Edit: Interesting job offer from Active Ownership Capital (the guys behind the Stada deal)
TGV Partners 6M 2017 report with interesting thoughts on acquisitions, Amaysim and Tucows
What Bill Miller does these days (Spoiler: He slso owns als Bitcoins)
And finally, “Deep Work” author Cal Newport on why you should quit social media:
Ted Seides, the author of this book came to some fame because of his 2007 bet with W. Buffett where he claimed that he could pick 5 (hedge) fund-of-fund managers which would outperform the S&P 500 over the next 10 years. He already admitted to have lost before the 10 years end.
Metro/Ceconomy
I had briefly written about the Metro/Ceconomy Spin-off in January. After some legal hassles, the spin-off took place last week last.
This is what I wrote back then:
With 327 mn shares outstanding, this would translate into ~6,20 EUR per share as a lower bound value for Ceconomy under my (very rough assumptions).
It think at or below this price, Ceconomy could be an interesting “Ugly duck” spin-off investment.
Interestingly, Ceconomy had a very good start, opening around 9,40 EUR and has gone above 10 EUR per share, far above my buying threshold.
Good post from 25iq on how to value subscription based businesses
Don’t miss: Barry Ritholtz interviews Ed Thorp
By coincidence I also found this interview with Ed Thorp’s initial partner Jay Regan
Some thoughts on Mining stocks from Forager
What’s next for the Asset Management industry ?
Patience is a potentially big competitive advantage for investors
Vomiting (among others) is a big problem for Robo taxis
A few days ago, Amazon famously announced to take over Whole Foods Market for 42 USD per share (representing a premium of around 27%).
Markets enthusiastically welcomed this move from Amazon, with the Amazon share jumping almost 4% or ~13 bn USD, which coincidently was almost equal to the deal amount.
Whole Foods itself was “under siege” from activist investor Jana which had built up a 9% stake in the company. Just 2 days before the takeover, Whole Foods CEO called Jana “greedy bastards” indicating that he was not happy having such a shareholder.
An enthusiastic analysis of Trupanion (h/t valueinvestingworld)
A two part series on the decline of the American Mall: Part 1 & Part 2
Compagnie Lebon from France looks potentially interesting
Midyear review from Clarkstreet Value with some interesting Special Situations
Forager Funds likes Australian company CTI
Interesting thoughts on Google and monopoly power
Summer reading list from Market Folly
Perfomance 6M 2017:
In the first 6 months of 2017, the blog portfolio gained +16,0% (including dividends, no taxes) against 9,28% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%)). Since inception, the score is now +174,6% vs. 89,4% for the benchmark. The full details (and graph) as always on the performance page.
Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 6M 2017:
Partners Fund TGV: +10,88%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +6,04%
Squad European Convictions +17,65%
Squad Aguja +9,48%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos 1,87% (in EUR)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen +10,24%
Evermore Global Value +2,22%
Greiff Special Situation +8,55%
A lot has happened over the last few weeks for my 4 largest special situation investments:
Actelion / Idorsia
The original Actelion idea was very simple: Buy an M&A target at a small discount which is relatively safe and get something (the Idorsia spin-off) extra which no one seemed to have noticed.
Although the case played out exactly as I thought and Idorsia even seems to be worth more than I assumed, I only made around +4% on it. Not bad for around 5 months but not great either.
Looking back I think I made 3 mistakes:
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!
Management summary:
The battle for Whole Foods might just have started
Where are we in the Potash price cycle ?
Interesting feature about short sellor Andrew Left (Citron)
Tim Ferris Ted Talk on Stoicism
Why any Blockchain technology needs Governance, too .
Good post on four less known but very influential “Heroes of Investing”
value and opportunity 