Here are the notes from the second day, I’ll continue adding them as the day goes along so you can refresh this page to see if there’s anything new. John Lewis, Osmium — compounders and engagers in small caps. “Ignore the noise, focus on priorities” (Cliff Remily, offshore subsea idea) Short selling pitfalls and short […]
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The Value Investing Congress is a two-day conference featuring fairly lengthy, insightful presentations into interesting value investment ideas or bigger picture strategies from some of the most successful hedge fund managers and other value investing “thinkers”. I try to attend every year, and I’m extra delighted that the press and the large corps of bloggers […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Guy Gottfried has suggested a lot of small cap Canadian stocks, some of which have done phenomenally — so what does he suggest this time? Holloway Lodging (HLC.TO, HLLOF)– […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Michael Kao’s presentation is titled “Multiple ZONES of Optionality” — which sounds conceptually a little bit similar to his “asymmetric investing” pitch from the Spring Congress in Las Vegas. […]
I like to try to attend the Value Investing Congress each year, preferably both of them (East Coast and West Coast) when I can — they are fantastic investment conferences largely because they’re pretty small, and they consistently attract some of the best value investors who share detailed presentations about what they’re buying and how […]
Here are my notes from the presentations on the second day at the Value Investing Congress: Eric Sprott, “Investing Opportunity of Your Lifetime” (Gold market manipulation) Isaac Schwartz, “Hidden in Plain Sight” (Kazakh banks and Russian flooring) David Hurwitz, “Opportunities for Investment in Korea” Michael Kao, Akanthos “The TAO of Asymmetric Investing” (Tag Oil) Petra […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Arnaud Ajdler runs a new special situations hedge fund called Engine Capital (he’s been at Crescendo for a decade and is an experienced activist investor, but moved to start […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Dan Ferris, who we have covered many times, is presenting about Altius Minerals (ALS.TO, ATUSF), which he has covered for years and we’ve written about many times (it’s also […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Petra presented on South Korean stocks last year in Las Vegas as well, so it’s likely that these stocks are also ones that individual investors have trouble buying. They’re […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Isaac Schwartz is from Robotti and company, and he started by updating us on Kazakhstan and the bank he recommended there last year. Which climbed in price nicely last […]
Should be an interesting day for us here at the Value Investing Congres — one “secret” presenter later in the afternoon, a presentation from Dan Miller at Gabelli who has picked a few great small cap growers in past years, more from Whitney Tilson, a presentation from newsletter guy Chris Mayer, and a presentation from […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Richard Lashley at PL Capital has been involved in proxy contests and shareholder activism with small banks around the country for about 18 years. Chris Mayer talked about him […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Lisa Rapuano presented about the importance of personality and temperament in managing your own investment portfolio. A common trait among successful investors is adherence to a process. I took […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. David Neuhauser from Livermore Partners planned his presentation primarily about Pacific Rubiales Energy (PRE.TO, PEGFF), but since he started investing in it in the first quarter it released good […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Eric Andersen is a hedge fund manager at Western Standard, long-short, with a long term focus. They focus on small cap companies, below $500 million, with no analyst coverage […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. This presentation was not so much about presenting on one stock as it was about explaining his way of thinking, and the kinds of long-term decisionmaking he thinks is […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Chris Mayer is well known the mavens of Gumshoedom, not only because he has presented at the last two Value Investing Congresses but also because his publisher, Agora, has […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Carlo Cannell has presented at past Congresses, though I don’t know if I’ve written about him before. He argued that boring and mundane industries are the way to go… […]
