value and opportunity

These days, negative news is everywhere. Brexit, Trump, Syria, Terrorist attacks, Monte Di Pasci etc. It is not that hard to feel depressed about the world and the future. As I mentioned earlier on the blog, sometimes it makes sense to follow Charlie Munger’s advice and “invert, always invert”. Therefore I tried to come up with some potential positive and surprising news of how the world could get better in 2017. Some of them are pure fantasy, some might actually happen, who knows ? In any case it was fun to come up with those ideas. “think positive” is clearly not a solution for every problem of the world but sometimes it just helps to change the perspective in order not to fall into the “everything is doomed” trap.

1. Italy has actually turned the corner. NPLs, which have been decreasing since Mid 2106 drop dramatically and are snapped up from investors. BMPS will be nationalized, the rest of the Italian banks privately recapitalized. Building activity soars in Italy but also in Portugal and Spain.

2. Battery technology & Electric Vehicles will make a break through, accelerated growth because of jump in new car sales and build up of infrastructure. Growth easily outpaces decline in traditional cars.

3. Break through for healthy organic food which enables many people to start farming and really make a living out of it. Rural areas get a real boost as people want to move back to the country. People eat  more healthy food which lowers the cost for health care.

4. “Robots” will free up capacity from low value creation assembly line jobs to do really meaningful jobs (customer service, integrating refugees, caring for old and sick people, educating children).

5. Refugees create a large number of super innovative startups that contribute meaningful to GDP based on their experience from their home country (do more with less or nothing)

6. The Euro Zone and UK reach an agreement for the Brexit. As a result, UK will keep access to the common market but will pay for the recapitalization of the Greek Banking system. The EU will enlarge the franchise, grant access to the market against cash and will also recapitalize Portugal and Spain.

7. Donald Trump finds out that renewable energy is even better for energy independence (and jobs) than shale oil and gas. He will turbo charge the growth in the sector and will be known as the “Greenest President” in the history of the US. His Children accidentally had bought the majority of Tesla/Solar City just before his announcement. Musk makes so much money from Tesla which he puts into SpaceX and he will start his Mars mission already in early 2018.

8. A powerful and charismatic “Mahdi” appears and declares that peace is the ulitmate goal of Isalm. Terrorist attacks stop, the Middle East stops fighting and an “all around” peace treaty gets signed. Ultra orthodox muslims and Kurds get their own countries. Immediate rebuild of destroyed cities starts, driving growth for a decade.

9. Kim Jong-un in North Korea decides that he prefers a life as team manager of a US NBA team together with Denis Rodman as coach. North and South Korea are peacefully reunited. United Korea will grow by 10% plus for the next 10 years.

10. Donald Trump decides after 10 months that being President is boring and also bad for his Golf handicap. Vice President takes over.

Exactly 6 years ago, the first (German) post of this blog was “released” into the WWW. As I have done in the past years, this is always a good time to reflect about happened over the year.

Again a big THANK YOU to all readers and especially those who actively contribute by commenting (critically) or sending Emails. I think without this input, the quality of the blog would not be the same or even the blog wouldn’t exist anymore.

Knowing that many smart investors read my post and contribute via comments or mails is really a very big part of the motivation to keep this blog up and running. Thank you again !!

So let’s move to the highlights of 2016:

Top 10 most popular posts written in 2016

1. Novo Nordisk – Great Compnay but also a great Investment
2.Uniper/E.ON Spin-off: Take one ugly Duck and transform into ….. 2 really ugly ducks ?3. Capital Allocation & Capital Managament – what is good and what is bad
4. A few Thoughts on Banking Stocks (Lehman 2.0, Deutsche Bank)
5. AQ Group (ISIN SE0000772956) – A 15 year “42- Bagger” without a Moat ?
6. Kinder Morgan (KMI): Asymetric Upside Potential
7. David Einhorn: Nice Q4 Lette but E.ON as a long Pick ? Really ? C’Mon !!!
8. Coface SA (ISIN FR0010667147) : Ultimate Death Spiral or Contrarian Opportunity in an attractive industry ?
9. Amercian Express (AXP) – Cheap “Buffett” Blue Chip or Value Trap ?
10. Armageddon Alert: WILL “Brexit” create a Black Hole that swallows Planet Earth & the Universe ?

It is interesting that mostly “big names” like Novo, Amex or Einhorn draw the most readers. Even more interesting is that some old general topic posts like “How to calculate Enterprise Value” still get clicked 5-10 times more often than the Top 10 from 2016……

Mistakes made in 2016

Buying Aixtron as a special situation without more research. I was only lucky to get out with a small loss. The timing of the Hornbach sale was very unfortunate after holding it for 5 1/2 years. Also the sale of Citizen’s, despite the nice profit was clearly too early and I missed out another 20% of the “Trump Rally”

Buying more Lloyd’s Bank after the Brexit was stupid. Banks always get punished and I underestimated the weakness of the pound.

And yes, buying Deutsche Bank in the beginning of October would have been a very good performer for “Hindsight Capital LLC” my new 100% p.a. vehicle.

Lessons learned

The biggest learning this year was clearly:that it is very hard to predict what will happen on a macro level. Who would have thought that we will have the Brexit and Donald Trump us US president ? But even harder is to predict what markets would do when those events happen.

If you would have told me end of last year that those events would happen and  I had to decide to invest for the full year or being not invested at all, I would have gone for the latter. Looking back, this would have been a big mistake.

So I am happy that I don’t have to earn my money with predicting macro events or timing stock markets.

Company analysis

Regarding company analysis, I think my best analysis (or at least the ones that I had the most fun) were Silver Chef, DOM Security and Majestic Wine which all became part of the portfolio.

Overall I managed to do ~23 deep dives in this “blogging” year which is pretty OK.

Favorite Books

Among the 12 book reviews this year, my personal top 3 were the following:

Capital Returns (Marathon Asset Mgt.): Great and funny letters of Marathon Asset Mgt.

The Shipping Man: This cured me from ever looking at shipping stocks

and Shoe Dog, the autobiography of Phil Knight, founder of Nike.

Goals for 2017

According to the bible, the seventh year is the one where one should rest and do nothing. So far I do not plan to rest. 2 company analysis per month seems to be a very reasonable target. I do have a pretty long “to do” list which got even longer after the “12 ways the ideal company should be run” post.

On the other, hand, I do plan to move forward with a plan in 2017 that I had for a long time: I want to write a book. This might mean a somehow slower frequency for blog posts. And don’t worry: It will not be the 93rd book on Warren Buffett….