Weekend Reading Links: Klarman, Munger, Buffett, Valuation, and Learning

The new company I was researhing turned out to be another bust after valuation.  I found the Australian company to be in a range from fairly valued at the high end of my intrinsic value estimate to overvalued by as much as 70% from my low estimates of value and have decided to not do any further research on it at this time, especially since its margins were not very good either.

For now I am going to be reading some books over the coming days and then its back to searching for more companies to research.

Seth Klarman On Leadership.  This video is from ValuePrax and contains some very valuable insights from the reclusive Klarman.

Charlie Munger Lecture at the Harvard-Westlake School.  This interview is from Santangel’s Review and contains Mungers thoughts on the recent financial crisis.

Alice Schroeder On How Buffett Values a Business and Invests.  This is yet another article from Greg Speicher that contain Ms. Schroeder’s thoughts on how Warren Buffett looks at business.

Valuation: Valuing Growth and the Petersburg Paradox.  This is from Csinvesting and the page also has some links to papers that talk about different things valuation related.

I Learned To Speak Four Languages In a Few Years: Here’s how.  This is a write up from LifeHacker about the techniques that helped the author learn four languages in a relatively short amount of time.  This is fascinating to me because I have always wanted to learn a new language and have recently started learning a bit of Spanish.

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New Blog, National Western Life Analysis, Stretching Yourself To Learn New Things, Notes From Meeting Value Investor Mohnish Pabrai, And CSInvesting News

After yesterdays detour and the help from your comments in the comments section, I will now get back to posting links.  A big thanks to all readers who helped out yesterday clarifying the situation, I really appreciate it.

The Red Corner Blog.  For those of you who might not know, Red has been very helpful to me in the past on Whopper Investments blog, and more recently on this site as well.  I recently found that he has his own blog where he analyzes and values companies.  His work is exceptional and I highly recommend that everyone visit his site, especially if you need help with the more technical aspect of evaluating companies, which is an area where I currently struggle.  He also answers a lot of questions from readers as well so make sure to read the comments on his writings as well.

Student of Value has come up with another great analysis piece, this time on National Western Life, as always highly recommended.

Stretching Yourself To Learn New Things is another great write up from Farnam Street.

Notes From Value Investor Mohnish Pabrai is from Perfect Research that contains Mr. Pabrai’s thoughts on a wide range of topics in investing.

I wanted to let everyone know who might be clicking on the CSinvesting links I have, that I got an email from John the other day after noticing that his site is down currently.  He said that he is currently in the process of moving his blog to a self hosted site, while also recovering from surgery.  Get well John, no need to rush back after major surgery.

I am still struggling to find another company to research and hope to find one soon.  I suspect that I am not alone in finding it hard to find companies to research since the market has been going up quite a bit?

Why Smart Brains Make Dumb Decisions, Learning, 5 Reasons To Doubt My Analysis, Munger On Deferred Tax Liabilities And Intrinsic Value

I have found another company to look into and I am going to start reading its annual report today.  I will update you if I think the company is worth doing an entire article on.  Now onto the links.

Why Smart Brains Make Dumb Decisions is an article from the New York Times detailing what makes our brains over and underestimate the amount of danger involved in a task.

When It Comes To Learning Depth Beats Breadth and What’s The Best Way To Begin To Learn A New Skill are both quick thoughts from Farnam Street about learning.

5 Reasons To Doubt My Analysis is an article from Old School Value, written by Daniel Sparks of ValueFolio, about why we should all doubt other people’s analysis, and why we should all do our own analysis when it comes to making investment decisions.

Munger On Deferred Tax Liabilities and Intrinsic Value is a very technical discussion on those two topics and how to incorporate some of the information into valuations.  The site also has a couple links to Seeking Alpha articles on the subject as well.  I have to admit that some of the stuff goes over my head and the highly technical aspect of investment analysis is an area where I know I need to get a lot better at.

Up next will be some more links until I decide whether I am going to do an entire write up on the company I start researching tonight.

Warren Buffett’s Alpha, Student of Value, Making Mistakes, Free Session on Investing, and A New Blog

Chasing Warren Buffett’s Alpha is an article from the CFA Institute about Warren Buffett’s performance since 1976 to 2011 where they try to determine what has made Buffett’s performance over that time period so special.  This article also contains the link to the original paper about the conclusions that the writers came to.

Yuri Gagarin ($4PX:BU) is another fantastic valuation and analysis article from Student of Value.  Pay close attention to how he thinks about the company.  As always the way he thinks about things and presents them is amazing to me.

Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them is an article from Psychology Today with lessons that I wish I would have learned in my teenage years instead of only recently.  I used to be so afraid of failure that I never tried new things. Only over the past 4 years or so have I started to try a lot of new things.  Trying new things, and making mistakes, has not only made me a vastly better investor, I think it has also made me a much better person as I have been able to improve in every aspect of my life.

Free Session on Global Value Investing click on the interview transcript link for the free download of the interview.

I found a new blog that looks very promising, I hope you enjoy, and if you do enjoy the blog I recommend following him on Twitter @SilvioDixon. http://instant-genius.info/

Next up will be my valuations and quick thoughts on the rest of my portfolio from before my transition to actual investing and what I am doing now.

Your Investment Ideas and analysis, and a chance for a free book

Readers Investment Ideas and Analysis Page

I set up a new page just for you the reader to put your investment ideas, valuations, and analysis.  Here is the link for the page and the description is below.

This is going to be a place where you can put some of your ideas, valuations and analysis.  I do not care if you are a complete novice or run a hedge fund.  I want this to be a page for discussion on how we can improve all of our thinking and analysis.  If you are new to valuation and analysis of companies and do not feel confident in what you are writing yet, feel free to remain anonymous.

This page is going to be a page of improvement and learning so feel free to ask any questions you might have about any investing topic.  Also you should feel free to give your feedback on others ideas.  Readers should also feel free to question, challenge,and critique other peoples ideas.  Critique needs to be constructive, and as positive as possible.

I will also post some of the best ideas and analysis on the main feed of the blog.  If I have your permission I will even post some of the best on my Twitter and Facebook feeds to get you some recognition.

If over the next week several people post their analysis, valuations, ideas, and/or critiques I will randomly select one and send you a free book from my collection.

Let the ideas start flowing.

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.