These are my notes and instant reactions from a presentation at the Value Investing Congress, the notes below might contain errors, paraphrases, incorrect quotes, or misinterpretations. Tim Eriksen of Eriksen Capital Management also presented at the Value Investing Congress a year ago, and his idea (Internet Bancorp, INBK) seemed pretty interesting at the time. It […]
I always like to squeeze in the pre-conference workshop at the Value Investing Congress, because in that much smaller group we tend to get more discussion and deeper analysis… and the stories aren’t all blogged by a hundred people and on CNBC, so there’s usually time to consider them. It takes me some time after […]
Good morning, Gumshoe friends! The Value Investing Congress in Las Vegas starts tomorrow, but I decided to also attend the pre-conference workshop so I’ll be tied up most of the day in those more in-depth presentations and won’t likely be sharing my notes as we go like I try to do with the regular conference […]
This is where we’ll be posting all of my note and comments from the second day of the Value Investing Congress — I’ll add links below to each of the notes as they come out throughout the day, or you can always see all of my VIC postings here. If you want to see the […]
These are the two presentations made by folks who entered the Value Investing Challenge, one short and one long. David Swartz is the second place winner of the Value Investing Challenge, he’s from Pacific West Land, a commercial real estate firm. His suggestion is to short LifeLock (LOCK), he has a longer report eviscerating the […]
Mick Mcguire’s title is “Don’t buy this Recovery,” but he started out by profiling a company that is a pure play on North American construction — but it’s commercial and industrial construction, not residential. There has not yet been much recovery in commercial construction, but he thinks it’s about to begin. His pick is United […]
Starboard Value is a company that looks for activist investment opportunities where there’s a clear path to potential success. Either they’re successful in working with management, or they try to go over management’s head and try to replace board members and management defends themselves by doing the right things to create value. They are the […]
Carl Chen presented about Taiwan and China, presenting a Taiwanese stock and a Chinese stock. They think that China is still on the ascendancy, and that it has become too fashionable to talk about the failure of China, which has the longest existing human culture on the planet. Taiwan is a great place to look […]
Dan Miller works for GAMCO investors and the Gabelli funds, he manages 35 industry analysts. His talk is called “Investing with Conviction”, and he’s working with the Gabelli concept of “private market value” — they call it “PMV with a Catalyst” and he published a quarterly list of the “Focus Five” — the five most […]
The Winklevoss twins came to talk to talk about Bitcoin. Which is definitely the least typical presentation I’ve seen at the Value Investing Congress — these are my notes from the talk. Bitcoin is a math-based asset created over a decentralized peer to peer network. They are hoping to convince us that Bitcoin will be […]
David Shapiro and Evan Vanderveer presented for their Vanshap Capital, which is very small but has received seed funding from Markel (MKL). EGI Financial (EFH.TO, EGFHF pink sheets) is a small company in Missisauga, in property and casualty insurance in four segments — primarily non-standard auto insurance under the name Echelon General, but they also […]
Chris Mayer may be the presenter at the Value Investing Congress who is most familiar to Gumshoe readers, being as he edits a couple of newsletters for Agora Finance and we’ve revealed a few teaser picks of his over the years. He tends to be a pretty sober and value-focused guy, despite the wackiness of […]
As most of you are no doubt aware right now, one of our special features for the Irregulars is that when I attend an investing conference I try to write about all of the interesting ideas I learn about for you. Lately that’s meant I’ve been at the Value Investing Congress twice a year and […]
The guys from COMPOUND Capital presented at the last Congress too, and they have had some interesting ideas — they have two stocks to share today. They look for recurring revenue, owner operators, balance sheet slack and limited leverage, undervalued companies or confusing situations. They like names that don’t screen well and have limited analyst […]
Donald Yacktman is a legendary value investor who runs two excellent mutual funds, Yacktman Fund and Yacktman Focused Fund. They’re one of the many funds affiliated with Affiliated Managers Group (AMG). What is unique about him? He thinks about 70% of investors (or maybe 95%) are rear-looking and momentum-driven investors. He thinks that you have […]
