value and opportunity

Interesting paper on the merits of low volatility stocks

Greenbackd on Benjamin Graham – Skill or luck ?

MUST READ: Howard Marks Q4 memo. Time to be cautious, at least for bonds.

Bruce Greenwald on Apple and Amazon

Cable TV seems to have one more life

Felix Salmon on stock picking as an upper class men’s hobby

Expecting Value on Morgan Sindall. He seems to have similar issues then I had when i looked at the stock.

Some very good “common sense” investment advice from the Aleph Blog

Great and detailed analysis of a Bulgarian REIT

Geoff Gannon has a post on catalysts based on my Porsche update. I will definitely follow up…

Fascinating story about human crowd management from The New Yorker. Maybe there is a lesson for stock market bubbles ?

David Einhorn Q3 Investor letter

Must Read: The family of Chinese Premier Jinbao has squirreled away 2.7 bn USD

Damodara about sunk costs and “portfolio maintenance”.

The Sloan Ratio, a good way to track accruals in balance sheets

East Coast Investment Management investor letter on investment process

Charlie Munger transcript from 2010

Great final post from Wexboy about investment catalysts with “case studies”

UK Blogger Paul Scott has launched a UK small cap website based on s proprietary “PAS” system. Maybe I should challenge him with my boss score ?

Great documentary (German) about the end of one of the shittiest German banks ever, WestLB.

Very interesting Asset Allocation blog called GestaltU. Among others they recommend cash in order to protect against inflation…..

ExpectingValue, a great UK blog has reviewed his Portfolio. Good place to start if one is interested in UK small caps.

Reader Ben forwarded me his great write up for Curanum, the German care and serviced appartment provider for senior citizens which I publish with his permission:

Curanum AG – Write Up (1)

His conclusion was as follows, but I think one should read the whole piece although Ben is not recommending the stock at the moment::

Conclusion
As overcapacity is expected to be reduced in the upcoming years I expect occupancy rates to recover from their current lows. As this will give Curanum some time to breathe, the management will have to make additional investments in their facilities to be able to comply with regulatory requirements. From my perspective there is not much room for additional acquisitions for the following reasons.

First, the company is highly leveraged. Second, the company just increased its number of outstanding shares by almost 20%. Hence, demand from equity holders should be satisfied at the moment and banks are currently reluctant to even refinance existing debt. Given the high cost pressure and limited pricing power a further decline in margins within the next years is highly likely from my perspective. The company is currently generating healthy cash flows, though capex seems to be too low, which will negatively affect cash flow generation in the future. Most of this is reflected in the current share price, so I do not think that Curanum is a prime short candidate.

To the contrary, given the current downside trend in the stock price, the sock seems to be ready for a rebound. A short term catalyst could be a successful refinancing of the maturing debt facility. However, from a long term investor perspective I do not think that the company does offer an attractive risk/return profile.

In case you need a name for your soon to be founded hedge fund, try the HedgefundNameGenerator

Second part of the Ibersol analysis from Stephan at Simple Value

Well structured analysis of Bank Of Ireland’s H1 results from Philip O’Sullivan. Could be used as a template for other banks as well.

Good overview of the current “craze” for dividend stocks

Deep thoughts from David Merkel about complexity in financial companies. This guy knows his stuff.

No posts for the next 2 weeks or so.