Wednesday, December 30, 2015

The Song of the Dodo

I find the process of natural selection (evolution) fascinating. As such I really enjoyed most of The Song of the Dodo, where the author takes the reader through the history of what knowledge has been accumulated in that field, from the pre-Darwin years all the way to today.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

The Machine That Changed The World

American manufacturing dominated most of the 20th century as its methods of mass production took over the world. Nowhere was this dominance more clearly on display than in the auto sector, where guys like Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan were driving down the cost of owning a car while driving up what a car could do. But the tide started to turn when some Japanese manufacturers came up with a better way. The Machine That Changed The World is about that new way.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Made In the USA

Bill Gates' favourite author Vaclav Smil has written a book about the rise and fall of manufacturing in the US, titled Made In the USA. The book delves into the history of US manufacturing, essentially starting from the shift from crafts-made products to mass production that vaulted the USA to the top of the productivity charts, and ending with the job losses in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Taught a Lesson by Gear Energy

I know the commodity space is run by guys who care little for shareholder value. I guess holding down a job in a boom/bust industry is tough, so managers do what they need to do by smoothing it out at the expense of the shareholder. And yet, I still got taken.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Lever of Riches

Why are some countries richer than others? One major reason is the derivation and use of technology. In The Lever of Riches, Joel Mokyr digs into this topic.

Monday, December 14, 2015

The Ten Commandments of Business Failure

Any book that has its foreword written by Warren Buffett is one I'd like to read, so surprisingly it took me a long time to get to this one, The Ten Commandments of Business Failure.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

When You Are Engulfed In Flames

Sedaris is able to see the humour and/or the craziness in everyday situations. His book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, is about nothing: the nuances of everyday life.

Monday, December 7, 2015

More Money Than God

Over several decades, the hedge fund industry has taken the financial sector by storm. In More Money Than God, Sebastian Mallaby presents some of the more interesting events in the history of hedge funds.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Dead Companies Walking

Hedge fund manager Scott Fearon discusses what made him successful in his book, Dead Companies Walking. The book is actually about failure. Failure is good for an economy, as it allows new ways of doing things to rise. Fearon's expertise is spotting failures before the market recognizes them, and shorting them all the way down.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Hackers and Painters

Programmers and artists have a lot in common, so says Paul Graham, author of Hackers and Painters. The book contains a lot of insight into life in general, but is aimed at those who create software.

Monday, November 30, 2015

Best Books of 2015

These weren't actually written in 2015 (most of them anyway), but rather I read them in 2015. I went through all the books I read this year, and have ranked them below, as holiday gift ideas for you!

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Where Are The Customers' Yachts?

This Warren Buffett recommendation is all about how Wall Street works. Though it was written decades ago, it's all still relevant, as human nature, and therefore the way Wall Street conducts business, hasn't changed.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The Greatest Salesman In The World

The Greatest Salesman in the World is a novel about how one can become the greatest salesman in the world. Though the story is interesting, I don't think I learned much from it at all.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Titan

John Rockefeller was the richest person in the world for quite a stretch of time. In the Charlie Munger-recommended book Titan, Ron Chernow biographs his life.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Monday, November 16, 2015

Shake Those STTs

The price volatility of STT Enviro continues. Over the last few months, I've written about this stock both when buying and when selling. Once again the price has dropped.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Intro

I find most technical books written for the layman difficult to understand, and this one is no exception. In The Laws of Thermodynamics, Peter Atkins tries to teach us about the interactions of heat and work, and for the most part he succeeds.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

The Little Book Of Talent

There is an increasing amount of evidence that talent is not as innate as most people believe. Skillfulness is actually acquired through practicing and how one practices. In The Little Book of Talent, Daniel Coyle offers some 50 tips on the best way to get really good at anything.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

KING of Value

A year ago, I wrote about King Digital as a potential value stock. Yesterday, the stock closed about 50% higher than it's level one year ago, as the company accepted a buy out offer.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor

If you know a company's future growth rate (good luck with that), and can calculate it's Beta (say what?) along with its weighted average cost of capital (to 2 decimal places, because you wouldn't want to be imprecise), you can figure out what a company is worth exactly...at least that's what gets taught to finance students around the world. One of the most successful investors in the world, however, knows differently. In Tren Griffin's book about Charlie Munger, the reader gets a different point of view of what makes for a successful investor.

