Some links 04/2025

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Some deep thoughts on the relationship between material wealth and happiness

You can challenge any of Prof. Damodaran’s assumptions on Nvidia, but compared to the many clowns and scumbags that pose as stock analysts these days, his logic and level of transparency is just awesome. Well done Professor !!!

Nice wite-up on conglomerate Jardine Matheson from Emerging Value

Some interesting stats on UK take-over premiums from Klement on Investing

For anyone interested in the insurance industry, the Swiss Re Sigma reports are a great resaource

Interesting Sharescope article on small cap premium and a few UK Trust ideas

Philipe Luchesi with a new Video discussing Laurent Perrier (French, Youtube offers translation in subtitles)

Book rewiew: “Gambling Man – The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son”

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Content:

This was clearly one of my “must read” books in 2024. The author, Lionel Barber, is the former editor of the financial times and as such clearly has access to people who might have otherwise not spoken to a more unknown journalists.

The book goes back to Masa-son’s very humble roots as part of the Korean minority in Japan which clearly was not an easy childhood. His father earned the first money by breeding pigs in their garden in a “slummy” area in their hometown. The father seems to have been quite an entrepreneurial character himself, moving into “loan sharhing” and then into Pachinko, low scale gambling game very popular in Japan. Similar to Masa later, his father used risky leverage and often risked it all to win. In any case, the family got decently rich with these gambling halls.

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Some thoughts on DeepSeek- The Black Swan for MAG7 or something else ?

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For various reasons, I was able to spend much more time on this topic since Sunday than I would usually have. On Sunday morning, the topic somehow picked my interested and I have been trying to understand as a Non-Expert what is going on here.

For full disclosure: I have no positions in any of the MAG7 stocks, but that might make me equally biased than someone who has mortgaged his family home to invest in NVDIA.

On Sunday Morning, I initially used mostly Twitter, but during the day this was overflooded with MAGA Crap. Twitter is still a good place at an early stage for “virally developing situations”, bit it gets washed with (AI written) turd pretty quickly.

The DeepSeek topic is interesting on many dimensions. Here are some facts (taken from Wikipedia, but confirmed by other sources):

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Some links 03/2025

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Ben Evan’s “State of AI” presentation is a must read

Despite lackluster performance, David Einhorn’s Q4 letter is worth reading

Annual letter time: Partners Fund 2024 letter, Rubicon Stockpicker 2024 letter, Compound Interest 2024 letter

An interesting new Subtack called “Building Things that last” has just launched with a few great posts

For me, the story of the week: Chinese LLM Deepseek seems to be (almost) on par with the OpenAI &Co at a much lower cost. Maybe it’s just Chinese propaganda, maybe it’s not.

A very detailed Nvidia short case including an (expert) assessment of Deepseek

The “Behind the Balance Sheet” Substack and Podcast are both worth the time

Jensen-Group (ISIN BE0003858751) – Hidden European Champion at a “Dirt Cheap” price

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!

As mentioned in the Performance review, I had already build up a new position in late 2024 in a new stock. This time I will try something new: I will only post a few sections of the write-up and only those who send me an email will receive the full version (for free of course).. The reason for this is that I am really interested how many of the readers are actally reading the full document. The bonus song of course is included in this post at the end.

      0. Investment meme

For some strange reason, I felt the urge to start the pitch with this rather “German humor” meme:

  1. Elevator pitch:

Jensen-Group, a company originally from Denmark, now listed in Belgium, is a 420 mn EUR market cap “hidden champion” that is the world market leader in “Heavy laundry” equipment and automation. The company is run in third generation by the Jensen family which still controls 40% of the shares.

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Some links 02/2025

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Nice year end review from the “no deep dives” Substack with some interesting positions

Wintergem Substack with an update on Hingham Savings Bank

Famous short activist Hindenburg announced to stop operating

Are Cannabis spiked drinks really replacing alcohol in the US ?

I had linked to the study last time, here is a summary of how Ozempic/Wegovy seem to change people’s eating habits

Fascinating story about the development of the Video Game “Star Citizen” that might cross the 1 bn USD budget soon

FT Alphaville on how overvalued the USD actually is (Hint: a lot)

Performance review 2024 – Comment “Extrapolate the past at your own peril”

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2024 overview
There is no way around it: 2024 was a in absolute terms AND relative terms really bad. The Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -2,5 % (including dividends, no taxes, AOC fund as of 30.09.2023) against +4,9% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends). Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.

Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2024:

Partners Fund TGV:  4,8%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +9,0%

Over the 14 years from 12/31/2010 to 12/31/2024, the portfolio gained +387% against +168% for the Benchmark (before taxes). In CAGR numbers this translates into 12% p.a. for the portfolio vs. 7,3% p.a. for the Benchmark.  

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Some links 1/2025

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A very entertaining “future 10 year asset allocator” review from AQR’s Cliff Assness

Short seller Hindenburg once again swings out against Carvana

An interesting and inspiring story about a family that produces cymbals since 400 years

A decent list of 2025 top picks from UK investors/Bloggers

An interesting paper on how food demand seems to change with GLP-1 drug intake

“Big potato” is now controlling the US French fries market

A great post on what happened in the AI/LLM space in 2024

My 23 (+1) stocks for 2025

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Following an annual tradition since 2013, by the end of the year, I review my portfolio by writing/updating very short summaries for each individual position.  17 of the 23 positions from last year are still in the portfolio and I have added 6 new positions. That turnover has been mostly driven by reviews (Admiral, ABO Energy), or the price target had been reached (DEME) and by finding new ideas. A more comprehensive Performance review will follow in early January 2025.

A short user guide:
My preferred style of investing is a bottom up approach, focusing on 20-30 small/midcap stocks that in my opinion have a good return/risk profile over the next 3-5 (or more) years. Many of these stocks are not household names and are unlikely to make spectacular gains in any single year. Many of them look interesting only after the second or third glance and are rather boring, which is exactly what I am looking for. So if you are looking for a “Hot stock for 2025”, this post won’t help you much.

And always remember: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

As last year, I have created a portfolio overview chart based on holding periods which I proudly present here:

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Some links 21/2024

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Highlight: If you read only one thing this week then Wintergem’s deep dive on Moats (and the apllication on Adyen) is a MUST READ

Richard Beddard with a nice check up on UK Tech company Rasperry Pi

The newest AI models seem to be capabable of lying to their supervisors

If you like non-nonsense, down to earth finance talk, this podcast episode from Todd Wennings Flyover Stock blog/podcast is great.

Some US Small cap ideas from Royce

The Dungeon Investing substack with a first look into Square Enix (Very good Substack for everything related to gaming)

DB_Silver_Fox Substack on Carl Zeiss Meditec

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