Catching Up On Links

I have just finished up my newest article and just need to edit and proofread a bit more and hope to have it up soon.  Over the next few days I will be posting a bunch of links since I have gotten way behind on this while researching other companies, hope you enjoy.

Yahoo-Business Insider-The Story of a Man Who Outsourced His Work To China So He Could Watch Cat Videos All Day.

Forbes-The Great Baupost Madoff Claim Trade That Made a Big Madoff Feeder Fund a Loser Again.

Oddball Stocks-More is Better? How Much Information is Really Needed To Invest?

Four Hour Work Week-How to Travel Through 20+ Countries With Free Room and Board.  Cannot vouch for this yet as I have not tried it and it seems a bit sketchy to me but if it really works and is safe that is a potentially great idea for travelers.

Wexboy-Where Is the Credit Opportunity in 2013?

Shadow Stock-Illiquid Stocks For Outsized Returns.

Old School Value-The Harder You Work The Luckier You Get.

Rodkelly.com-30+ Quotes From Charlie Munger.

Outward Branch-Heart To Heart With Value Investor Theodor Tonca.

Business Insider-China Hard Landing Presentation. What If China Land’s Hard?

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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.

Update and Links From Mark Lin, Oddball Stocks, Guru Focus, Farnam Street, ValueFolio and Old School Value

The most recent company I was researching turned out to be another no go as I found it to be overvalued at the low end by as much as 30%.  Since then I have turned my attention to Dole and have been getting my updated article on them prepared.  I have already written a portion of the article and with Dole releasing its most recent results later today I should be all good to go and have the whole article up by early next week.

Until then here are some links.

The One Thing That Can Kill Your Portfolio

ROE, ROIC, and CROIC

All Roads Lead To Rome: Bridging the Graham Buffett Divide

Alternative Information Sources

Analyzing Working Capital-The Key To Successful Investing In Net Nets

Why Net Cash Is The Most Misleading Indicator Of Balance Sheet Strength

Characteristics of Value Stocks and Value Traps

The Principle of Incomplete Knowledge

Charlie Munger…..”If I Were Teaching Business School”

Psych Plays and Bayesian Probability

Weekend Reading Links

With all the research I have been going lately I have gotten way behind on posting links so here are a bunch that I think are very good.

Atul Gawande: Excellence Is Recognizing Details, Failures

The Price Of Paying Attention

How Not To Run A Hedge Fund: Geoff Grant Edition

Advice From Jeff Bezos

How Did R.A. Dickey Master The Knuckleball

Jason Zweig Interviews Seth Klarman

How Did I Come Up With My 16 JNets

What Drives Operating Metrics?

Free Ebook: 115 Profitable Investing Ideas

How Buffett Made Money In Bad and Volatile Markets

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.

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.

What I have been doing, my portfolio, Coaching, Selling, Facebook valuation, Michael Mauboussin, and Winners and Losers

Update on what I have been up to

Recently I have been catching up on some reading; investing books, websites, blogs, etc, which is why I have been posting a lot of sites that I think we could all learn something from.  I hope to finish up the book I have been reading in the next few days, and then it is back to searching for some more companies.

I have been struggling in trying to find the proper balance between learning new things and researching companies.  It seems like I always wish I had more time for both.  If any of you have any tips on how you strike a balance between the two it would be very much appreciated if you could share them.

My Portfolio

Another reason I have not been researching new companies lately is because I have been thinking about my portfolio and what I need to do to free up some cash.  I missed out on Dole because I was fully invested and could not get any cash into my account in time which led me to thus far miss out on the almost 40% uptick in the stock price since I originally wrote about them.  I am glad that there was cash in a couple of accounts that I manage and that I was able to buy it for them, but it made me realize that I need to become more concentrated in my own portfolio, get rid of some of the older companies I bought when I was doing very minimal research, and free up some cash.

In the next few days I will be talking about some of the decisions I have come to.

Some more links for you

Coaching a Surgeron is an article from The New Yorker that asks questions like “If professional athletes have coaches why don’t we all?” It is an incredibly valuable article that any person who wants to become better at any walk of life should read.  It is quite a lengthy read but well worth the lessons that it contains.

How to Think When Selling Stocks is a write-up from Jae Jun over at oldschoolvalue.com.  I wrote a post about a week or so ago about how I was struggling with some of my sell decisions and this is one of the things that actually helped me come to some decisions about my own portfolio.

Ten Reasons Winners Keep Winning, Aside From Skill is an article from the Harvard Business Review blog.  Most of the reasoning is talked about in several other books and websites, but it never hurts to review them and think about them again.

Share Repurchases From All Angles is a write-up from Michael Mauboussin and Legg Mason Capital Management that discusses share repurchases from different perspectives, how management thinks about them, the pros and cons of share buybacks vs dividends, and how they affect the company and shareholders.

This is the Short Call on Facebook, Targeting a $4 Share Price is a mini valuation and analysis of Facebook from SumZero.  The author explains why he thinks Facebook is still overvalued and why he is shorting the stock at this time.

Something every investor should read.

Found this on Twitter since I follow Jae Jun of oldschoolvalue.com.  He has put together a digital magazine that lists the best investment websites, blogs, podcasts, research sites, screeners, etc.

The 30 page magazine is completely free and all you have to do is tweet about, or Facebook the link to download the magazine.

The best thing about this aside from it being free and the quality, is that it has shown me a lot of websites I have never even heard of.  Hopefully a lot of fertile grounds for investment research.

I hope you all enjoy

Digital magazine link

Great post I found. Also an update.

Here is a great post from oldschoolvalue.com, hope you enjoy.

I have just finished the annuals and quarterly reports from Chiquita, and Fresh Del Monte, Dole’s biggest competitors.

I am putting together a series of posts on those three companies.  Which one could be the best buy for a spot in the long term portion of my portfolio without the spin off possibility, or if any of them are good enough to fit that profile.

I have also started Competition Demystified and can tell I am going to learn a lot from it.  I can’t wait to get farther into it and start applying the principles to the stocks I research.