Monday, October 26, 2015

The Great Illusion

Whereas for most of human history, conquest has led to material gains for the victor, this is no longer the case, says Norman Angell in his book The Great Illusion, a Peter Thiel recommendation.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Decmil Group

Decmil (ASX:DCG) offers design, construction and accommodation services to mining and government sectors. The share price has been absolutely hammered (down 50% in the last year, 70% in the last 3 years) because of the mining pullback in Australia. However, the company remains profitable and has managed to diversify away from mining into building bridges, schools and other infrastructure.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

The Science of Parenting

On pretty much every subject, there's a lot of crap out there. Some people are better at marketing what they know than at figuring out if what they know is right, and this leads to a lot of misinformation. Parenting is no exception, as you can find "experts" on opposite sides of almost any topic. In The Science of Parenting, Margot Sunderland aims to cut through the crap by giving parents advice based on science instead of conjecture.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Ashley Services

I have recently been buying shares of Ashley Services Group (ASH) in Australia. This is yet another Australian company that has seen its share price pummeled since the commodity plunge. However, its relationship with commodities is pretty loose.

Friday, October 9, 2015

Anglo American

In general, I hate mining companies. They burn cash when times are good, and they burn cash when times are bad. They always seem to forget that they are in a cyclical industry, so when times are bad they are totally unprepared.

I generally avoid investing in mining companies, but there is an exception to every rule, and my exception is Anglo American (AAL,AAUKY).

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

The Discoverers

A great deal of discoveries in human history have led to the incredible standard of living we enjoy today. In The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin explores (the who, what, where, when etc) a great number of these.

Friday, October 2, 2015

Karsan Value Funds: 2015 Q3 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Pinetree Debentures Play Out

Two years ago, I discussed Pinetree's (OTCPK:PNPFF) debentures as a potential value investment. Read more...

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Stuff Matters

I don't have a very good grasp of where all the stuff I use comes from. Things like glass, and porcelain, plastic and chocolate. What separates these materials from other similar materials? What separates these materials from themselves? How were these discovered? How were they refined? In Stuff Matters, Mark Miodownik seeks to answer these questions for a number of common materials.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Lean Thinking

Unlike a lot of the "Lean" books I've profiled on this site, this book isn't about the internet. It's the predecessor of the current literature on lean, written back when manufacturing was the hot industry! In Lean Thinking, James Womack follows up on the old study of Toyota in order to come up with manufacturing principles that can reduce costs and help increase revenue.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less

The title Double Your Profits in Six Months of Less is a little on the promotional side, but the quality of the content is excellent nonetheless. In the book, consultant Bob Fifer shares about 80 tricks that when combined are likely to far more than double the profits of mid-size to large firms.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Hong Kong Filings Notifications

Hong Kong is the latest country for which you can now get notifications when a company you own files something, at www.conferencecalltranscripts.org.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Television is the New Television

Though they are still too high for me, there has been a dramatic decline in the multiples of various media companies over the last few weeks. Investors can't seem to agree on what the future for video media is going to look like. I recently read Michael Wolff's Television is the New Television to help me think through this topic.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

The Fish That Ate The Whale

Who knew the banana could be so interesting? Well, not the banana itself, but the business conditions surrounding its introduction to the US. Rich Cohen takes us through the story in The Fish That Ate The Whale, with a particular emphasis on one incredible entrepreneur, Sam Zemurray.

Friday, August 28, 2015

The Diamond Age

I don't read fiction very often, and yet some of my favourite books are fictional (e.g. Animal Farm, The Goal), so I like to throw one in there every now and then. The Diamond Age is a Peter Thiel recommendation that explores a great deal of themes.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Rayonier's Loss, But Whose Gain?

