Even Seth Klarman’s Baupost seems to have lost it with investors
Must read: Dan McCrum summarizes the Wirecard story (so far) in the FT including many new interesting details
FT Alphaville thinks that ESG darling Tomra is wildly overvalued
The event industry is having its “Napster moment”
According to rumors, Softbank has been buying Tech stock options like crazy
Good advice: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist
Fred Wilson from AVC has some interesting thoughts on SPACs
I have covered the current SPAC Mania already in a post in June on Nikola, but since then SPACs only seem to gather more steam.
VC legend Bill Gurley (Banchmark Capital, Uber) has released an interesting post on the three main venues for a company to go public: A “classic” IPO, a simple listing and finally the SPAC.
I’ll try to summarize his post:
Bill Gurley is clearly not an idiot as he most likely is now a billionaire following some very impressive investment successes (Uber) with Benchmark capital. However I do think that his arguments have some serious flaws.
Another week, another 25 randomly selected German shares. This time, I only found 3 of them to be interesting, however one stock became the biggest position in my German basket yet.
626.Pommersche Provinzial-Zuckersiederei AG
Pommersche is a 2.3 mn market cap company that is very illiquid and only releases very intransparent information. “Pass”.
627. Netfonds AG
Netfonds AG is a 63 mn EUR market cap company that could describe itself as a “Fintech” if they wanted. The company listed directly (no IPO) in 2018 and at first struggled:
Read moreInterActice Corp (IAC) is a company I had on my list for a long time but for whatever reason I never managed to look at them in more detail. Over the past few weeks I read in several quarterly reports of good funds that they had invested, so I decided to look at least a little bit deeper this time.
Founder/ Chairman Barry Diller
InterActive is the creation of Barry Diller, who is now 78 Years old. He had a very interesting career. As a media executive, among other things, he created Fox Network, and mentored media executives such as Michael Eisner (ex CEO of Disney).
He took control of IAC in 1995 and finally bought out “Cable Cowboy” John Malone in 2010. The relationship with Malone was long but not always without issues.
Prof. Damodaran with a comprehensive market update
Softbank backed Finance company Greensill is part of some “interesting” financing shenanigans structures
The UK Value Investor with a nice write up on Jupiter Asset Management
“Uncle Warren” Buffett has significantly reshuffled his bank holdings
An interesting article on how Apple tries to force Apps/Companies to enable in-app purchases in order to get their 30% cut
A great inside story on stock trading app Robinhood
FTAlphaville on why stock splits can actually matter
Broyhill likes Emerging Market Airports as counter cyclical investments
Good to remember: Stock splits are only “paper shuffling”
Fortnite maker Epic (owned by Tencent) is suing Apple and Google on app store monopoly
Great post on the almost forgotten bicycle stock bubble of the late 1890s
David Einhorn still seems to be long stuff that goes down and short stocks that go up
Half Year letter TGV Intrinsic (Mercado Libre, FEMSA)
IAC reveals a 12% stake in MGM Resorts International and explains why
Another 25 randomly selected German stocks. This time, there is only one “watchlist candidate” among them.
601. Elbstein AG
Elbstein AG is a 29 mn EUR market cap holding company that is majority owned (75%) by the billionaire Ehlerding family. The company invests among others in listed German companies. The stock price is flat over the last 5 years or so which might indicate that the investment success is limited. Nothing to see for me, “Pass”.
602. Rheinland Holding AG
Rheinland Holding is a small German Insurance company with a market cap of 119 mn EUR. The stock chart is “super boring”, although with a small long term uptrend that one rarely sees with insurance companies over this period:
Fellow blogger Wexboy with his 6M portfolio review
Overstock looks like a good candidate to short
Must read: The LT3000 blog on structural market inefficiencies (and Hongkong Land)
The unbelievablee Government assisted “pump” of the Kodak share
Unlike other multinational chains, Starbucks is really struggling through the pandemic
Nice write up on Vertiv from GreenWood
“Next generation Buffett wannabe”Sardar Biglari has seen better times
Another 25 carefully randomly selected German stocks.
576. TDMI AG
Zombie stock, “pass”.
577. New Work AG (XING AG)
New Work AG (former XING AG) is a very interesting company. The 1.3 bn market cap company is the German speaking version of LinkedIn. I used to be a (happy) member of XING until they began flooding me with tons of unwanted adverts. I still maintain an account there but since then have moved to LinkedIn. That’s maybe one of the reasons why the B2C side seems to be stagnating, but they compensate with increasing B2B revenues. They also run the German version of “Glasdoor” called kununu.
RV Capital’s half year letter (New position: Prosus)
A deep dive into the structural fraud culture of Chinese Companies
A more positive take on SPACs from a VC perspective
And a more negative opinion on SPACs from a value investor perspective
And finally a deep dive into Bill Ackman’s recent 4 bn “super SPAC”
Fantastic story about a “Stock market oracle toad” during the 80s Japanese Stock frenzy
Good write-up on UK based Headlam as a potential counter cyclical opportunity
value and opportunity 