Harvey Sawikin is a Russia-focused investor, one of the few who has been consistently invested in Russia since it opened to foreign investors, and his suggestion is to buy Gazprom Neft (GAZ in London, GZPFY on the pink sheets), a Gazprom subsidiary that’s a better (and less liquid) value than its parent. It’s cheap partly […]
Very interesting and honest take on the breakdown in India from an honest Indian money manager. He’s clear about how terrible things are in India — but says that India has been cyclical and the underlying reasons for the economy to grow are still there … and the stocks are cheap. Business confidence at lows, […]
Chris Mittleman runs private money for Mittleman Brothers, and he presented at the last Value Investing Congress as well — he said he hopes to buy stocks that are great companies that have gotten cheap for temporary reasons. The ideas last time were Carmike Cinemas and Revlon, both of which have done quite well since. […]
Charles de Vaulx’s fund is focused on value investing, of course, but is more diversified and doesn’t hold large concentrated positions. They do hold some cash when opportunities are low, and unlike many value investors they do often hold gold or gold mining stocks (though they’ve avoided mining shares in recent years, he says). They […]
Mark Boyar is a well-respected longtime value investor, he publishes a research-intensive newsletter and has an excellent record over many decades. He first mentioned the stocks that he talked about last time he presented, at the Las Vegas iteration of this Congress back in May (we covered that here) — he did well with Dole […]
Blue Harbour advocates a “private equity approach to the public markets”, focusing on backing the right management teams and “thinking like an owner.” He advocates collaborative work with companies and boards (they’re not doing proxies or fighting, they’re looking for people who want help) — this has improved because directors are now much more aware, […]
Alex Roepers speaks at most of the Value Investing Congress events, and he has often shared excellent ideas of (mostly) larger industrial stocks which can benefit from what he calls “constructive shareholder activism” … he’s planning to share five new investment ideas, but started with “insights from 25 years.” He is a concentrated investor, typically […]
John Mirshekari is a fund manager at Fidelity, specializing in industrial stocks, and he’s talking about capital allocation and incentives. He started by talking about a mistake — Pinnacle Airlines, which was written up as a value stock dozens of times … the CEO had little incentive to help investors. He thinks that capital allocation […]
Michael Castor is a healthcare hedge fund guy, and he talked about accounting He started out by sharing a couple names that he’s interested in — he thinks there is attractive valuation at Cardinal Health (CAH) and Select Medical (SEM) And he says there is a compelling value in Aratana (PETX), a pet medicine company. […]
Guy Gottfried has a nice, albeit short, record of choosing excellent little Canadian value stocks that have risen in value pretty substantially over the year or so following his presentation. Of course, that doesn’t mean his pick this year will jump right up — but he’s presenting before the market opens, and the 500 or […]
Hi folks! I’m traveling to the Value Investing Congress in New York, and, as I have for the past couple of years, I’ll be reporting my thoughts and notes on that Congress and the investing ideas I hear there next week for the Irregulars — hopefully, if the internet access is OK in the conference […]
The Congress has concluded, with a couple dozen sessions over two days exposing your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe to probably 50+ interesting investment ideas. I’ve shared notes on almost all of those sessions over the past two days, and I’ve now got lots of ideas bouncing around my head that I’m setting aside for deeper analysis […]
Whitney Tilson presented on several of his older ideas and a few new ones, and started off by telling us that the most dangerous three word phase in investing is “I Missed It.” That’s the phenomenon of missing a huge performer because you don’t want to buy after it’s risen — just because you missed […]
Ori is a global value investor, and he thinks it’s critical to research the country as much as the company. Great individual companies can be crushed by a bad geopolitical situation. You have to like the country as well as the company. Objective criteria — why is Israel a great place to invest? Stable, capitalist, […]
Chris Mittleman spoke on behalf of his family-run investment firm, Mittleman Brothers, and says he applies a more selective criteria to find real extremes of value. The presentation was about applying a private equity mentality to public equity — and they invest in a lot of companies that have substantial leverage. So unlike value investors […]