In dramatic fashion, Mr. Market took Rayonier (RYAM) to the woodshed over the last two days. The beating reduced RYAM's market cap by about 50%, or over $300 million. The reason: RYAM's largest customer is trying to get out of a fixed-price contract that doesn't end until 2018. What I find interesting is that this money that disappeared from Rayonier's market cap should show up somewhere else, but it doesn't!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

One of my favourite writers about business is Peter Drucker. He was a true innovator, as the field was pretty barren when he first started writing on the topic. In Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he tries to codify how successful new businesses can be created.

Monday, August 17, 2015

OTC Filings: Instantaneous

Many companies don't file with the SEC, but publicize their results nonetheless. These OTC filings are now available instantaneously on conferencecalltranscripts.org. As such, you can now receive a notification/alert as soon as a company you follow comes out with new results.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Sell Sell Cel!

Just three months ago, I discussed Cellcom as a potential value investment. The company was a market leader in an industry where market leadership has a strong advantage thanks to the economies of scale of network effects. The company was undergoing an industry price war, however, which made its price take a dive from the top rope.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Setting The Table

The restaurant business is a difficult one in which to develop a moat. You can't patent a flavour or a way of doing things, and you can't prevent the competition from opening next door. Customers are in no way tied to your restaurant just because they came once. As such, it's no surprise that so many restaurants close (60% in the first three years, according to research cited here). But Danny Meyer has bucked this trend, having successfully grown several restaurants, including the famous Shake Shack. In Setting The Table, he discusses his formula for success.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

We Learn Nothing

Tim Kreider is a cartoonist for the NY Times, among other media. In We Learn Nothing, he looks back on his life. But the book is not so much an autobiography, as it is a sequence of chapters dedicated to specific times or moments in his life.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Getting Things Done

Most of the books about productivity I have read recently have treated the symptoms of the wandering mind, rather than the cause. For example, meditation is said to give you better focus. But why is your mind so pre-occupied to begin with? Because you have a lot of shit to do! Getting Things Done treats the cause of your lack of focus, by organizing you so that your mind is relaxed because it realizes it doesn't have to pump you with reminders all the time.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Automated Scuttlebutt

In addition to receiving alerts when companies in your portfolio issue filings or have transcripts, you can now receive alerts whenever a webpage related to your company is updated. There is now a 3rd category of notifications available in your company portfolio on conferencecalltranscripts.org. It's called "Other", and you can use it to track anything from company presentations to 3rd party data about the company, or even to see if there have been changes to a company's job board. For this reason, I call it "automated scuttlebutt".

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Making Of The Atomic Bomb

The weapon that can destroy humanity had a rather innocent beginning, with James Rutherford's genius experiments which demonstrated the existence of the atom, which no microscope is strong enough to allow us to see. In The Making Of The Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes takes the reader on a journey from the beginning of the identification of the atom to the massive destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Friday, July 10, 2015

The Critical Chain

As a huge fan of EM Goldratt's The Goal, I thought I'd give another book of his, The Critical Chain, a go. I was not disappointed.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Confidence Game

Several years before the credit crisis, Bill Ackman warned investors that the large bond insurers, MBIA in particular, were taking on too much risk. He started shorting the stock and talking about the company's problems to anyone who would listen. He was attacked by many, including MBIA management, regulators who don't appreciate the role of short-sellers, and the media. He was eventually vindicated as his predictions turned out right and he generated an incredible profit as a result. In Confidence Game, Christine Richard tells this story.

Friday, July 3, 2015

Karsan Value Funds: 2015 Q2 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The Magic Of Reality

The world of science has led to discoveries more wondrous than anything we can make up, and Richard Dawkins takes us through a number of examples in The Magic of Reality. This was an excellent book from which I learned a heck of a lot.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Dream Big

3G Capital has become a well-known outfit thanks to its buyouts of some large American firms and its partnership with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in some of its purchases. While this company may appear to be an overnight success, it is actually the result of decades of the blood, sweat and tears of its Brazilian founders. Cristiane Correa's book Dream Big tells the story of this firm and its predecessors.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Notifications for London Stocks

The FTSE 100, the index of large caps in London, still sits below its 1999 high! I myself have had some luck finding some value on the London Stock Exchange, though mostly with smaller names. To track the filings of these stocks, I have now made notifications available on conferencecalltranscripts.org for stocks on the LSE.

