What Would You Like To See In My Upcoming Value Investing Book? Asking Me Questions, Starting To Research Again

Before I get too serious about thinking about the advertising and marketing of my upcoming value investing book I wanted to ask you if there was anything specifically you wanted to see talked about in the book?  Maybe something you wish would have been in other books about value investing that you would want to hear about?  At this point I still have time to add things and I will seriously consider any of your suggestions if they are not in the book already.

I have just finished up the second full revision/edit of the book and as of this time it looks like the book will end up being around 200 pages in an eBook format.  This of course is without any of your suggestions and will likely change before the book is released.  It was a lot longer originally as I have since cut several entire chapters to remain as concise and information packed as possible.

Once I hear some of your suggestions and weigh whether or not to include those into the book I will release detail on what the book is about and the title.

Also if there are any questions you have wanted to ask me for a while feel free to ask them as I would be more than glad to answer them.  They do not have to be investing related questions either.  I would love to share more about myself with you all and would love to hear some of your stories as well.  I will also take requests of any companies that you would like me to possibly write an article on as well since I have been drawing blanks while trying to find any interesting or undervalued companies lately.

Up next: Putting some of my advertising/marketing ideas into practice, setting up a site for the book, setting up a preorder page, continuing to revise and edit the book further, implementing some of your ideas into the book, finding a designer for the book cover, and I have also begun researching companies very slowly again.

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Excerpt From My Upcoming Book About The Proposed Going Private Transaction At Dole and Dole Shareholders Fighting Back.

I have finished up writing the main transcript of my book and have done one full revision and edit of the book.  I have sent the book off to some family members and a couple recently published investing authors to get some feedback on things that I could be doing better.

After receiving some feedback from those sources, (Thank you all so much!) I am in the process of going back over the entire book to make improvements.   I wanted to release this portion of the book right now to you all because I have talked about Dole quite a bit on this blog and I wanted to share my full thoughts about the ridiculous situation at going on at Dole right now.

It appears that a lot of Dole’s current shareholders agree that the buyout offer at $12 is ridiculously low as its own shareholders have been suing the company to stop the low ball going private transaction offer.

Below are just two of the many articles about Dole getting sued for the proposed transaction.

Levi & Korsinsky Notifies Investors of Claims of Breaches of Fiduciary Duty in Connection With Going Private Proposal From Company’s CEO

More cases against Dole board say Murdock bid too low

Directly below are two pages from my upcoming book where I talk about the transaction. Please feel free to leave any comments or concerns you have about the actual excerpt from my book or the proposed Dole transaction as I would love to converse about either.  Also keep in mind that I still have a lot of editing and revising to do if you find any grammar or editing errors.

“As I have been writing, editing, and revising this book, Dole’s Chairman Mr. Murdock has put in an offer to take the company private once again like I thought that he may do so I wanted to write my thoughts on the ridiculous offer being given to Dole shareholders.  I did think that Mr. Murdock may have wanted to take the company private again but what I didn’t expect was the manipulation of the company’s stock price in my opinion before that happened.  Shortly after Dole sold its worldwide operations to Itochu Dole management began to do some very strange things.  The value of its land holdings, that Dole management themselves estimated to be worth around $500 million when they were getting ready to sell their worldwide operations to Itochu, suddenly stated that they thought their land now was worth only around $250 million only a few months later.

This was shocking to me and led to me sell the stock I owned in Dole in my personal portfolio and the portfolios that I manage because I figured that Dole was doing something untoward to try to get the value of its shares down so the company could be taken private again at a cheaper valuation.  One of my followers on Seeking Alpha and I actually talked about this and both came to the same conclusion that something fishy was going on.

After selling my shares in Dole due to the above situation I stopped paying attention to the company all together to concentrate on the research of other companies until it came out that Dole was planning to do a massive buyback of its shares.  I thought this was a very good thing for them to do since I found the company to be very undervalued when writing my second article on them so I started to look into them a little bit again.  Before I could do even minimal research into the new situation at Dole though its management made another very strange decision.  A few days after Dole announced that it was going to buy back $200 million worth of its shares it changed its mind and all of the sudden decided to update its fleet of container ships instead and canceled the proposed share buyback program.

