Author Archives: memyselfandi007

Metro AG – Post mortem

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As I mentioned in the comments a few days ago, I sold my complete Metro position at around 12,30 EUR /share. Including a 0,70 EUR dividend, this translates into a -26,6% loss and is a new entry into my “flop 10” list.

So what went wrong ?

Looking back at my initial post, my original idea was to buy the “ugly” part of old Metro which was supposed to be Ceconomy. This was clearly influenced by missing out on Uniper when it spun off from E.On, which was a similar ugly duck but performed very well.

One observation that I made back then was the following:

Looking at the stock chart we can see that Metro didn’t create a lot of shareholder value over the last 20 years.

When the split actually happened, Ceconomy traded far above the level that I thought would be interesting:

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Some links

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FTAlphaville compares Turkey to Thailand and Malaysia in the 90s Asian crisis

The Canada Goose stock looks VERY expensive

Some good insights into short selling from Glenn Chan

Bill Gates recommends to read  the book “Capitalism without Capital”

A deeper look into Alibaba’s “numbers salad”

Bronte’s John Hempton tires to understand why Bayer shareholders didn’t stick around after a wave of lawsuits seems to hit newly acquired Monsanto

Off topic: rest in Peace Aretha Franklin

 

 

Observations: Tesla, David Einhorn & Turkey

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Tesla / Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s “Tesla is somehow going private” Tweet has triggered a lot of comments and discussions (good coverage on FT Alphaville).

For me the main take-away of this story is two fold:

One the one hand, listed equity markets are not the best place to raise equity capital once you are listed. It is OK to raise equity once when you IPO but after that, a company should only pay dividends and buy back stock. Part of the reason that Tesla is shorted so much is the expectation that they will need to raise equity which clearly shows the dilemma of public equity markets these days. Personally, I do think we will see more “Softbank style” large private vehicles which will specialize in providing capital to growing companies and save them the troubles of public equity markets until the company is mature enough. Unfortunately this will lead to the shift of a large part of value creation away from public markets and out of the reach of many “Normal” investors.

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Some links

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Unintended consequences: Ride hailing apps seem to increase inner city traffic

The “Old” valuation ratios don’t work that well anymore

Quant Investing is now a thing in Venture Capital, at least at Google

Seth Godin with a good list of books worth reading

Great piece from VC investor Fred Wilson on “investment pace”

Forager defines its own “investment edge”

Y Combinator’s Summer 2018 book list

Edit: Don’t miss the 2018 half year report from the TGV Truffle fund

creditshelf – Hot Fintech disruptor or overpriced hype IPO ?

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Intro: Why am I looking at this ?

Fintech companies these days are hot. Not many days past that not another big deal is announced. Most of the “action” though takes place in the Venture Capital market which is normally closed for most retail investors.

There is clearly a lot of hype in the sector, on the other hand there are more and more really disruptive business models that might do to traditional finance (Insurance, banking, Asset management) what Amazon has done to retail

As financial services is one of my core interests in investing, I think it will pay of to keep an eye on what is happening in Fintech.

Credishelf IPO

CREDITSHELF LOGO FARBE

An exception is the German company Creditshelf, which despite being a pretty early stage startup, has just successfully completed its IPO on July 18th.

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Some links

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Must read: Extremely wise words from Marc Andreessen on how to grow a (Tech) Company

It’s half-year report time:

TGV Partners fund (among other with Grafenia Plc as new position)
Rob Vinall’s RV Capital (AddLife and PSG as new positions)
TGV Rubicon

A few thoughts on Overstock.com

Best Buy is thriving again despite Amazon. A blue print for others ?

The UK Value Investor with 4 rules for selling stocks

And don’t miss Wexboy’s Half year update

 

 

 

Investment philosophy: How to cope with less time available ?

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For several personal reasons (don’t worry, all of them VERY positive !!), I already have less time and will have even less time for detailed company analysis in the future. So the question for me is: What do I need to do with my portfolio (and the blog)?

A few questions I have been asking myself were:

Should I

  1. have more positions to diversify or should I have less positions to concentrate on the remaining ones ?
  2. allocate more money to other money managers or even start investing into ETFs ?
  3. try to focus on less risky stocks ?
  4. just do shorter company analysis and focus on the essentials ?
  5. or even go back to a more mechanic approach (BOSS Score) ?
  6. focus more on my Circle of competence and skip trying to extend it ?
  7. Or even focus only on  a small universe of the highest quality stocks ?
  8. increase my minimum holding period to slow down turnover ?
  9. Avoid “Higher maintenance” positions like M&A arbitrage etc ?
  10. Do more “shadowing” of investment managers I admire ?
  11. What should I do with the blog ?

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Some links

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Mega Unicorn WeWork forbids its employees to expense meals containing meat

Ever wanted to own a piece of an Airbus A380 ? OTC Adventures has found a way to do so.

Smart phone cameras are the enemy of secretive hedge funds

Nick Train thinks that (deep) value investors should be VERY careful these days

A nice profile of value investor Chuck Allmon

Are you looking for trouble in the financial markets ? BBB Corporate bonds are a good place to start

Some links related to Stock spin-offs. Veoneer looks actually very interesting.

 

 

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