Monthly Archives: September 2021

All Swiss Shares part 14 – Nr. 131-140

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And on we go. Another 10 randomly selected Swiss shares. This time, three companies are going on to the extended watch list and one is actually a current holding of mine. As we are now already at around 2/3 of the Swiss Stock universe, I need to think about the next market to look at.

131. Perrot Duval AG

Perrot Duval is a 13 mn CHF micro cap. According to their latest annual report, the company is already 116 years old. The company seems to have sold its major operating business a year ago or so and now concentrates on the sector process automation, although I did not really understand what their remaining subsidiary called “Füll” really does.

What is kind of interesting is the fact that the company sits on 17 mn CHF of net cash and therefore the market seems to discount a lot. The CEO and Chairman owns 35% of the shares.  In the mean time, the company seems to have made further acquisitions.

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Some links

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When Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify sits down to talk, it is always worth listening

A cautious look at potential negative effects of “Buy now, pay later” offerings

Interesting deep dive into “the mind of Perma-bear Marc Faber”

Some interesting thoughts from Micheal Pettis how China will manage the Evergrande problem and a deep dive into Evergrande’s “accounting”

GlobalStockPicking with a portfolio update 

Guru Copycat investing doesn’t to work so well

Bill Ackman scored big with the IPO of Universal Music

Plus an old song to start the week in a happy mood: Beach Boys – Big Sur

Book review “The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything”

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I usually do favorable reviews of book because I don’t write about the bad ones. However this book is even exceptional among the many very good books I have written about.

There are some books that give you a new idea and/or explain something that I could never explain myself. This book created so many “Aha “moments for me that I am not sure if I have gained the same amount of new knowledge from any other book in the recent years.

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All Swiss Shares Part 13 – Nr. 121-130

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Back to Switzerland with 10 “fresh” and randomly selected Swiss stocks. This time, 5 of the 10 stocks might be worth to watch after a first analysis, although I need to slim down my watch list to a more manageable number at some point in time. Enjoy !!

121. VZ Holding

VZ Holding is a 3,5 bn CHF market cap financial services company, that in contrast to most other Swíss financial companies seems to been able to create some long term value over the last years:

VZ Holding

VZ is an Asset advisor/manager and there is a very decent write-up available from Verus Capital (in German).

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Some links

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Must read: Thoughts on investing (and life) from “The undercover Fund Manager”

Some thoughts on who might be paying the bill for Evergrande’s default and the impact on the Chinese Financial System

Is Facebook the “cigarette industry” of the digital age ? 

Prof. Damodaran is no big fan of ESG Investing 

Good write up on SEA Ltd., South East Asia’s leading internet company

FrenchHiddenChampions has a nice series on Gerard Perrier (and other good stuff)

Interesting insights into the Business model of O’Reilly Automotive

Making Fun of Fundamental investors – The Frank Thelen edition

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Frank Thelen is a household name in Germany. As part of the German version of “Shark Tank” (which he left in 2019), he clearly became the Venture Capital investor with the biggest public exposure (the guy in the back in the middle):

Recently, Thelen announced that he will launch the “German Version” of Ark Invest which he calls 10xDNA Fund. The idea behind is that he, as successful VC investor is able to run a big fund of public stocks that aims at “disruptive technologies”.

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Some links

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HBR (and Bain) on why Founder led companies perform better

An interesting deep dive into the Market Panic of 1792

Very comprehensive overview how the Venture Capital landscape has changed over the past few years

Good profile of ETF tech guru Cathy Wood (ARK)

The Lightning network, Bitcoins answer to scaling issues, still doesn’t work

AQR thinks that shorting (high emission) stocks should decrease a portfolio’s carbon footprint

Microsoft did a big study on remote working on its own work force. The results are not positive.

Summer Reading summary

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Over (spring and) summer, I managed to read a couple of books that might be interesting for my readers. This time a try a new format with a shorter summary on a couple of books compared to the more detailed single reviews I did in the past. I hope this is helpful nevertheless.

  1. The Rise of Carry

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“The Rise of Carry” is a more macro oriented book written by two former Hedge Fund “dudes”. Their thesis is that a significant part of today’s market activity is driven by “Carry Trades”, which are defined as leveraged bets with an asymetric return profile (“fat tails” on the downside). It is a very interesting approach to look at markets. The book was written well before Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital collapsed due to …leveraged bets.

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Some links

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Great deep dive from Mathew Ball on Netflix and Gaming

An interesting look at “alternative performance measures” that are used by Tech companies

Highly recommended: AMA with Vitalek Buterin on Twitter (only people he follows could ask, first question from Elon Musk)

Thanks to Elon Musk, in theory “Space Base load Solar” could become a thing

6M reports from TGV Intrinsic ( Frontier Digital Ventures, VEF) and TGV Compound Interest (Amaysim, EQS, FEMSA)

A pretty cautious take on Chinese stocks

Spotify needs to take social streaming (and TikTok) very seriously