Monday, June 22, 2015

When To Rob A Bank

Long-time readers will know that I'm a big fan of the Freakonomics franchise, having reviewed many of their previous books on this site. While none of the subsequent books has been as good as the first (which I highly recommend), they are all still very good.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Making of the Modern World

If you enjoy drowning in a sea of numbers, Making of the Modern World is for you. This Bill-Gates-recommended book is about all the different materials we use and have used, with emphasis on changing trends and directions.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Notifications For Australian Stocks

The Australian market index still hasn't surpassed its 2007 high. Thanks to a recent bust in commodity prices, there is value to be found in Australia. Recently, I profiled one of my favourite stocks in Australia at the moment, Logicamms.

But how is one to keep up with the latest news from companies on different exchanges around the world? I solved the problem for myself and decided to share it: at conferencecalltranscripts.org, you can now add Australian companies to your portfolio, and get notified when one of these companies has a new filing.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

I'm a fan of Michael Mauboussin's work, and so it's no surprise that I enjoyed his book Think Twice. The book is basically a summary of a lot of the cutting edge research into our decision-making biases and how we can improve on them.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Logicamms

Logicamms (LCM) is a small-cap operating in the hated mining sector. Excluding its strong net-cash balance of $20 million, it has a P/E of less than 5, as its share price has fallen 60% from its 2013 high!

Friday, May 29, 2015

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Before Captain Obvious became a thing, it was customary for the impatient to criticize those who point out the self-evident with a good old fashioned "No shit, Sherlock!" But who is this Sherlock who has transcended the centuries while 99% of what gets written (including the contents of this blog) has an expiry date that would make the dairy industry blush?

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Strayer Returns

It was with a heavy heart that I sold Strayer a few months ago when its price leaped into the $70 area. But the market gods have seen fit to return this company to my portfolio, as the stock is down almost 40% over the last six months! I've written about Strayer before as a stock idea, and not much has changed so I'll just add a few quick points to supplement the old article and bring it up to date.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field

After Newton, everyone was pretty sure that the properties of the physical world had been figured out. Things travel in a straight line unless acted upon and all that. But then some experimenters, led by the brilliant Faraday, demonstrated that some activities appeared to operate as fields. A generation later, the brilliant Maxwell was able to formalize/quantify how these fields worked. As a result, today we have a world totally reliant on their discoveries as we are utterly dependent on electricity. Nancy Forbes tells this tale in her book, Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Structures

Why don't ships/buildings/bridges fall down? Structures by J.E. Gordon is aimed at answering such questions for the layman.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Cellcom

Cellcom Israel (CEL) has traded on the NYSE for more than 8 years, but it's price has never been so low. It is the cell network market share leader in Israel, but a price war is bringing down the industry's profits.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Out of STT Enviro

I purchased my position in STT Enviro 3 months ago, but today I no longer own any shares. I have no quibble with the company, it's just that the price ran up such that I no longer believe it to be a good risk-reward at the current price.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Marissa Mayer and the Fight To Save Yahoo

Yahoo! (YHOO) has one of the lowest P/E ratios on the S&P 500, so it is with great anticipation that I read Nicholas Carlson's timely book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo. I was not disappointed.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Netflixed

Blockbuster totally ignored Netflix as it penetrated the DVD rental market by offering DVD-by-mail made possible by the internet. But eventually, Blockbuster had to do something, so it allocated part of its budget to a new office staffed by young, ambitious types who understood the Netflix threat and wanted to take it on. The new guys at Blockbuster came out with a product that had a user interface pretty much identical to that of Netflix. They eventually found a formula that combined rentals by mail along with in-store coupons that Netflix could not match. Netflix's subscriber numbers began to drop as users shifted to Blockbuster.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Racing Towards Excellence

