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Archive for October, 2010

Donald G. Smith on price-to-tangible book value

Posted in Liquidation Value, Stocks, tagged , , on October 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The Fall 2010 edition of the Graham and Doddsville Newsletter, Columbia Business School‘s student-led investment newsletter co-sponsored by the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing and the Columbia Investment Management Association, has a fascinating interview with Donald G. Smith. Smith, who volunteered for Benjamin Graham at UCLA, concentrates on the bottom decile of price to tangible book stocks [...]

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Above average odds on The GSI Group (PINK:LASR)

Posted in Activist Investors, Liquidation Value, Stocks, tagged on October 28, 2010 | 6 Comments »

For a period from late 2008 through mid 2009 the GSI Group (PINK:LASR) was prima facie the cheapest stock on my net net screen, but I couldn’t pull the trigger because it was delinquent a few quarterly filings. The company entered Chapter 11 due to the technical default of not filing financial statements and is now [...]

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Screening for five-year earnings-per-share gains is a waste of time

Posted in Stocks, tagged , , on October 27, 2010 | 4 Comments »

James P. O’Shaughnessy’s What works on Wall Street is one of my favorite books on investing. The thing that I like most about the book is O’Shaughnessy use of data to slaughter several sacred value investing cows, one of which I mentioned yesterday (see The Small Cap Paradox: A problem with LSV’s Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk [...]

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The Small Cap Paradox: A problem with LSV’s Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk in practice

Posted in About, Stocks, Value Investment, tagged , on October 26, 2010 | 7 Comments »

Yesterday’s post on LSV Asset Management’s performance reminded me of the practical difficulties of implementing many theoretically well-performed investment strategies. LSV Asset Management is an outgrowth of the research conducted by Josef Lakonishok, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny. They are perhaps best known for the Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk paper, which, among other things, analyzed low price-to-book [...]

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An analysis of LSV Asset Management’s returns and alpha

Posted in Stocks, tagged , , on October 25, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Insider Monkey has a great analysis of LSV Asset Management’s Value Equity Fund returns and alpha (LSVEX). LSV Asset Management is a quantitative value shop founded by Josef Lakonishok, Andrei Schleifer, and Robert Vishny, authors of the landmark 1994 Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk paper, which is a favorite topic of mine (for more, see the archives on LSV [...]

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AVNW update and valuation

Posted in About, Activist Investors, Net Current Asset Value, Stocks, Value Investment, tagged on October 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Oozing Alpha has a write-up on the valuation of Aviat Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVNW) (see the post archive here). AVNW is an interesting Ramius activist target trading at a small premium to net current asset value. Here’s the write-up from Oozing Alpha: Investment Thesis AVNW is an excellent opportunity to invest in a leading wireless backhaul [...]

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Buffetts next door: VOD and RDI

Posted in About, Value Investment, tagged , on October 21, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Matt Schifrin’s Forbes ”Buffetts next door” blog shines the spotlight on Tim Eriksen, one of Marketocracy’s best stock pickers (see his track record). Eriksen identifies a few stocks that I hold, and for the same reasons: Vodafone (VOD). Vodafone is one of the world’s largest mobile communications providers in the world.  Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, which it [...]

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Fortune as Pershing Square activist target

Posted in About, Activist Investors, Pershing Square Capital Management, Stocks, Value Investment, William A. Ackman, tagged on October 20, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management has opened up an 11% stake in Fortune Brands, Inc. (NYSE:FO). The 13D filed 4 October doesn’t disclose much about the position, but the NYTimes has a great REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS article Fortune’s Links discussing the position: After a round of golf with his Titleist clubs, a guy pops into the clubhouse for [...]

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The dumbest net net stock Warren Buffett ever bought

Posted in About, Greenbackd, Net Current Asset Value, Net Net Stocks, Net Quick Stocks, Net Quick Value, Warren Buffett, tagged , on October 19, 2010 | 1 Comment »

This is an oldie, but a goodie (via CNN). The travails of buying net nets, as told by the master’s apprentice: Warren Buffett says Berkshire Hathaway is the “dumbest” stock he ever bought. He calls his 1964 decision to buy the textile company a $200 billion dollar blunder, sparked by a spiteful urge to retaliate [...]

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Guest post: Voting Power in the Activist’s Hands

Posted in About, Activist Investors, Catalysts, Stocks, tagged , , on October 18, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Travis Dirks has provided a guest post on the voting power of differently sized shareholdings, which has important implications for activist investors seeking to impose their influence on a management. Travis is an expert in Nanotechnology, and received his Ph.D. from the world’s leading institution for the study of condensed matter physics, University of Illinois [...]

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