7 Years of Value & Opportunity – THANK YOU !!

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Exactly 7 years ago now, the first (German) blog post appeared on this site.

As I have done in the past years, this is a good time to reflect about happened over the year. Again a huge THANK YOU to all readers and especially those who actively contributed by commenting (critically) or sending Emails. And those who are suffering my sloppy spelling and grammar….

I am still surprised that I manage to keep this level of activity in the 7th year, but knowing that a lot of really smart people read my post is a fantastic motivation to keep going and try to become better.

Thank you again !!

The 10 most popular posts written in 2017

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Kinnevik AB – Better than Buffett, Watsa, Wallenberg & Co ?

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Kinnevik is one of the more well-known “typical” Swedish investment companies. Founded in 1936 and still controlled (via A shares with multiple votes) by the 3 founding families, Stenbeck, Van Horn and Klingspor, the company now has a market cap of around 7,8 bn EUR.

Originally, farming, forestry & industrial were their main businesses but Jan Hugo Stenbeck, who unfortunately died in 2002 at the age of 59, transformed Kinnevik into a more “modern” company.

One specific feature of Stenbeck was that he didn’t only invest in listed companies but also helped to create new companies or invested in a very early stages. This is from Stenbeck’s obituary in the annual report 2002:

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Synchrony Financial (SYF) – a Spin-off that is better than its Parent GE ?

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While looking at General Electric some days ago, I remembered that I had the IPO/Spin-off GE Capital Credit Cards which is now Synchrony Financial on my research list for quite some time.

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Company Background

This is from the 2016 annual report explaining how Synchrony was separated from GE:

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The South Sea Bubble, the History of Corporations and the Cryptocraze

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People who have read my blog for some time know that besides value investing, I am a big fan of historic (and current) asset bubbles.

The South Sea bubble – recap

One of the most interesting historical stock bubbles was clearly the famous “South Sea Bubble” which peaked and collapsed around 1720. Besides the fact that Sir Isaac Newton lost a ton of money in this bubble, there is another interesting aspect of this bubble which is often overlooked:

The underlying construct which enabled this bubble was the invention of the “Business Corporation” which were initially created to gather enough capital for exploiting the colonies in the Netherlands and England. 

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Some links

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Why ICOs issued by companies might not be that positive for its shareholders

The Brooklyn Investor has similar thoughts on Buffetts 100 bn cash pile than I had

Reckitt Benckiser might be a high debt low growth “time bomb”

Monish Pabrai’s simple spin-off investing strategy

Nate from Oddball sees very little value these days

Steel Partners Preferreds might be worth a look

Forager observes that animal spirits are back in the mining sector

Some links

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Glen Chan with a good summary of the risks with Chinese stocks

Hard times for Bill Ackman – Q3 report of Pershing Square

Will the P/B “factor” ever make a come back ?

15 Questions to ask management of a company (as an analyst).

Virtual Reality E-Sports seem to have some potential

John Kingham has found 3 trustworthy dividend stocks (Admiral)

How to change the culture of a large organisation (Honeywell)

 

 

 

The Naga Group / Nagacoin ICO: “Double Pumping” the Cryptocraze

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I have had some posts on Bitcoin and Crypto currencies on the blog before. Overall I find the technology very interesting, but at least for Bitcoin I am not certain about the real value.

Things are though very different for a German company called “The Naga Group”. The company IPOed 5 months ago on July 10th in Germany in the lightly regulated “Scale segment”. Initially, its aim was to specialize in “disruptive Trading technologies”.

The disruptive technology is an App which is the “Tinder of Stock trading”. The product is a “social trading business platform” called Swipestox, trying to earn most of its money with advertising. I have looked up the App on the Google play store and it has been downloaded a 100.000 times which is OK, but not great. Interestingly the newest comment/rating is from beginning of September, so I am not sure how actively this App is used.

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