I wish I had read something like Racing Towards Excellence when I was much younger. Instead of getting the inside story on a number of things I just didn't know, I had to learn from my own mistakes. I highly recommend the book to anyone in their 20s or younger.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Sapiens

Yuval Harari's book Sapiens is just an excellent read. It's about three important periods of human history: the cognitive revolution (where our ancestors became able to use their minds to a level unseen in other species), the agricultural revolution (where our lifestyle changed dramatically) and the scientific revolution (where our standards of living as well as our potential to destroy rose tremendously).

Friday, April 10, 2015

Rosetta Stone

This isn't about Rosetta Stone the stock (I have no idea where that's going), but rather about Rosetta Stone the service. For the last year or so I've used Rosetta Stone to successfully learn a new language: Hindi.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Karsan Value Funds: 2015 Q1 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Behind The Cloud

Salesforce.com is a market darling, having taken the CRM industry by storm. Last year, the company had sales of over $5 billion, which is more than 30% above the year before, which in turn was more than 30% above the year before that. In Behind The Cloud, founder and CEO Marc Benioff discusses what he thinks are the key success factors that propelled his business to what it is today.

Monday, March 30, 2015

The Great Influenza

It is believed that a flu virus managed to kill 5% of the earth's population around 1918. In The Great Influenza, John Barry puts us there. The reader travels with the bug across the world, gets a glimpse of the terror it caused among the population, learns how the virus works, and meets the scientists who try to fight it.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Hornbeck Offshore

Under normal conditions, I tend to avoid investing in anything related to energy and other commodities, precisely because they are prone to the type of manic price crashes that we have seen in the oil industry over the last couple of quarters. But following crashes, there may be opportunities to pick up some babies that have been thrown out with the bathwater. I believe Hornbeck Offsore Services (HOS) may offer just such a chance, with some downside protection to go along with upside as the price of oil eventually (even if it's many years away) reverts to the all-in cost of a marginal barrel.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Bull of Heaven

In Bull of Heaven, Nawar Alsaadi takes us through his life as an investor, with a particular focus on his activist fight with Equal Energy. For me it was a real page-turner, as I enjoyed reading about Alsaadi's adventures growing up in Iraq (and his family's clashes with the Saddam Hussein regime) and his many financial adventures in the stock market.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

I Double You, G!

A stock I have been buying recently is IWG Technologies (IWG), a producer of aircraft water systems. The company is the "world’s leading provider of flight-certified potable water treatment units, on-demand water heaters, aircraft water pumps, a compact water module, and innovative potable water components", with more than 3000 of its units installed on airplanes worldwide.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Red Notice

Bill Browder's Red Notice was a difficult book to put down. It's the real-life story of Bill Browder's Russian hedge fund, but it feels like fiction: what happens to Browder and his associates feels straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster thriller.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Selling Dover Downs

Just over three months ago, I wrote about Dover Downs Gaming (NYSE:DDE) as a potential value idea. Since then, the stock has run up almost 50%. Considering not much has changed from a business standpoint, I felt it prudent to sell my shares and apply those funds instead to situations where the market is pessimistic rather than optimistic.Read more...

Friday, March 13, 2015

STT Enviro

For a company with a net cash position, STT Enviro (STT) may be the most volatile stock I've seen. But that price volatility is a good thing, as it allows investors opportunities to buy this company at a discount to intrinsic value.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Lying

I do it several times a day, and apparently so do you! Lying is endemic in our society, but Sam Harris believes things don't have to be this way. In his book Lying, he tells us why and how we are better off if we stick to the truth in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre's Bad Science is your guide to debunking "hacks, quacks and big pharma flacks". I thought it was an excellent book that exposes a big part of the healthcare industry for what it is: nonsense.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Data Group's Debt Doesn't Reflect Improved Performance

A year and a half ago, I wrote about Data Group's debentures as a potential value opportunity. At that time, they traded for 58 cents on the dollar with maturity in less than four years, for a yield to maturity of 20%. Today, those same debentures trade at 71 cents; but as maturity is now just over 2 years away, the yield to maturity is even higher, closer to 25%! This is despite the fact that business conditions for the company have improved markedly. Read more...

