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.

 

Advertisement

Happy Holidays, Thank You To Everyone, And Some Holiday Reading Links

Happy Holidays And Thank You To Everyone

I have just finished up my most recent article and plan to start buying the company’s shares on Monday.  Until I am able to buy the full allotment of shares that I want for my personal portfolio and the portfolios I manage, I am going to hold off on posting the article.

Over the next two weeks I am going to completely stop evaluating companies to take a break and concentrate on spending some time with family and catching up on some reading and learning that I have been meaning to do.  I plan to study floats, and competitive advantages/moats over that time.  I already have some books and a bunch of websites and articles that I plan to read on those subjects, and a bunch of other articles that I have been saving to read so I should be kept pretty busy and will continue to post links of things that I think contain some kind of valuable information.

I also plan to post an end of the year update on my overall progress so far this year, an update on how the companies I have bought into this year have fared since buying them, and an update on how the companies that I have written articles about, but have not bought, have done in the time since my articles were published.

I would also like to thank everyone who comes to this site for their interest and I hope you enjoy the journey thus far.  A very special thank you to the people who have commented on this site and to everyone else who have helped me become a much better thinker and investor over the last year.  I very much appreciate all of the help I have received since starting this journey four years ago and especially since last February when I actually dedicated myself to this.  Thank you all very much.

Holiday Reading Links

In case some of you get sick of spending too much time with family and friends over the holidays : ), below are some more links to keep you occupied.

Red over at The Red Corner Blog has been posting quite a bit lately and once again I would highly recommend reading his entire blog.

Gurufocus-Tweedy Browne Letter To Shareholders.

The Reformed Broker-Forget Fairness, Let’s Talk About Stupidity.

Unlistedstocks.net

Oddball Stocks-Announcement of Unlistedstocks.net.

Whopper Investments-Could a Red Flag for Excessive Executive Compensation Be An Opportunity In Disguise.

Gannon And Hoang On Investing-Relativity and Anchoring.

Greenbackd-Active Engagement With Companies To Improve Governance And Strategy Outperforms Passive Investment.

Epicurean Dealmaker-Goodwill Hunting.

Adventures In Capitalism-Gearing.

Aswath Damodaran’s Musings On Markets-Acquisition Hubris: Overconfident CEO’s and Compliant Boards.

Seeking Advice, Offering My Services, And Sharing Links

Seeking Advice

If you have ever read the goals page on this blog you know that I plan to open up my own investment partnership or work at a value fund as an equity research analyst as soon as my health gets completely better.

My health is still not completely better so opening my own firm will have to wait, and unless I can get an outsourced research analyst job where I can stay at home that also will have to wait a bit longer.

Thus far I have sent emails to some value investment firms showing them my work in the hopes of becoming an outsourced research analyst for their firms and have so far received no replies.  Thinking about getting some packets together and sending physical information to them because I am sure these firms get hundreds or thousands of emails per day.

As I have been gaining experience, knowledge, and confidence in my ability to analyze companies, I have been looking more and more into what I can possibly do to make some money while I wait for my health to get completely better.

So far I have come up with two ideas while I wait to open my firm:

1. Starting some kind of research firm where I could sell my ideas and analysis articles to value investment firms, or work for them from home doing research on specific companies that they want me to look into.
2. Some kind of consulting firm where I could offer my services to local businesses offering to analyze their businesses to see where they could maybe cut costs, and give them some ideas about how they could become more profitable.

So far I have gone over the various pros and cons of both and wanted to ask if any of you have any experience doing either of those two ideas above, what those experiences have been like, and if you might be able to offer any advice about potentially starting one of those firms.  Also if you might have any other ideas of how I could put my knowledge to use while I wait for my health to get better please let me know.

If any one of you are looking for someone who loves to research and dig deep into companies please let me know as I would be very interested in learning about your company and hearing those opportunities as well.

Any advice or help would be very much appreciated as I think I could be an asset to companies and help make them money.

Weekend Reading Links

Greenbackd-The Brick Valuations and Analysis Report.

Oddball Stocks-The Problem With Linear Thinking.

CNN Money-The Best Investor You Have Never Heard Of.

Geoff Gannon at GuruFocus-What Is Your Investing Goal?

Geoff Gannon at GuruFocus-How Would Warren Buffett Invest If He Was Starting Over Today?

Farnam Street-General Failure.

Old School Value-How To Invest In The Stock Market-Reflections.

Barel Karsan-Insight Into A Buffett Moat.

Microfundy-Buybacks Vs Dividends.

OTC Adventures-IECH Corporation.

Portfolio Update And Links From Old School Value, Charlie Munger, Greenbackd, and PsychCentral

Today I am going to value the company I have been researching to see if it warrants further research and a full article, I will update you about what I figure out.

I also sold out of my entire position in Vodafone (VOD).  My valuations and brief analysis can be found in this post from last month.

I bought Vodafone before doing valuations of any kind and only minor research and again I paid the price.  I bought at too high of a price in my estimate and it would have been very difficult to make money due to my high cost basis.  In the link above I also give some other reasons why I was thinking about selling, which are ultimately why I decided to sell my entire portion of the company.  I sold my stake in Vodafone up about 2% after commissions.

That brings the cash position in my portfolio up to 17% and for now I am going to hold onto it and will let you know when I redeploy some of the cash I have built up.

To the links.

Two links from Old School Value; the first one is How The Cash Conversion Cycle Can Help You Pick Winners and Losers.  The second gives you 52 Techniques to Spot Fraud.  Both contain extremely important lessons.

How Reading Lights Up Your Mind is from Psych Central about the effects reading has on your brain, very fascinating.

Charlie Munger on Google’s Moat-It’s Huge…Probably Widest He’s Ever Seen is another great post from Greg Speicher’s blog.

Greenbackd on Hunting Endangered Species.  The link contains his 15 page strategy paper on “Hunting Endangered Species: Investing in the Market for Corporate Control.”  The link also contains links to some of his other papers.