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.

Advertisement

Third Article Posted To Guru Focus Is My Third Editor’s Pick

Unico American Corporation: A Company I Would Love To Own Outright.

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.

• 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.

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.

 

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.

Weekend Reading Links From Geoff Gannon, Oddball Stocks, The Value Perspective, Farnam Street, Pick The Brain, and Others

While I have to go back over all of the annual, quarterly, and proxy reports of the company I am researching to get my notes back on the article I am preparing to write, here are some weekend reading links.

Benzinga-Cash Flow Sheninigans: Salesforce.com Edition

Value and Opportunity-Gronlandsbanken AB: Sleepy Eskimo Bank, Or Moat Company With Natural Resource Option

The Value Perspetive-Value Investors Distinguish Between Safety And The Perception Of Safety

25i1.com-Charlie Munger On Mistakes

Oddball Stocks-A Profitable Cash Box Or A Cash Box With Profits?

Pick The Brain-3 Ways To Reduce The Chances That You Are Deluding Yourself

Geoff Gannon-What’s Your Investing Routine?

Farnam Street-The Role Of Skill And Luck

Farnam Street-What We Suffer From Today

The Value Perspective-Investors Are Often Unable To Visualise Potential Upsides For Struggling Sectors Such As Retail