Monthly Archives: December 2021

V&O goes Crypto (again) – Part 1: Intro & Major Coins

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Introduction: Why looking at Crypto at all ?

I had written first about Bitcoin in September 2016, when 1 Bitcoin was around 1000 USD.  I always had an academic interest because the original idea and the execution of a decentralized decision making system has been a great achievement in itself. You’ll find an attempt to describe Bitcoin and Blockchain here from September 2017.

In November 2017 I made the following observation:

In my opinion, the current Cryptocraze is much more like the South Sea bubble than the Tulip mania.

Underlying the current Crypto currency mania in my opinion is a fundamental new way how to raise capital for and create a new type of decentralized organization.

Clearly the then prominent ICOs were mostly complete garbage or outright theft, such as Wysker or the Naga Coin.

However, four years later, Crypto is booming again and the big currencies are more “valuable” than ever before and there is a “Cambrian explosion” of activity all over the Crypto space.

So I decided to have another look at the Crpyto mainly to educate myself on new Crypto currencies but also on “second generation” activities such as Staking, DAOs, DeFi and NFTs.

Maybe it is of interest to some readers, maybe not, but I do think it makes sense to understand a little bit the evolution in this space. Just to be clear: I don’t think that the space is “investable” as such, however part of the infrastructure that is created now might have impacts on other parts of the economy and society.

So let’s kick it off with looking at the main 20+ Crypto currencies according to “market cap” according to coinmarketcap.com.

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11 Years of Valueandopportunity.com

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11

Every year on December 15th, the blog celebrates another anniversary, because on that day in December 2010, the blog went live for the first time. (Edit: This should have gone out yesterday….).

As always there will be a separate performance portfolio review in the beginning of Januray.  This time, it is the 11th. I have googled around a little bit and the Number 11 seems to mean sometimes achieving a higher spiritual level. I am not sure if I managed this in my 11th year in the blog, although I feel strangely relaxed about the recent market turbulences 😉

Again, a big thank you to all readers, especially those who contribute (and motivate) via constructive comments but of course also to all the silent readers.

The top 10 posts in 2021 were the following:

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All Swiss Stocks – Final edition

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Condensing the watchlist and some general remarks:

As the ultimate climax (or anticlimax), my readers will find below a table with all Swiss stocks that I identified in round 1 as worth to “watch” including a second flag if they made it into my 20 stock “priority” watch list. Those who manage to read to the very end will also find my next target country for the “All Stocks” series 😉

Overall, I prioritized companies that are already in my portfolio or have the chance to become a member of my high quality “GARP” bucket at some point in time in the future or undergo a potentially value enhancing transformation process (ABB, Metall Zug, Holcim).

I am in general very positively surprised, both on the quality of the businesses that I have seen as well as the quality of the reporting of many companies. I always thought that Switzerland is mostly about banking and tax evasion.

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Some Links

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The best definition/explanation of Bitcoin I have read so far (Spoiler: Bitcoin is Art)

Tyler Cowen on Magnus Carlsen and the future of Chess 

Highly recommended: Very insightful analysis why Casper (Online Mattresses) didn’t make it as a public company

A nice pitch for Nintendo as an investment

Nice review of “The Delusions of Crowds”, a new book by William Bernstein

Monevator on the end of P2P Lending (in the UK)

A very critical but equally fascinating interview with one of the Cofounders of the ConstitutionDAO

 

All Swiss shares part 19 – Nr. 201-213

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Finally I made it, below you find short summaries of the last 13 randomly selected Swiss stocks quoted on the SIX, three of them are potentially worth watching.

Just one remark: There are many smaller Swiss stocks quoted outside SIX, but as I am not able to trade them via my brokerage accounts, I will omit them in this series.

Overall, I have identified 45 stocks out of these 213 as potentially worth watching. The final post of this series will condense this to maybe 15-20 stocks that I think I can handle going forward.

201. CS Group

CS Group has a market cap od 23.6 bn CHF and clearly has seen better days. They managed to be part of all the big blow ups in the last few years, from Greensill to Bill Hwang or Wirecard, not to mention ugly infights of the previous management.

So it is not a surprise that the chart looks ugly and the market cap is less than 50% of arch rival UBS:

CS

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Panic Journal – “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”

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In May this year, I had (prematurely) ended my Panic Journal series with the following, slightly too optimistic conclusion:

As mentioned above, despite some remaining risks, the peak of the Pandemic seems to be behind us.

Looking ahead however, I do think that it is risky to think that now all problems will fall away and we will have a multi year super boom that will lead to yet another big general stock market party.

I don’t predict a crash either, as the Pandemic has clearly shown me that I know a lot less about (current) markets than I thought. So the best thing to do is to continue trying to learn what is going on and not trying to make decisions based solely on experiences from the past.

Now, seven months later, many of us are (again) sitting in their home offices and facing the 4th wave  plus  potentially a more dangerous variant of the Virus.

Again, vacation plans have been killed and the discussion for or against vaccination resembles religious wars in medieval times. Time for the “Panic Journal” again. As before, don’t expect any actionable advise here, this posts are more like a self therapy.

The Virus

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All Swiss Shares part 18 – Nr. 191-200

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With 200 out of 215 stocks now covered, this will be the penultimate post in this series covering single stocks. My goal is to conclude this in 2021 and it almost looks like I’ll succeed.

This time, two stocks look like worth watching further. At the very end of this series I will need to consolidate my watchlist and concentrate on the top 20 (or so) stocks to watch going forward.

191. Temenos

Temenos is a 9 bn CHF market cap software company that specializes on Software for banks and financial institutions. Looking at the chart one can see a very nice run up until 2018, since then the stock trades sideways under significant volatility:

Temenos

The company as such is highly profitable, with EBIT margins of > 30%. In 2020, sales declined by -8%, but EPS remained more or less constant. As many other “traditional” Software companies, Temenos seems to be transitioning right now from a licence + maintenance model to a SaaS model.

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With 200 out of 215 stocks now covered, this will be the penultimate post in this series covering single stocks. My goal is to conclude this in 2021 and it almost looks like I’ll succeed.

This time, two stocks look like worth watching further. At the very end of this series I will need to consolidate my watchlist and concentrate on the top 20 (or so) stocks to watch going forward.

191. Temenos

Temenos is a 9 bn CHF market cap software company that specializes on Software for banks and financial institutions. Looking at the chart one can see a very nice run up until 2018, since then the stock trades sideways under significant volatility:

Temenos

The company as such is highly profitable, with EBIT margins of > 30%. In 2020, sales declined by -8%, but EPS remained more or less constant. As many other “traditional” Software companies, Temenos seems to be transitioning right now from a licence + maintenance model to a SaaS model.

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