After the 2011 review, I wanted to quickly summarize my general strategy for 2012.
1. In general I don’t think that I am able to predict any stock market levels, fx rates or interest rates. For me, “tactical” assets allocation, which means siwtching assets classes or moving in and out of cash does not provide any systematic upside. However I believe that absolute market levels (esp. FX and interst rates) have some predictable influences on certain business models.
Performance (see also the current portpolio page)
December 2011 was the best month for the portfolio in absolute terms so far with + 4.03% against -1.62% of the Benchmark (50% Eurostoxx50, 30% Dax, 20% MDAX). For the whole year, this results in a performance of -4.1% against -13.8%. On a monthly basis, the picture looks as follows:
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10 Most read articles 2011
1. WGF Anleihen – Interessant oder lieber Finger weg ?
2. (Hard Core) Opportunity Investments: WestLB 2011er Genußscheine
3. Praktiker Anleiheprospekt – „Poison Pill“ gegen potentielle Übernehmer
4. Core Value: Total Produce – Obst und Gemüse Großhändler aus Irland
5. Solar Millenium Anleihe – Kurzanalyse Liquidationerlös
6. Opportunistic: Drägerwerk Genussscheine
7. Muddy Waters zu „Sino Forest“ – Parallelen und Unterschiede zu Asian Bamboo
8. Praktiker AG – Anleihe schmiert ab
9. Kartellverfahren – Interesante Recherchemöglichkeit am Beispiel Praktiker / Max Bahr
10. Asian Bamboo – Interessante Details aus dem Einzelabschluss der AG
Interestingly enough, 7 of the top 10 posts refer to companies or stocks which are in trouble. Only Asian Bamboo was a short in the portfolio, the WGF analysis was done based on a request by a reader and Praktiker was only intersting as a peer company to Hornbach. One explanation could be that once share prices are falling, investors are more actively searching in the interent for reasons and more info.
So if one would want to maximise traffic to an investing blog, one should write a lot about “fallen angels”, however this is not my goal.
I want to especially thank to all the commentators, who provided a lot of input and feedback. This is really the best part of blogging.
At this point I want to encourage anyone who has an (other) opinion or wants to ask something, please don’t hesitate. You can either use the comments or send me an Email to memyselfandi007@web.de
WMF AG is one of the “core value” stocks, I have only mentioned briefly. WMF was founded over 150 years ago (wikipedia). The company is well known for generations in Germany for producing excellent kitchen supplements, especially cooking pots and pans, cuttlery and other “kitchen helpers”. Additionally they started at some time in the sixties to produce coffee makers, especially for the professional area like restaurant, company cafeterias etc.
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After the first post about European spin-offs, I decided that starting in 2009 does not generate enough entries for a real back test.
So I went back until January 1st 2005 for a first back test of the success of spin-offs.
I filtered all spin-offs starting from 1.1.2005 with the following criteria:
I am back on Dec. 27th
Inspired by Joel Greenblatt’s Book “You can be a stock market genius”, I wanted to take a quick look at the most recent European Spin offs.
As a first sample I searched for all Spin Offs which were announced since 01.01.2009 in Western Europe and completed until today.
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Ich hatte ja ein paar mal über Solar Millenium gepostet und wenn ich gekonnt hätte, wäre ich auch die Anleihe Short gegangen.
Jetzt hat es nach Solon auch Solar Millenium erwischt:
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8 days ago, I commented on the ECB announcement which in my opinion was totally misinterpreted by the market:
My summary was as follows:
Summary: In my opinion, the market severely under estimates the potential impact of the announced measures. For many banks this will be the lifeline to survive the next few years and potentially even Governements could gain a „back door access“ to the ECB. I am not saying that banks are a „buy“ right now, but this should take a lot of stress outof the EUR banking system.
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value and opportunity 