Of course this sent the share price falling and again led me to believe that its management was trying to manipulate the share price lower so that it could be taken private at an unreasonably low valuation.

Unfortunately it turns out that I appear to have been right because a month or two after Dole decided to cancel its proposed share buyback program to instead buy new container ships, which of course sent the share price lower, Mr. Murdock announced that he was putting in an offer to take Dole private at $12 a share.

Mr. Murdock brought Dole public in 2009 at $12.50 a share so this in and of itself is ridiculous since the company is much more financially stable now than it was then due to getting rid of its giant debt load.  In my opinion this entire situation from the changing of the estimated value of its land by 50% shortly after announcing that they thought it was worth $500 million, announcing the proposed $200 million share buyback and then a few days later canceling it, and then Mr. Murdock attempting to take the company private again at an incredibly low valuation should be investigated.  If Dole is allowed to be taken private at $12 a share, which it probably will because Mr. Murdock at my last check still owned 40% of the company, then the company should be investigated for manipulating its stock price.   If the company is taken private for a paltry $12 per share then its remaining shareholders are getting screwed.

If a situation like this happens to a company you own be very careful, trust your research, trust your instincts, and get out of owning the company if you think you need to.  There are a lot of other companies you can spend your time researching and owning rather than spending your precious time and capital having to worry about whether a company’s management is going to screw over shareholders.  Dole’s current shareholders are fighting back by suing the company and I wish them good luck because the proposed buyout offer is ridiculously low.”

Update On My Value Investing Book, Discount For You Loyal Readers, Company Research, Another Baby Girl, and Dole Shareholders Getting Screwed.

I have been spending the bulk of my time lately getting ready to move, getting ready for another baby girl coming in late October, and writing my book.

We are staying in the same area just getting a bigger house to accommodate our growing family but packing and doing house related things to get ready for closing on both of our houses on the same day later in June, yikes, has been taking up the majority of my time in recent weeks.  Excited but also cannot wait until we are moved and settled in so things can start slowing down again and I can start working on me and my brothers business and researching companies more.  I have been researching companies very slowly but up to this point I am finding everything to still be overvalued.  The search continues though and I hope to pick up steam again after I move and get the book finished.

I am done writing my book and am now onto the editing and revision stage.  So far I have gone through the introduction and six chapters and am getting very excited.  While I was writing the book I was just trying to get the main transcript done without concentrating much on how good it actually was.  Now that I am able to read through the transcript as I am editing and revising it I am getting very excited because I think I will be able to help a lot of people become better investors faster and I cannot wait to release it to everyone.  I hope to have most of the editing and revising of the book done by early July and hope to release the book sometime in the mid October to mid November time frame.  I also plan to release a chapter or two online before the book comes out as well.  Of course if I get picked up by a publisher these things will likely change but if I self publish the book on places like Kindle and others than that is the time frame I am shooting for.

As a thank you to the loyal readers of this blog, my followers on Twitter and Seeking Alpha, and my Facebook friends I also wanted to let you know that if you follow me on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or Seeking Alpha that you will be getting a 25% discount off of each package I am going to offer for my book.  The same discount is going to apply to anyone who mentions this blog or the upcoming book on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit as well.  If you want a discount when the book comes out make sure to # or @ me on Twitter, get my attention on Facebook, or email with the link where you mentioned this blog or the upcoming book as I will start to keep a list of everyone who has helped me promote this book and who has supported me while I was just getting started.  I also plan to offer an even bigger discount or prize of some kind for the person or people who help promote the book the most but have not come up with a solid idea for that yet.  Again this is all dependant on what a publisher would want to do if it comes to that but this is what I want to do.

