Mike, that Gabelli piece is phenomenal. He is not usually so open about his firm's technique. I will distribute that to my firm's investment team tomorrow. I like to think I am good one-on-one with management, but you can always get better. The best way to do that, I have found, is listen hard to what questions other people ask and file away their techniques for your own interviews.
And on N (aka Nickel), a lot of value investors have blown this one, so be careful. It looked cheap at 25, it looked cheap at 20. We are in a period of commodity deflation, so valuing the assets in the ground may provide no margin of safety if the commodity price drops further. To say nothing of valuing a mining company based on historical earnings. That was when commodity prices were much higher. Before you think of buying INCO because it looks cheap, take a good long look at Phelps Dodge, Asarco, Freeport (FCX), etc. They all look cheap, and PD is the class of the industry. You could have invested in INCO in 1960 and still be down. This business destroys wealth systematically.
And USEC has started to run. It is very unusual for a "busted IPO" to bounce back above the offering price so quickly. Usually these stay down for a long time, if not forever because the buyers of the IPO are forever disillusioned.
Just my thoughts,
Jim
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