Month: February 2013

General Thoughts

On the Importance of Long Term Thinking

Posted on

One of the things I’ve been thinking about over the past few days is how important it is as an investor to engage in patient, long-term thinking. Most of us are either individual investors managing our own portfolios or maybe small professional managers like myself with a few like minded partners/investors. The edge we have over larger and better equipped institutions cannot be understated. Our edge lies in our ability to be able to think, and more importantly act, with […]

Investment Philosophy

More Notes & Articles on Allan Mecham of Arlington Value, “The 400% Man”

Posted on

Last week I wrote a post summarizing some of my thoughts on a Smart Money piece called “The 400% Man” that came out about a year ago. The piece dramatically increased the popularity of a small town, small-time (small meaning assets under management, not returns) hedge fund manager named Allan Mecham of Arlington Value Management. I think Mecham now manages a few hundred million in his fund, but before last year he was managing around $80 million. He started his […]

Get Better by Reading

Thoughts on Investment Process & Shareholder Letters to Read

Posted on

In the last week or so, I’ve written a couple posts on my investment process. One post discussed where I look for ideas and the tools I use, and the other briefly discussed my investment routine. Feel free to read those posts for more of my thoughts on my process, but here is a quick summary of the places I look on a daily/weekly/monthly basis for investment ideas: Value Line Wall Street Journal Investment Blogs Screeners New Low List Value […]

Investment Philosophy

The 400% Man-A Lesson for Aspiring Investors

Posted on

This afternoon I came across an article from Smart Money that is about a year old. I read it for the first time today, and it was one of those  pieces that you bookmark for reading again later. The piece was called “The 400% Man“, and had the intro tag line: “How a college dropout at a tiny Utah fund beat Wall Street, and why most managers are scared to copy him.” The article provides a great background into a […]

Investment Philosophy

Mohnish Pabrai-Thoughts on Growth & Similarities to Buffett

Posted on

I just read an article on Mohnish Pabrai by a magazine called Outlook India. Pabrai is one of my favorite investors to watch and learn from. He has a logical, simplistic way of explaining things, and he has built his entire investment business around what he calls “cloning”. He says that an investor would dramatically improve their results if they simply copied what Buffett does. Research papers have in fact backed this up as true; one paper calculated the returns of Buffett’s stock […]

Ben Graham

Value vs. Growth Investing-Which Method is Best?

Posted on

As an investor who studies in great detail the strategies and investment philosophies of the great value investors, I have always been intrigued by the debate of value vs. growth. I just wrote this post on qualitative vs. quantitative analysis. The discussion between growth and value is similar: the best growth investors are good business analysts… they have to be. It’s easy to find a company that’s growing, but the hard part is determining if that company will continue to […]

Portfolio Management

“Canada’s Warren Buffett” on the Importance of Holding Cash

Posted on

Fairfax Financial Holdings just announced their 2012 year end results and over the weekend I had a chance to read through the conference call transcripts and make some quick notes. I’m always interested in listen/read what the Fairfax chairman and CEO Prem Watsa has to say. Watsa is one of the best investors in the world. He is often compared with Warren Buffett, not only for his investment acumen, but also for the similarities in the business vehicle he uses. Like […]

Uncategorized

4 Simple Steps in My Investment Routine

Posted on

I wrote a post yesterday about some of the tools I use on a daily basis in my investment routine. To summarize, here are the tools I use while looking for stock ideas: Value Line (Great info all on one page-great place to hunt for ideas) Morningstar, Magic Formula, Google Spreadsheets (for screening and watchlists) Spinoffs (I keep a watchlist of spinoffs and research them individually) 13-F’s (I go through a few filings from value managers I follow) Blogs (Great […]

General Thoughts

Quantitative vs Qualitative Methods for Stock Analysis

Posted on

There has always been an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of quantitative and qualitative methods for picking stocks. Which way works better? Is one better than the other? Should an investor use both “quant” and “qual” factors when making investment decisions? I’m not sure… but I’ll give you my opinion. Two of the investors that I’ve learned the most from had completely different viewpoints on these two schools of thought. Ben Graham was a quantitative analyst, choosing only […]

Uncategorized

How I look for Investment Ideas

Posted on

Yesterday I was talking with someone about the merits of using the 13-F as an investment tool, and it prompted me to briefly review my process that I use for searching for stocks to invest in. For those that don’t know, the 13-F is a form that the SEC requires investment managers of a certain size to file each quarter. A lot of people watch the 13-F’s, and I think there are research studies that show that if you follow […]