Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Panic Journal (3) – Why Expert Virologists seem to be really bad (or careless) with statistics

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Disclaimer: I am an anonymous investment blogger and not a Virologist, so please be aware of this. I also think that Covid-19 is a huge threat and that everyone should contribute to public safety by staying at home and avoiding contact for some time.

The Problem

As mentioned above, I am a “stock guy”, however mostly a fundamental/Behavioural type of investor. If I see a number, I want to know where it comes from and how it is derived.

The current discussion on Covid-19 is, at least in Germany, mostly about numbers. Two numbers stand out and get reported all the time and everywhere:

  1. Number of Covid-19 Infected persons (per day and daily change)
  2. Number of persons that died due to Covdid-19 (again per days and daily change)

The official source for this number is the Robert-Koch Institute (RKI) named after the German scientist who discovered the tubercolosis bacterium more than 100 years ago.

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Panic journal (2) – Fear & Bullet proof your portfolio

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Upfront remark:
Although this blog is mostly about investing, I hope that none of my readers will lose any dear ones because of Covid19. Stay safe, stay at home as much as possible and don’t take any unnecessary real world risks especially if you belong to or have regular contact to people who are most vulnerable.

Panic turns into fear
At the time of writing, Spain and France have gone into lock down after Italy last week and the US has implemented a National Emergency and Austria even tries to ban meetings of more than 5 persons. In Germany, Schools and Kindergartens are closed and the coming week will bring more lock downs as well.  So it is pretty useless trying to predict what will happen with the economy in the coming weeks/month. It is pretty clear that there will be a recession, but it is close to impossible to figure out how deep and how long this will go.

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Panic Journal (1) – “Baby steps”

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This post is written mostly for myself in order to document my thoughts and actions and to learn from my obvious mistakes. But I promise that the blog won’t turn into a short term trading site !!

Today was a lot worse than I expected. Who would have expected that OPEC members disagree and the Oil price would tank more than 30% overnight ? In general, lower oil prices are good for most economies, but such a move will create some issues with regard to margin loans, counter party risk, indebted frackers etc etc.

So instead of the expected Monday “Corona panic” we have now the “Corona + Oil super panic”. Plus some strange moves like the EUR gaining strongly against the USD, despite Europe always being in the weaker position, even now with the Corona Virus.

Nevertheless, I started to put some money at work. Surprisingly not in the tourism sector, as I need to do more homework there.  Not everyone might have read the comments but this is what I bought today:

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Travel stocks revisited – building up a watch list

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My long term readers know that I did a lot of research on travel stocks in the past, however with little result other than a only slightly profitable investment into Expedia.

With the current situation, I decided to have a quick look at the travel sector again.

Up until now, the tourism industry has been seen as a secular growth industry, mainly due to 2 mega trends: Emerging market middle class tourists and older, more wealthy first world tourists were driving tourist numbers and subsectors such as cruises or AirBnB rooms. Just last year, “overtourism” became a major trend in social media, I guess this problem will not be a big issue in 2020.

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Some links

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(legendary) VC Investor Sequoia Capital tells its portfolio companies to batten down the hatches

A deep look into US Pay TV which looks more and more like a Zombie product 

The march newsletter of spinoffstockinvesting (Registration required or read via RSS)

The Zephir blog thinks that Belgian stock Barco could be a buy now

Yetanothervalueblog is still positive on Airplane Leasing company Aercap

RIT (Rothschild Investment Trust) 2019 annual report

Congrats, the GlobalStockPicking blog is now 5 years old

 

Market commentary (including 20 rules to survive the “Corona crisis”, Metro Bank, Paul Hartmann)

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Intro

Most readers know that I normally don’t do market comments, however this post will be an exception (and should therefore maybe ignored ?).

To be clear, I have no special information or personal opinion on how far the COVID virus will spread and what the ultimate effect of all this might be. Will there be a recession due to supply chain disruptions ? Will we see another stock market drop like 2002/2003 or 2008/2009 ? No idea, but in any case it makes sense to review what I think is the most reasonable way to behave for long term investors.

20 rules that might help you to survive, or at least sleep better

Situations like this are not unique and over the years I have created for myself some rules that might be helpful or not:

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Some links

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Must read: Why the (VC backed) technology sector seems to look very similar to the US shale industry some years ago

John Kingham thinks that DIageo is a good company but overvalued

UndervaluedShares with a great feature on the Lundin Group and how to make money in the “Dark Corners” of the capital markets

Are travel related stocks now a “Buy” ?

The Rational Capitalist blog has an in depth look into Buffett’s share repurchases over the years

GlobalStockPicking likes Greatview Aseptic, a competitor to Tetrapak

A critical viewon the “secret sauce” of the Private Equity industry

All German Shares Part 17 (Nr. 326-350)

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The next batch of 25 randomly selected German stocks.

In the last post, someone asked why I do not filter out certain stocks (Nanocaps etc.). I have thought of this, but decided against it.  The main reason is that some of these “Zombie’s” have really interesting stories that might contain important lessons. Plus there is a VERY small chance that a real gem is hiding somewhere, although I haven’t found one yet.

This time, I only put 3 stocks on my watch list, but some of the “passed” stocks have really interesting stories.

326. United Labels AG

United Labels is another child and survivor of the Dotcom boom. The 8.7 mn market cap company is active in licensing brands to producers of everyday articles like T-Shirts etc. Top line is however shrinking since a few years and this year they had to put their Spanish subsidiary into insolvency. “pass”.

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Some links

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The always excellent Valuesque blog with some insights on how to manipulate round EPS numbers 

A great list of attributes from A16Z on how to analyze market place businesses

The epic Semper Augustus annual letter (128 pages…)

Another AirBnB scam, this time in London

Very interesting deep dive why most AI (startup) companies are mostly not software companies but service businesses 

The art of defining EBITDA for tech companies

Yetanothervalueblog with a deep dive into Wrestling (WWE)

 

 

 

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