The spring issue 2018 of Graham & Doddsville is out
A good overview on competition for self driving cars from Bloomberg
British stocks look cheap these days, one example is Centrica
Some updates on Spin-off situations
Great Longread on the dominating position of the combined Essilor/Luxottica
“Big Beer” needs to reinvent itself
Want to get into start-up Financing ? Here is a good guide for seed stage investments
Metro, the spin-off stock I bought last year, doesn’t look very good at the moment. The stock priced tanked significantly over the last weeks and the stock is now a proud member of “V&O Flop 10“:
When a stock price moves like this, the fist thought is always: I need to do something, either to sell, or more often, to buy more. This was for instance one of the mistakes I made with Silver Chef, where I Increased my position at least temporary.
Argentina has raised interest rates to 40%
Venture funds are getting bigger and fee levels are falling
24 rules to succeed in life by Richard Jenrette (The “j” from DLJ)
John Huber thinks large Tech companies are attarctive right now (Tencnet)
However published free cash flows for Big Tech should be taken with a few grains of salt
Elliott’s presentation on how to “accelerate Hyundai”
Enron’s Ex CFO is now offering anti-fraud training
The company:
Saga Plc is a UK company that combines two business that I have looked at quite often: Insurance and Travel.
Saga has its origin as a Seaside Hotel in England and then became a travel company before then moving into insurance in the 1980s. Saga caters specifically for the “over 50” market and claims to be the “leading provider” to people over 50 in the uK.
After a PE financed management buyout in 2007, he company was IPOed in May 2014 at a price of 185 pence / share.
Looking at the stock chart, IPO investors at first saw a decent outperformance before things went south this year:
US packaged food companies are struggling
Prof. Damodaran on Amazon
Deep thoughts on Cryptocurrencies and the new Basecoin
Excellent post on how to look at (and evaluate) Startups at the seed stage
The UK Value Investor with an in-depth look at Morrisons
Some details about WeWork and the Softbank Vision fund
Interesting thoughts on how to “fix” the Price-to-Book Ratio
Deep thoughts about the recent strategy change at Zillow
Prof. Damodaran has a look at Google. And Google has screwed up messaging again.
A more pesimistic view on the future of tech stocks
Forager on the disadvantage of size in fund management and their thesis on Auto Trader (UK)
What Hugh Hendry is doing these days after closing his Hedge Fund
Long Term Value Blog with a portfolio update
The Global Stock Picking blog likes Rezidor Hotel Group
Deep thoughts from (and about) the founder of Constellation Software
Forager on the potential long term downsides of large moats
Ben from Wertart with a deep dive into Sarine Technologies
At USG, Buffett goes somehow activist by teaming up with German Knauf against the Board
Express Scripts looks like a potentially interesting Special Situation
Red Corner blog is back with a write-up on CVR Partners
Prof. Damodaran updates his Facebook valuation
Performance Q1 2018:
In Q1 2018, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -1,38% (including dividends, no taxes) against -3,90% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%)).
Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in Q1 2018:
Partners Fund TGV: -10,79%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -4,45%
Squad European Convictions +0,19%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos -1,40% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -0,47%
Evermore Global Value -3,03%
Greiff Special Situation +0,65%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -5,38%
Paladin One +0,57%
Forager on buying high risk stocks
Bill Ackman is having issues at Pershing
Great portrait of the very frugal CEO of Fastenal
An interesting approach to value Bitcoins
“The Profit” seems to be a really interesting TV reality show
Who is to blame for GE’s problems ?
Monish Pabrai’s new 5 stock “Uber Canibals” portfolio
Electrica is the only remaining “Emerging Market” stock in my portfolio. I bought the stock in December 2014 and now after 3 year and some months it maybe time to assess how the situation looks against my initial expectations.
Including dividends, the stock is up ~18% in total since then, in my portfolio however the stock is flat because I bought more of Electrica at higher prices. Compared to a +53% performance of the portfolio in the same period, the stock is clearly a underperformer and the question is clearly if I should keep the stock.
My initial thesis relied on the following assumptions:
What happened ?
value and opportunity 