2 years of valueandopportunity.com – Thank you very much !!!
Exactly 2 years ago, Valuematze and I got our first post online, the German version of our investment philosophy.
Since then a lot of things happened, among others, Valuematze went “professional” after a few months. I then started to write mostly english language posts from November 2011.
So after 680 posts and 2000 comments it is a good time to have a quick look back as well as forward
Some numbers:
– 680 posts or ~ 0.8 per day
– 2000 comments
– in the first month, December 2010, the blog had 309 views in total for the month
– since then, the blog had around 260 k visits, currently around 500-800 views per day
– on a typical day, ~30-50% of the readers are still German readers, followed by US, UK, France and Switzerland
The Top 10 posts over the last 2 years are:
1. WFG Anleihen-interessant oder lieber finger weg
2. “Risk free” rates and discount rates for DCF models
3. Kurzanalyse Prokon Genußrechte
4. Exotic securities-detachable GDP linked Greek warrant – valuation-approach
5. Piquadro SpA – Competitors, market analysis and strategies
6. (Hard Core) Opportunity Investments: WestLB 2011er Genußscheine
7. Exotic securities: “Detachable GDP linked Greek warant” (ISIN GRR000000010)
8. Operating Leases – Bewertung und anstehende Änderungen (IFRS 17)
9. Praktiker Anleiheprospekt – “Poison Pill” gegen potentielle Übernehmer
10. Quick check: Vivendi SA – Seth Klarman “Cigar butt”
Interestingly, only one of my successful investment ideas (WestLB) made it into the top 10. People seem to be more interested in popular “grey market” investments (WGF, Prokon), high profile cases (Praktiker, Greek GDPs, Vivendi/Klarman) and general issues (risk free rates, leasing).
As I am not a financial journalist, I will still focus on (long) investment ideas. Looking at bad investments (and frauds) is also some kind of hobby of mine, but usually one gets a lot of negative comments and from time to time even “not so nice” emails from lawyers. Nevertheless, I think this is some kind of “community service” to the investment community I will try to provide in the future.
Why I blog
For me, the main purpose of this blog is to have a kind of journal which helps structuring my thinking and provide some immediate feedback.
It is a very different thing to just have a half baked idea and trade compared to writing it down, publishing it and defending it against critical comments. Also with books for instance, I found it extremely helpful after reading them, to summarize the content in a “book review” post.
So one of the big benefits of writing this blog is that I approach my investments much more structured way than I did before and trade less than ever. On the other hand, the blog motivates me to continuously search for new ideas.
The icing on the cake however are the many valuable comments I got from the readers.This kind of immediate feedback is really really helpful and very motivating.
Portfolio performance
I personally see the portfolio performance more like a side-effect, especially over such a relatively short time period like 2 years. Since running th blog, I was very very lucky. Basically almost every “opportunity” idea really had a catalyst event, most notably Draegerwerke and AIRe. Also, the “window of opportunity” of interesting situations with good risk/return relationships which opened up following the financial crisis is closing pretty quickly.
Of course, a good performance also motivates me to write in the blog, but I am pretty sure that I would still enjoy blogging with a benchmark (or worse) performance.
Portfolio composition /turnover
As most of you have already found out, this blog is not about market timing or quick trading tips. After 2 years, ~50% of the portfolio are still the original constituents.
Two of the original constituents (AIRE and Depfa) were taken over or matured. So Portfolio turnover was something like 20-30% p.a. which corresponds nicely with my target investment horizon of around 3-5 years.
Targets for the future
For the next year, I have set myself the target to review hopefully 1 new stock/bond per week. I know that’s quite ambitious but on the other hand, looking at companies for me is the most effective way of improving my investment skills. Reading books etc. is nice, but nothing beats the experience of researching a stock and make an investment decision.
Further, I try to further develop my Boss Score database. I am currently at ~2500 stocks covered and I have some ideas to improve the model. So far Ia m extremely happy how it works.
I will also try to interact more with other financial bloggers. I think this one of the great aspects of blogging against just scribbling down one’s notes on a piece of paper. The exchange about HoldCos with Geoff Gannon for instance was quite funny and yielded some interesting thoughts on this topic.
So finally, many thanks again to all readers and especially to those who have commented and/or sent me Emails or even contributed write ups for the blog. Blogging is much more fun with feedback and I think I have learned quite a lot of things over the last 2 years.
By the way, I am always open for contributions to the blog. Let me know if you have something that I should put on the log.
value and opportunity 
Glückwunsch auch von mir zu Deinem tollen Blog. Du siehst an den Reaktionen, wieviele interessierte Leser Du schon gewonnen hast. Es werden sicher noch viel mehr, wenn Du so weiter machst wie in den beiden ersten Jahren.
🙂 trotzdem danke für die schnelle antwort:-)
Glückwunsch zum interessanten blog! Ich schau auch immer wieder mal rein zb weil ich auch den ivg wandler halte. Wie ist eigentlich deine momentane einschätzung zur praktiker anleihe – ich halte sie bisher nicht aber die kapitalerhöhung ist ja erfolgreich verlaufen und die investoren haben anscheinend hoffnung.
hi,
ne, keine aktive Meinung zu Praktiker 😉
mmi
Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Für mich der beste Investment-Blog überhaupt. Als grundsätzlich risikofreudiger Anleger habe ich in erster Linie von den Warnungen profitiert, die wirklich genau die Schwachpunkte aufgezeigt haben. Mach bitte weiter so!
Keep blogging, i only found you recently, but it s a great pleasure to read and — i hope — will prove profitable, too!
Klasse Blog. Vor allem die hohe Frequenz an neuen Artikeln in Top-Qualität finde ich gut. Ich freue mich auf 52 Analysen in 2013 😉
Weiter so!!!
Dann mal Happy Birthday und vielen Dank! Jedes Mal ein Vergnügen….
Glückwunsch. Ein klasse Blog! Habe so manche Anregung mitgenommen. Weiter so!
Congrats. Valueandopportunity is one of the great investment blogs out there.
Thanks for your work here and also for the comments of others.
Usually I prefer strict quality investing, companies with earning power value and some growth prospects, and industries with which I’m particularly familiar. I don’t read every article here, but what I read was very well analyzed.
really interesting blog, started reading a few weeks ago.
any chance you can maybe do something in-depth on irish financial/insurance stocks going forward?
Congrats – as you know, 2 years is a bloody lifetime for investment blogging..!
Dieser Blog ist in meinen Augen das Beste was weit und breit zu finden ist. Ein grosses Kompliment für diese Ausdauerleistung auf einem solch hohen Niveau. Viele Gruesse!
Viel Erfolg weiterhin.
Den Wünschen schließ ich mich gerne an!
Grate success. Please keep up!
Congrats! Keep up the good work!
hi there, congrats on the success of the blog/investments – very impressive! did you engage in promotion activities for your blog or did its reader base grow without any further ado (simply through posting blog entries and engaging in commentary discussions)?
Die Zeit rennt wie ein Elch!
Happy Birthday!
Ich wünsch dir eine lange Fortsetzung dieser Erfolgsgeschichte.