Vitaliy Katesenelson presented at the Value Investing Congress five years ago, one that I didn’t attend, and he talks about market cycles. He notes that what we think of as bear markets have really been long sideways markets. Sideways markets are the removal of PE premiums from the market, earnings grow but that’s canceled out […]
David Hurwitz of SC Fundamental presented a thought exercise on valuing a steady and boring company versus a rapid grower that has been steadily losing more money on each new sale. The key is to look at balance sheet — that’s the bedrock the company sits on, earnings can come and go even for very […]
Zeke Ashton runs Centaur Capital Partners and does long/short and he’s also a manager of Tilson Dividend (TILDX), which uses covered calls. I’ll flip his presentation and start with his investment idea, which is title insurance — but he also did a good presentation about investment mistakes so I’ll share those notes on as well. […]
Mark Boyar does excellent value investing research that he publishes (his firm also manages a mutual fund, Boyar Value (BOYAX) — it’s an expensive fund so I wouldn’t necessarily want to invest there, but his research is great), and he shared a bunch of lessons with us at the Congress today — along with some […]
Guy Gottfried is a Canadian value investor, he has spoken at most of the Value Investing Congresses I’ve attended and he has often shared valuable ideas — usually stocks I’ve never heard of. A couple years ago it was The Brick (BRK in Toronto), which has done extraordinarily well, and last Fall it was ClubLink […]
Well, it’s been a busy, busy first day of the Value Investing Congress — they reorganized the event this year to include more presentations, which means I have more notes to share with you. Much of the time I posted these thoughts in real time, and the more in-depth consideration of any stocks that look […]
Chris Mayer, who we’ve covered from time to time as Agora has teased his letters, was the last presenter of the day. He talked about owner operators, which generally means “skin in the game” — founders, families, large investors. Owner operators have their wealth at risk, look for long term profits, it all makes perfect […]
Phillip Goldstein of Bulldog Investors talked this afternoon about his experience with Imperial Holdings (IFT), which is in the life settlements business. The business is and was pretty compelling — lending money to wealthy senior citizens against their life insurance — even as it’s been very controversial. Bulldog invested in them by buying debt with […]
It’s been interesting to see that we’re getting a broader international spectrum of ideas at this Value Investing Congress than in years past — so far we’ve seen Iraq and the UK … and India, Mongolia, Korea, Israel and probably others are on the way. Isaac Schwartz from Robotti & Co. tried to lull us […]
Zack Buckley, who last year talked up a short in the tech space, today argued that there’s a small tech company that’s very undervalued. The company used to be called InfoSpace and (since investors hated Infospace), it’s been renamed Blucora (BCOR) and owns two businesses, the old search distributor Infospace and their recently acquired third-place […]
First Internet Bancorp (INBK) — traditional bank but without traditional branches, so they can offer better rates and lower fees. There are plenty of online banking competitors, but despite the fact that the only growth industry in the town where I live is building new bank branches the preference for internet banking is growing nicely […]
David Nierenberg founded the D3 family of investment funds, which is a focused small cap and micro cap investment group. They profiled one of their interesting ideas this morning to launch the Value Investing Congress, and like many of the stocks they pick it’s a stock that they think gives growth at a discounted price. […]
The Gumshoe faithful have been asking about Hilary Kramer and her latest teaser pitch, so we’re going to ID at least her “#1” idea here — and possibly we’ll get into the rest of ’em if there’s interest. The basic idea is much like past ads from the Motley Fool and others — that cloud […]
As I usually do in the weeks following the Value Investing Congress, I’m featuring a favorite idea from that Congress as our “Idea of the Month” this time around — and though it was hard to narrow down the list this year I decided to go with one of the smaller and more unusual ideas, […]
The second day of the Value Investing Congress resulted in mostly headlines about David Einhorn shorting Chipotle (CWG), since that was the only thing he shared that seemed new and sexy, but he and several other presenters also shared some interesting thoughts that stood out for me about a few of the victims/villains of the […]
