten pretty good at spotting the bad companies and have been obviously staying away from them.  Too bad that is the easy part of investing.  Now I need to get a lot better at deciphering which companies are the good ones and which ones have the potential to become great, the ones with a so called Franchise.  I also need to get better at finding companies with legitimate, sustainable competitive advantages.

So for Father’s Day I got Bruce Greenwald’s Competition Demystified which will hopefully help me learn a lot in those two departments.

Those are my plans for the next week or so, now lets see how that plays out.