My 21 Investments for 2018

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Another part of my annual blog rituals is a short overview of all the positions I own at the end of each year with a short review of why I (still) own them.

The summaries of the previous years can be found here:

My 27 investments for 2017
My 27 investments for 2016
My 28 investments for 2015
My 24 investments for 2014
My 22 investments for 2013

Interestingly, the list for 2018 contains the lowest number of stocks so far as I tried to concentrate my portfolio a little more into my “best” ideas and kicked out a few positions where I wasn’t fully convinced anymore (Aggreko, Ashmore, Pfandbriefbank, Coface, Romgaz, Kuka, Lloyds Banking) or where the catalyst actually took place (Gagfah, Sapec, Kuka). In general, I would feel comfortable in owning up to 25 positions.

But now let’s look at the 21 stocks I own as of year end:

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Wysker / Wys Token ICO – “Made in Germany” but any good ?

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I’ll promise my readers that this will not turn into an Crypto/ICO blog, but I also must confess that I am absolutely fascinated by what is happening right now with Bitcoin & Co. After briefly looking at the “Nagacoin Doublepump” a few weeks ago I can not withstand to look at the second German based ICO called Wysker / Wys (the coin).

What is Wys / Wysker

As any good ICO these days they have a 19 page whitepaper which looks quite modest compared to the Naga pamphlet.

In short, Wysker aims to be the “Tinder for shopping” (funnily enough, Naga wanted to be the “tinder for stocks”). In order to make this thing more sexy, there is also a block chain aspect and, of course machine learning involved.

How it is supposed to work:

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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_logo

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

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