Bureaucracy gone mild
In finance, as in life, there are often severe consequences for making mistakes. The financial crisis has exposed those investors, most spectacularly the investment banks who borrowed too much but also private investors, who weren’t as disciplined as they should have been.
Financial blogger Gregory Speicher thinks investors can learn something about discipline from the medical [...]
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
In practice:
Catch a share near its low
Starting off where I finished last week, clicking through the companies I’ve profiled over the last year to determine which are suitable for the Thrifty 30 portfolio, I’m rejecting Business Post (BPG) again.
Although most of my junk mail and a lot of actually quite useful mail seems to [...]
Not-For-Me
In practice:
Just an opinion
Judging by the numbers, Photo-Me, the UK’s dominant photobooth operator is a buy. It’s ranked 26th on my list of good companies at cheap prices.
The shares cost eleven times average earnings (profits), which is cheap, but not desperately so, and it’s financially strong, scoring eight out of nine on the F_Score.
Many [...]
Summer shutdown
In practice:
We’re all going…
I’m taking an extended break this summer and although I don’t usually make predictions, I confidently predict the next blog will be on Wednesday 26 August, one month from now.
In the meantime, and in time honoured tradition, here’s some summer reading.
I’m taking two books away:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. [...]
Minsky, mortgages and you
In practice:
Minksy’s protracted moment
If you follow this blog, you’ll recognise these names: Jeremy Grantham, Nouriel Roubini, Robert Shiller, and James Montier. I’ve quoted them many times, and they anticipated the financial crisis.
They have something else in common, they’re all followers of economist Hyman Minsky. Grantham describes himself as a Minsky maven. Roubini feared we were [...]
Seduced by Celsis
In practice:
What’s not to like?
Barring a small surge to 240p in 2007, and subsequent backwash to 140p last year, it’s difficult to detect much life in Celsis’ share price. Investors’ enthusiasm for the company seems to be flagging as it grows and in the second half of this century it’s mostly traded sideways.
Could a [...]
Cataclysm postponed, temporarily
In practice:
How inflation, population, and developing countries could take us back to the ‘70’s
You have to watch this two part video interview with Russell Napier on the FT site earlier this month:
Bear market bottoms
Cataclysmic bear market
If you do, come back, because I rang Mr Napier last week asking him to clarify his prophecy of doom. [...]
Investing against the tide
In practice:
Huveaux (again)
Rupert Levy, Huveaux’s financial director, returned my call this morning. I rang him yesterday primarily to ask about some of the notes in the accounts.
A quick recap: Yesterday I said this publishing and events company was cheap, but I was doubtful about its financial strength…
Note 15 confirms the company believes the “value in [...]
ASOS makes me look like an ass…
‘A’ is for acronym, and anomaly
Here’s a rarity these days, a couple of charts that go from bottom left to top right:
Yesterday, ASOS (ASC) announced it had doubled sales and and almost doubled of pre-tax profit and is looking ahead to another year of strong growth.
I cringe whenever I look at charts like ASOS, and [...]
Extreme shares and extreme moves
In practice:
Naked PE shares on the move
Keith Anderson emailed me this afternoon, saying:
Nobody rings you up and tells you that the market has just turned. So here you are…
The inventor of the Naked PE is watching his portfolios of extremely cheap companies very carefully. The prices of three of the six companies in his list [...]
