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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Felix who wrote (51194)	3/28/2013 4:49:12 PM
From: gizwick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78746

Sounds like me although I usually have a few more stocks, I concentrate my funds on two or three hopefully good ideas. A good example is BFCF and BBX. Two stocks that have taken off lately.

To: Steve Felix who wrote (51194)	3/28/2013 7:20:15 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78746

re 400% man. One of his best ideas - his buys, you get Pepsi? Whoopi. Sure it's arguably a good company, and one that'll be around for decades maybe. And maybe he bought shares at a good low price when the market was down. There are many such companies though that have these characteristics and can be bought in quantity in down markets. Why limit oneself to just a few? ===================== Consider Heico: "There are huge barriers to entry, he says, the replacement cycle is driven by regulation, and customers are not aggressive about demanding lower prices. Indeed, Mecham can tell a good story like this about any stock he owns. Indeed, Mecham can tell a good story like this about any stock he owns." Okay, so it's a sustainable business. Increases in stated bv, good profit margins. For a company though with a p/e regularly above 20 and having a presumed moat of a sort, I find the roe numbers not so attractive: ycharts.com. I question whether I'd even be a buyer if the stock were at its 12 mo. low. So good story? Yes. Value? - A buy? -- not for me. ========== Some of the buys -- maybe the Fairfax buy which apparently made his reputation -- were when the market was at its lows. Pretty easy to find many, many stocks then at attractive prices. If the idea is to find one or two good ideas every year, I wonder if that presumes a serial progression: one stock bought a few years ago does really well, gets sold and replaced by another stock with more attractive qualities, and then this second stock eventually gets sold at a good price and itself replaced with another. Etc. That would be great timing and selection. Or maybe it's good selection only -- if the fund has a continuing stream of new monies coming in (the earlier stocks wouldn't have to be replaced). ========== " ....half a dozen wealthy investors and portfolio managers converged on an office in midtown Manhattan. These were serious Wall Street moneymen; in aggregate, they handled more than a billion dollars. They had access to the most exclusive hedge funds and investment partnerships and often rubbed shoulders with the elite of New York, Greenwich and Palm Beach." It's said here many times (not by me) that a person has to find his own method for buying/holding/selling -- investing. So what does it say when investment pro's go to meet this outlier person? What can they learn from this guy that they don't already know or what would they do differently or want to do differently from what they are now doing in investing? That they would seek out this guy, I find discouraging about their abilities to manage money. === This also brings up my standard Doubting-Thomas questioning of performance numbers. Where are the numbers? Who audited ten years of this person's performance? Is this guy another Tilson-like who started in a garage with two stocks or something that doubled and those 100% profits are then woven as one year's number among the next nine year's percentage numbers so as to puff up the overall average % gain? Summary: Okay, successful guy, with nice record if true. Maybe the performance is sustainable. I don't know, and would assume that it is not. If I can find his stock picks, I'll look at them to see if they would fall into one of my style boxes.

To: Steve Felix who wrote (51194)	3/28/2013 11:45:08 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Respond to of 78746

I mostly agree with what Paul Senior wrote in his answer. One more thing though. As soon as someone invests in BRK (or FRFHF - Fairfax, for that matter), IMHO they cannot claim they are running a "concentrated portfolio". BRK (or FRFHF) is by itself a diversified fund-like entity. So it's like buying a position in SPY or LMVTX and claiming that you run a concentrated portfolio because it's just a single "position". Now, I don't think Mecham cares about this characterization, but since we are talking about concentrated portfolios... :) I took a look at some of his past picks. I hold BRK and FRFHF. I think WSO, HEI and PEP are overpriced here. Strangely, I think PEP is cheaper than WSO and HEI while likely having bigger moat.