A great look back 10 years ago when Porsche created the Volkswagen Short Squeeze
The 5 most influential (historic) blog posts on Software ever
Don’t rely on the high dividend yields of consumer staples stocks
Forager is seeing Inflation risks
Notes from the SF Sohn conference and the Capitalize for Kids conference
Why Chinese short-video start-up Bytedance is supposed to be worth 75 bn USD
Some deep thoughts on how to apply Machine Learning to equity investing
Very good write-up on UK Hospital supplier Tristel
A good presentation (from April 2018) on Tech company Box Inc
Neil Woodford’s fund has been cut down by half (search result, h/t Monevator)
Notes from the “Invest for Kids” Chicago conference and from the Great Investors Best Ideas Dallas Conference
The Fall 2018 issue of Graham & Doddsville is out
How will the Saudi issue effect Tech valuations in the Valley going forward ?
A good collection of Spin-Off links
A few (random) updates on stocks I own or looked at in the past:
DOM Security:
Already 3 weeks ago, they issued a document how and when the merger will be completed. If I understood everything correctly, the ratio will be 20 SFPI shares for one DOM Security share and completion is on or around 13. November 2018.
DOM currently trades at 53 EUR, SFPI at 2,61 EUR, so the relative price is pretty efficient. I plan to stay invested and over time increase the position from 3% currently (after selling 40% at the tender offer at 75 EUR) to a full position. I think it makes sense to stay with founder Mr. Morel for the future.
Interesting analysis of Customer acquisition cost (CAC) and life time value (LTV) of Netflix users
Recommended: UK stock blogger Maynard Paton (h/t Alan who linked to this in the comments)
Concentrating bets sometimes doesn’t work even for very smart investors: Eddie Lampert & Sears
The Crypto ICO market has cooled off significantly
Great post on moats in the digital age (Booking, Landstar)
The build-up of “almost-junk” debt is astonishing
System1 (or under its old name Braijuicer) is a good example for a stock where it didn’t pay off to hold if we look at the chart:
I had looked briefly at them when Ben from Wertart bought them in early 2016 but back then didn’t take the time understand what the company was all about. After the huge drop I decided to have a deeper lok at the company.
The business
Munich now has the second most “Bubbly” real estate market globally
Morgan Housel on endurance and long time horizons
Bill Ackman likes Starbucks and Dan Loeb goes activist on Campbell
Amazon seems to bite into Google’s ad monopoly
Some very smart thoughts on litigation finance and risk appetite
Greenwood Q3 2018 letter
David Einhorn had another miserable quarter
Must read: Rob Vinall’s latest letter (RV Capital 10th anniversary)
An interesting expirement: Trying to analyse the readability of annual reports
The Big Hack: How China “hacked” motherboards by inserting some extra chips
Great story on how difficult it is to break into the Rating oligopoly
Somehow, Oracle seems to struggle in the transition to the cloud
App only banks are becoming a thing
Must read (2): How (and when) 5G will effect us
DISCLAIMER
This is not investment advice. Please do your own research and don’t follow any anonymous bloggers.
Let’s continue with this nice “anti Buffett” stock from my post last week.
The people / founders
FitBit’s original founders from 2007, James Park and Eric Friedman are still on board.
Interestingly, although both ar only 41 years old, FitBit was the third company they founded together.
The other companies were Windup Labs, a photo sharing company they sold in 2005 and Epesi, a B2B software company that didn’t work out.
Performance 9M 2018:
In the first 6 months of 2018, the Value & Opportunity portfolio gained +3,38% (including dividends, no taxes) against -2,2% 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: +6,95%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -0,21%
Squad European Convictions +1,97%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos +2,16% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -4,42%
Evermore Global Value -1,59% (in USD)
Greiff Special Situation -1.91%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -3,86%
Paladin One +1,5%
Performance attribution:
The top 3 performers on a weighted basis were for 9M 2018 were:
The Follie Follie fraud case didn’t come totally unexpected
Overnight share price collapses In Hongkong seem to happen more often these days
Cryptomining company Bitmain is going public including some “special effect” accounting
Ben from Wertart with a good overview of his current positions
Must read: Howard Marks’ new memo “The Seven worst Words in the World”
Old School Value with 3 “boring” stocks (Brady, Robert Half, Yelp)
Good advise from Venture Investor Fred Wilson: Know what you are looking for