I’m absolutely sure that you can find plenty of articles about David Einhorn’s presentation today at the Value Investing Congress — unlike the past couple years, he did not tear any companies apart or allege really gross misvaluations or fraud, but did present a couple shorts and a couple longs. The shorts were a repeat […]
Today we’ve had two good presentations at the Value Investing Congress so far — one from Lloyd Khaner with a pretty compelling argument that Jamba Juice (JMBA) has gone through the first three years of turnaround and is ready to ramp up again with much, much better management and strategy, including a presence in public […]
Just had an interesting presentation from Mick McGuire of Marcato Capital Management, he called out three different companies who have good operating businesses but also understated values that are hidden by their balance sheets … in this case because they are carrying real estate at purchase prices. The three are Alexander and Baldwin (ALEX), Gencorp […]
Barry Rosenstein made his presentation to break up Agrium a’la El Paso and Marathon public. I also like AGU and may share more thoughts later but thought you’d like to see his presentation: www.JanaAGUAnalysis.com
Whitney Tilson had a good update presentation on some of his ideas this morning — nothing earth-shaking, and not much “new” news beyond what he shared during our pre-conference seminar yesterday or in past conferences, but he did reiterate his pitch that Berkshire Hathaway remains a ridiculous bargain, he now puts roughly a 12 PE […]
I’m tempted to buy some puts in Splunk (SPLK) following the presentation by Zack Buckley late this morning — he brought the shares down by 5%, but his brief look at the business model and the growth prospects, and the accelerated revenue recognition that makes the business look better than it is, point to some […]
So far we’ve heard from two presenters, Guy Gottried from Rational Investment in Canada presented two Canadian small caps that clearly caught the attention of the attendees — ClubLink (CLK in Canada, CLKXF on the pinks) owns a trophy tourism asset in Alaska (a scenic railway and the port that cruise ships use to get […]
The Value Investing Congress is always fun, and I’ll be trying to learn plenty that I can share with you in the weeks ahead (and, hopefully, become a better investor myself in the process), but this year I decided to spend a bit more time in New York and take in the pre-Congress seminar as […]
I try to make it to the Value Investing Congress in New York every year — it’s a great gathering of smart money managers and value-minded, fundamentally focused investors, and I usually come home with at least a half-dozen compelling ideas. Some of those ideas make headlines and move stocks, particularly when rock star fund […]
I’m afraid the mind is more willing than the body today, I seem to have picked up some sort of flu bug so I’ll be brief today and will share some more thoughts on the Value Investing Congress and the ideas we learned about in the weeks ahead. Which is probably for the best, since […]
The Value Investing Congress is always an interesting place to hear about ideas and strategies from some of the better money managers and analysts around, but I’m finding it particularly valuable this year … when the market is going through crazy gyrations and moving up and down on macro news like European debt or unemployment […]
This week I’m at the Value Investing Congress in New York, so your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe may toss in a teaser unveiling during these couple days if something jumps out at me, but for the most part I’m going to share some of the ideas from the conference that I find appealing, both for free […]
As most of you know, I spent a couple days learning at the Value Investing Congress in New York last week, a wonderful conference that attracts some of the best and brightest in value investing and gives them a great forum for sharing their ideas and methods. The stars of the Congress are usually the […]
A quick note for you during the lunch break for today’s congress: I heard some very good presentations backed up by stupendously thorough analysis this morning, including a great presentation by Kyle Bass on Japan’s debt and the debt of other heavily leveraged countries, and an argument from Michael Kao that the convertible bonds of […]
I mentioned last week that I would try to send out an update or two to the Irregulars while I’m here in Manhattan attending the Value Investing Congress … and whaddya know, I’m actually doing it! There won’t be a “regular” Friday File this week, but I’ll share this note and hopefully another one tomorrow, […]
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