8 Years of Value & Opportunity: Staying alive..
Once a year in mid-December I always realize quite suddenly that another year has passed and Value and Opportunity is now 8 years old since the first post in 2010.
As I mentioned earlier this year, for very positive reasons, both private and professional, activity in the blog did not reach the standards of the previous years.
Looking back, I still managed to look a these companies in more detail:
- Getinge / Arjo spin-off
- Softbank (part 1 and part 2
- Landis & Gyr
- Boiron SA
- Expedia
- Criteo SA
- Saga Plc
- Paul Hartmann
- Creditshelf
- DormaKaba
- SIAS SpA (revisited)
- FitBit
- System1
- Listed VC funds part 1
- Listed VC funds part 2 – Vostok New Ventures
Book reviews in 2018:
- Machine, Platform, Crowd – Harnessing our Digital Future
- Am I being too subtle – Sam Zell
- When the Wolves bite
- Bad Blood
Compared to the 31 company write ups and 12 book reviews in 2017, I really have slowed down a little bit but as a the headline says, imortant is “staying alive”.
Top 10 most read posts in 2018:
- Softbank part 2 sum-of parts
- The Value and Opportunity All time Flop 10
- Paul Hartmann – Back to my boring roots
- Performance review 2017 – Comment: “Keep an Eye on Interest Rates and Credit Spreads”
- Softbank & Masa Son – Mad Genius pumping the Start up bubble or Visionary Capital allocator ? (Part 1)
- The return of the Travel Series (9): Expedia (EXPE) – Cheaper than I thought
- Metro AG – Update & Playing the Devil’s Advocate
What I have learned in 2018
2018 was a year where finally the “tide got out again” and to use Mr. Buffett’s words it was finally possible to see “who was swimming naked”:
- Clearly, the crypto bubble deflated significantly. Now the crypto guys have to show if they can really create solutions that have real world significance apart from ideology and money laundering.
- The internet/mobile industrial revolution is still eating up sector by sector. Newspapers, TelCos, retail, taxi / personal transport, travel are just a few sectors that have been completely changed. Who will be next ? My guess is financial services (already happening), real estate buying /renting, auto trading and many more.
- Despite the internet/mobile revolution, in my opinion the creation of a strong VC infrastructure will also impact many other sectors in the long-term, even if we see a big “cooling down” in the VC sector in 2019
- The downfall of GE is a classic example that companies do not become more stable or impossible to beat if they become huge. Size (and access to capital) theses days is not the advantage it used to be. This should also be a warning for the current behemoths Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft & Co
- In investments, i think 2018 was also a year where finally people realized that certain “bullet proof” investment strategies (i.e. buy cheap, short expensive) do not work even in the longer term if significant change is happening in the economy. A lot of famous hedge funds are struggling now for several years and many are closing. “Mean reversion” doesn’t work well if the parameters are changing fundamentally.
Goals for 2019:
- Increase the “quality” of my financial media consumption. Having less time requires to be more selective. For instance I started subscribing to the “Economist”. Although it really takes time to read an issue, I think it is time well invested.
- keep up the pace of looking at 1-2 companies per month
- look even less at portfolio performance. I moved from a “real-time” portfolio view to weekly updates.
And a big thank you to all readers !!
And finally a big thank you to all readers to allocate part of your precious time to this blog. Especially to those who provide constructive comments and challenge my views.
value and opportunity 
I like your Ahlsell idea. Thanks for that. Due to the low risk, you should make it bigger.
For some reason there is no comment allowed.
sorry, forgot to open the post for comments….
And no worries, I have already increased the position to around 3,7% of the portfolio..
Congrats for the 8 years! Always a pleasure reading you. Happy Holidays
I love this Blog, it is great, and I know it is a lot of work.
Especially the good reads before the weekend are perfect.
The review of books also helped me to read more books.
Great job.
By dismissing crypto as (to date) having the only use cases of money laundering and ideology…well, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Expected more intelligence from you.
You might then consider reading more crypto friendly (and therefore more intelligent) Blogs. This will be win-win for both of us.
Oh boy, do I love this blog!
Congratulations and thank you very much for your great work. Your Blog is excellent!
Congrats for the 8 years !
On reading TheEconomist & Co: we all want to be best informed, and we seek infos by top experts & bests sources.
Yet, let’s not forget the conclusions of the canadian documentary”The Experts”… https://youtu.be/xt46P1Zcwto
What happens to the Special Situation Book Project? Looks like a book on Venure Capital looks more likely now.
Well, any book project is not realistic at the moment…sorry for that.
Time to say again thank you for one of the best blogs in it area.
Hello
Go for the electronic version of the Economist where you can listen to the articles in a podcast. This frees up time as you can listen to this during other acrivities. I listen to it while running or cooking…
Best
I do have the “combo” version….However I digest news better when I read it.