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Underperformance or Outperformance?

I did not expect to see the day that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway would underperform the S&P 500 in 5 out of 6 years, but that's basically what has happened. On the other hand, over the last 7 years (and also for any period longer than this), Berkshire has still handily outperformed this same benchmark! This is the more important indicator, in my opinion.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Innovators

In The Innovators, Walter Isaacson describes the history of the electronic age: how we went from a society with no computers at all to one with them everywhere.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

This Will Make You Smarter

This Will Make You Smarter is a collection of essays written by a number of people deemed to be at the cutting edges of their fields. Each essay seeks to answer the question of what concept would improve one's cognitive toolkit.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Death By Food Pyramid

I first started following the very talented Denise Minger after she wrote a fantastic take-down of a book I previously thought was well-researched. She has a unique ability to make complicated stuff sound very simple, and for this reason I jumped at the chance to read her book, Death By Food Pyramid.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Aberdeen Activists Lose

For reasons beyond my comprehension, Aberdeen shareholders voted to keep current management given the option of ousting those who have destroyed capital for so many years. As a result, the Aberdeen stock idea I presented about a month ago did not end up working out.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Everything is Bullshit

I have no interest in writing a book, but if I were to, this would be a topic that interests me. A lot of stuff society takes for granted are really just the result of either bad science, convincing marketing or some combination of the two. In Everything is Bullshit, the authors delve into a number of topics to expose why the conventional wisdom is wrong.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Selling Reitmans After The Pop

Almost 1.5 years ago, I wrote about Canadian retailer Reitmans (RET.A) as a potential value opportunity. Since then, sales have fallen, the Canadian retail outlook has degenerated, and the company's shares are up some 20%. As a result, my estimate of the company's intrinsic value has fallen, whereas the company's share price has risen, so I have sold my shares.Read more...

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Meet The Frackers

I'm not American but books like The Frackers make me proud to be a US ally! The book tells the story of a number of people who risked it all - their finances, their personal lives, their reputations - to chase their dreams. In so doing, as is the norm with capitalism as it is setup in the US, they increased the standard of living (by reducing the cost of energy) for not just Americans but for the whole world.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Senvest Capital: Deep Value + Growth

I've been following Senvest Capital for a few years now, since I first saw it at Oddball Stocks. I think the current opportunity is rather large.

Monday, January 19, 2015

How Asia Works

This Bill Gates recommended book makes a compelling case for why certain countries in Asia are relatively well-off while others are mired in poverty.

Friday, January 16, 2015

2 Micros For the Price of 1

It would be fair to say that O2Micro (OIIM) is poorly managed. Tangible book value per share is at the same level at which it was 10 years ago, even though not a single dollar of dividend has been paid out in the interim. The company is losing money. But the stock price reflects this poor management, and the losses and then some, as the stock has fallen by 80% over the last 10 years, to trade at a huge discount to book value.

Friday, January 9, 2015

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

Adam Smith is well-known as a promoter of specialization and trade and the coining of the phrase "The Invisible Hand". But upon reading How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, I recognize that the fact that these ideas were discovered by Smith was no fluke. Smith was a student of human behaviour and a very wise one at that.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Notifications By Text

When a company you follow has a new filing, you can now receive notifications by text (not just e-mail) at conferencecalltranscripts.org. As far as I know, that's the only site that provides that service, and it's free. It's also still the only site I know of that provides free notifications for Canadian company filings.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Getting Real

I recently read a great book by the name of Getting Real by Jason Fried. I got the book because I was a big fan of another book by Fried by the name of Rework.

Friday, January 2, 2015

Karsan Value Funds: 2014 Q4 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.