I also want to let everyone know that we will be welcoming our second baby girl to this blog in late October whose name will be Kailani.  My family is one of the main reasons I have decided to write a book because I would like to find a way to start making some money from my investment writing so for every book package you buy.  Every book you buy or help promote will help support my family and keep continued free content on this blog, and it will be immensely appreciated.  I would like to keep most everything on this blog free except for the book and some other premium content I have planned and any help you can offer would help support that.

Yesterday news came out that the majority owner of Dole, Mr. Murdock, was attempting to take Dole private again at $12 a share.  Dole came public at a price of $12.50 a share a few years ago.  After some of the things that Dole management has done in the past few weeks from saying their land suddenly wasn’t worth as much money, to saying they were going to do a buyback, then a few days later not doing a buyback, to this low ball buy-out offer I am very glad that I got out of Dole when I did.  I figured that something fishy was going on when they said that some of their land suddenly wasn’t worth as much money as they thought and had a conversation with one of my followers on Seeking Alpha about how something funny was going on and how management might be trying to lower the price of the stock so they could take it private again.  Unfortunately it appears that I was right because by my conservative estimates Dole is worth somewhere between $15 and $22 a share.  If Dole management is able to pull this off and only take the company private for $12 a share then there should be an investigation into what management has done over the past month or so as its shareholders are about to get screwed.

I will continue to update happenings on the book and if I find a company to write an article on but until I move later this month posts will continue to be few and far between most likely.

Remember if you follow this blog, me on Twitter, Facebook, or Seeking Alpha you will get a discount on my book when it comes out so please share this with as many people as possible so they can get the discount too, thank you.

Until next time.

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things, My Investing Book, Sold $STRT Up 75%, And What Have I Missed?

Since my last post almost two months ago now my brother and I have been working very hard in our business Black Hills Tech Solutions so I have had almost zero time to look at the stock market since then.  We are doing relatively well so far and are working on building a company’s website right now.  Okay well my brother and his buddy are doing the bulk of the website building since I have no idea how to do any of that.

I have also gotten off of my allergy shots, which have made me feel quite a bit better consistently and have also been forcing myself to take time off from things and relax every once in a while.  I do not know which has helped me the most but I have not been sick in about two straight months since I have started the above and have generally felt pretty decent most of the time.

Since I have been feeling better, (i.e not getting sick all the time mainly) and since I have had a bit of free time with less going on at the business I have had some time to fill my want/need to research companies, learn about investing, and work on my investing book in the past week or so.

In the past week so far I have finished up another two chapters in my book and tonight I will start on another chapter.  I also have been looking for a company to start research on but have thus far had no luck.  It seems that the market has continued to get even more over heated in the past couple months as a week ago I took cursory looks through about 250 companies to potentially do research on and the only ones I found to be even a little undervalued or interesting were Chinese nano caps.

If you have been following this blog for a while you know that Chinese small caps terrify me because of the fraud, misreporting, lying, etc and that I lost a lot of money on them when I first started investing.  Suffice it to say that if I am not comfortable buying into Chinese small caps that I won’t consider even looking into Chinese nano caps.

I have also sold out of Strattec (STRT) in the portfolios that I manage due to it reaching the higher end of my valuation range and I sold out up 75% since December when I originally bought into them.  If, and more likely when, the market crashes I will definitely think about buying into them again as I still really like what they are doing now that they have fixed the bulk of their problems and their management.  The portfolios that I manage are now sitting around 55% cash because of how overheated I think the market is.

I will continue to look for a company to do research on and continue working on my book and hope to post again a bit more regularly now that we have slowed down and settled in a bit more at the business.

Having said that I now ask you if there are any links, websites, articles, etc that have come out in the past couple months that you think are fantastic.  I pretty much blacked everything investing related out in that time frame to concentrate on opening and starting the business so I am sure I missed out on some pretty good information.  I would very much appreciate it if anyone has anything to share that you think I would like to learn from and might have missed in the past couple months and would really appreciate if you were able to share some of those with me.

Until next time.