Ways To Be Dumb
December 22, 2012 Leave a comment
Marty Whitman
June 11, 2012 3 Comments
Martin J. Whitman(Marty Whitman)is the founder of Third Avenue Funds, a family of Value Mutual Funds. Martin Whitman is a veteran value investor with a long, distinguished history . He has successfully identified value in securities for more than 50 years.
Mr. Whitman served as a Distinguished Management Fellow at Yale School of Management for over 30 years.He received a Masters degree in Economics from the New School for Social Research and graduated from Syracuse University magna cum laude. Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management is named in his honor.
One proven value philosophy guides each of his investments:-The cheaper you buy, the greater the potential investment reward and the cheaper you buy, the less the inherent risk. The low price paid limits downside market risk and increases appreciation potential.So he seeks to invest in safe companies that are cheaply priced: Read more of this post
Prem Watsa – The Canadian Warren Buffett
May 23, 2012 5 Comments
Seeing how Prem Watsa is in the news in India these days with respect of the sale of Thomas Cook India by its British parent,(http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/services/travel/toronto-based-fairbridge-capital-to-buy-thomas-cook-india-deal-estimated-at-rs-1000-crore/articleshow/13365646.cms) ,now might be just the time to take a look at the life of this media shy individual.
Watsa is not very widely known outside of Canada, but is well regarded and followed in value investing circles. He has shown an incredibly prescient ability to analyze the financial markets. Some of his most famous calls include selling half his stocks before the 1987 crash and buying S&P puts before the index fell off a cliff in 2000. He also bet against the Japanese Nikkei but his biggest success came more recently during the 2008 sub-prime crisis when he bought credit default swaps on the premise that banks and financial institutions would struggle if a credit and liquidity crisis arose. Today, Watsa is the CEO and Chairman of Fairfax, which has a market cap of approximately $8.7 billion.Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited is a financial holding company based in Toronto, Ontario, which is engaged in property, casualty, and life insurance and reinsurance, investment management, and insurance claims management. He is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Richard Ivey School of Business-his alma mater, a member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation and as well as Chairman of the Investment Committee of St. Paul’s Anglican Church.Till recently he was also a non-executive director of ICICI Bank.Whatever I can piece together of his story is pretty fascinating…. Read more of this post
Learning From Sir John Templeton
June 24, 2011 3 Comments
Sir John Templeton (November 29, 1912 – July 8, 2008) was a legendary investor and a pioneer of global investing. He took value investing to an extreme, picking industries and companies he believed to be at rock bottom, or as he called it “points of maximum pessimism.”He bought when there was blood on the streets. For example,when investors fled the New York market after the Second World War was declared, Templeton borrowed $10,000 to scoop up stocks priced at less than a dollar, often in companies that were near bankruptcy. In four years, he sold the stock, paid off the debt and pocketed $40,000—the seed money for Templeton Growth Fund, a market beater for many years.
Templeton did not care where a company was located. If it was selling below what he considered to be its asset value, and if it was in an industry or nation that was “out of favor,” he was interested in it. He was among the first to invest in postwar-Japan and among the first to sell out of Japan in the mid-1980s. He was one of the very few who invested in Peru when the communist Shining Path was running rampant, and by doing so, he reaped a fortune for his investors. Read more of this post
9 Ways To Make Money On The Stock Market
March 7, 2011 6 Comments
Here are 9 ways listed by Whitney Tilson to pick diamonds in the stock market:
1. Out-of-favour blue chips. Even the world’s greatest companies encounter problems or otherwise fall out of favor. Correctly differentiating between those suffering temporary rather than permanent issues is the key to success here. As long as the positive fundamentals of the company’s business remain intact, and new management is willing and capable of bringing the company on track buying out of favour blue chips can be very profitable.
2. Distressed industries. Buying a good company in a distressed industry is often a great way to make money.
3. Turnarounds. Turning around a broken business is difficult and often takes much longer than expected — but when it occurs, a stock can rise many-fold.
4. Overlooked small caps. Among the thousands of publicly traded stocks that analysts don’t cover are fine businesses that are cheap because either no one is paying attention to them or their stocks are thinly traded. Read more of this post
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