value and opportunity

Great analysis of Nicholas Financial by the excelent Punchcard blog

Eddy Elfenbein with a great look back into history into the Great Salad Oil Swindle. Good for Warren Buffet who bought into Amex because of this.

Damodaran still thinks that Twitter is worth only 18 USD per share

Sear has been an actually good investment over the last 20 Year, if you include all spin-offs.

Will the machines take over investing ? They seem to be even better at brewing coffee now.

Why Eike Batista’s downfall was not such a big surprise

Katsenelson likes Tesco. Just a few days before, Buffet sold part of his stake.

AlphaVulture on FFP, the French HoldCo of the Peugeot family

Jason Zweig on bad market timing by investors (hint: google the headline in order to read it)

Google, currently at the peak of investors attention, seems to loose it in some areas. I still don’t understand why the killed the Reader.

Finally, I discovered this new and very promising blog: Wertart Capital. Includes some well known ideas as well as some uncommon and interesting ideas. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!

The Brooklyn Investor is looking at some potential “Outsider” companies: The “new” Teledyne and Colfax from the US and Transdigm.

Especting Value is looking at UK wallpaper company Colefax

Very interesting presentation from Kerrisdale on Lindsay, an US company which produces automated water irrigation equipment for farmers.

Interesting presentation with some stock ideas from German value fund Discovery Capital.

The funny story of Carl Icahn’s sale of netflix shares by Kid Dynamite. His son didn’t want to sell…..

Finally a non-investment story from Sports Illustrated about the remarkable life a former NBA player who dissapeared on a boat some 10 years ago. I found it remarkable for several reasons:
– captivating story
– great presentation, if online stories are presented like this, traditional media outlets might stil have a chance
– there is finally a “hidden” investment angle: The best friend of the NBA player was Patrick Byrne, CEO of the company overstock.com. Not only is overstock.com a company which is suspected to be a fraud by Sam Antar, but he is also the son of GEICO CEO John Byrne, highly admired by no one else than Warren Buffet himself.

MUST SEE: 30 minute video with and from Ray Delio about the “economic machine”.

Damodaran with a 4 item checklist in order to identify potential value traps

The Brooklyn Investor explains, why one should concentrate on businesses, not on stock market levels, tapering etc.

A potential arbitrage opportunity with US “forever stamps” ahead of an announced price increase

Punchcradblog on Blackbaud, a software company with an interesting business model, which nevertheless is too expensive. Very nice write-up and way of analyzing a company.

Investor letter of a very good value fund: RV Capital including short summaries on all the holdings (among others Tonnellerie, Hornbach, Bechtle, Atoss etc.) as well a thoughts on value investing and technologies and circle of competence.

Always worth watching: Jim Chanos on Bloomberg TV. Looks at companies which do a lot of acquisitions

Interesting special situation analysis on Prime Office REIT AG

Nice NYT article about a 99-year-old investor, Phillipp L. Carret. He was even a broker client of Buffet’s father Howard.

Must read: Detecting accounting fraud in Asia

Cassandra about the difficulties of reinsurance companies run by hedge funds

Michael Lewis has a new big piece about the ex Goldman programmer who got 8 years in prison for stealing HFT code

Recommended: Jason Zweig (Co Author Intelligent investor) interview

Bad week for Bill Ackman: JC Penney drops, Soros has joined the ranks of the Herbalife “squeezers”. Ackman tries to fight back, but at the moment without any impact.

Interesting stock idea: Japan Airlines, bought by Jana Partner

China:

– Paul Krugman thinks it is game over for China
– China bear Jim Chanos in the meantime is short Caterpillar
– A similar trade from Andreas Halvorsen: Short Kone
– in the meantime China is building the tallest building in the world

Carson Block in the meantime is shorting American Towers

Book review “What’s behind the numbers” from Old School Value

A blogger looks at Kleeman Hellas

Mebane Fabers “shareholder yield” book is currently free on Amazon