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.

Questions For You All And Some Observations About Insurance Companies

I just stopped researching what is probably the tenth insurance company I have done at least cursory research on and I have come to a few conclusions after looking at insurance companies of all sizes.  I stopped research on this company because of its massive underwriting losses again.

1. UNAM is the only company I have looked at that has had consistent consecutive underwriting profits for almost a decade now.
2. The best companies besides UNAM have generally only had underwriting profits for 3 out of the past 10 years.
3. Almost all of the other companies have had consistent underwriting losses over the past decade.
4. Underwriting losses have generally gotten worse over the last few years.

Having noticed all of this I realized in my previous UNAM analysis write up that maybe I was making things too complex and wanted to ask your opinion on the matter.

1. How truly difficult is generating consistent underwriting profits over the almost past decade during a soft insurance market which is what UNAM has done?
2. Are the other insurance companies managements complete morons or are UNAM’s management and discipline just exceptional?
3. Should the consistent underwriting profit override the low ROE and low investment returns at UNAM?

Also just out of curiosity, does anyone else find researching insurance companies and other financials tedious with the amount of lawyer talk and useless crap that fills the pages of the annuals and quarterlies just to make sure they do not get sued?

Looking forward to some discussion on this topic.