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“This small niche player has a ‘first mover’ advantage on the complete cure for a disease that’s deadlier than cancer”

Looking at an Oxford Club tease for the Friday File

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, February 7, 2014


I haven’t been doing a lot with my personal portfolio over the past month — sometimes, even when the market makes you feel twitchy, I do manage to stick to the adage that has most often provided good guidance to my finances over the years: “Don’t just do something, sit there!”

Sure, there are plenty of stocks I’m keeping an eye on — the insurance companies still look pretty appealing and are now getting a bit cheaper, with Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) even dipping down below $110 for a few moments, and Third Point (TPRE) and Greenlight (GLRE) both dipping substantially on the month to get closer to respectable “buy” prices (both have had challenging investment returns so far this year, at least publicly, with down months in January and high-profile investments going against them — particularly for David Einhorn’s Greenlight and his long-held short position on Green Mountain Coffee, a position that was blown up by Coke’s investment in GMCR this week, but they’re hedged and I’d still like to own more if they continue dipping to closer to book value). Even Markel (MKL) has taken a hit this month, so now we’re closing in on 1.1X book value for them and I’d consider adding if we get close to $510, though I’m also being mindful of overexposure to insurance in my personal portfolio.

And I’m continuing to hold on to my Seadrill (SDRL) position, watching to see if it falls enough to indicate that the market has completely given up on their dividend — my sense is that it hasn’t happened yet, the stock is really resisting falling through the $35-36 line, and I think pessimism over deepwater drilling is too high, so I haven’t done anything yet and I’m still holding on. We’ll see how it goes, I am watching that one pretty closely.

In other newish news, Mail.ru is now closer to having control of VKontakte in Russia and investors don’t seem to care, that soap opera is odd indeed with the founder selling his pivotal 12% stake to a Mail.ru board member, and again, my path is … watching and waiting.

So really, lots of stuff catching my eye over in recent weeks as we’ve seen the markets finally tumble a little — but they didn’t tumble enough that I got particularly greedy, and I haven’t done much personally.

What, then, to ...

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