Alibaba Company Analysis

Alibaba company analysis

This is my Alibaba company analysis. It is a checklist style analysis, which helps me to answer questions about a company. I have not completed my research on Alibaba, so this analysis will change as I perform more research. I believe I have done enough research to have an opinion on Alibaba for myself though.

All of these questions were answered by following the investment guide I created. If you would like to follow my guide for yourself and know where to find the answers for completing an analysis of a company, you can check out my post “Company Analysis and Investment guide” or download the investment guide.

All of these questions come from the company analysis checklist I created. If you would like to use this checklist, you can check out the same post, “Company Analysis and Investment Guide”, or download the company analysis checklist.

Where I Found the Information

I found the information below by reading the most recent 20F (it’s a long one), I found 4 long and 2 short analyst reports (some were on Youtube), 1 news article per month for the last 12 months, I read a few of the 6Ks (there are a lot more than an American company with 10Qs), the latest earnings call transcript and listened to it on EarningsCast, 1 positive article on the CEO and listened to podcast #3 – “Alibaba: A Giant Among Giants” by Business Breakdowns.

I have to do more research on Alibaba before making my full investment. The next information I will be looking for will be on my investment guide. I have made my first investment and I have to complete the rest of my guide before making more investments. I also found a book to read. It is Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built.

The Company Analysis

Company Name

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Stock Symbol

BABA

Today’s Date

May 31, 2021

Where is the Company Headquartered?

Hong Kong, China

How Did I Discover This Company?

Charlie Munger, Greg Alexander and Mohnish Pabrai, 3 of my most favorite gurus, purchased it in quarter 1, 2021. It is tough to find information on Greg. He’s great at keeping a low profile. He is one of Warren Buffett’s three favorite managers he said he would give his money to if he ever retired. The other two managers were Seth Klarman and Li Lu. When one of these investors make a move, I pay close attention.

The Company

Company Overview/Description

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is a holding company that provides the technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands and other businesses to leverage the power of new technology to engage with users and customers to operate. It is the world’s largest online and mobile commerce company, measured by GMV (CNY 6.6 trillion/$1 trillion for the fiscal year ended March 2020). It operates China’s most-visited online marketplaces.

Its Business Segments

The Company operates four business segments. The Core Commerce segment provides China retail. China retail consists of China wholesale (2% of revenue), International retail (5% of revenue), International wholesale (2% of revenue), Cainiao logistics services (5% of revenue) and local consumer services through Taobao Marketplace (consumer-to-consumer) and Tmall (business-to-consumer).

Core Commerce

Alibaba’s China commerce retail division accounted for 69% of revenue in the December 2020 quarter. Taobao generated revenue through advertising and other merchant data services and Tmall derived revenue from commission fees.

Cloud Computing

It also has the leading cloud business in China, which accounted for 7% of revenue. The Cloud Computing segment provides a complete suite of cloud services, including database, storage, network virtualization services, big data analytics and others. As enterprises and SMB’s get digitized in China to go to the cloud from traditional on-premises solutions AliCloud gets $0.40 to $0.50 for every dollar spent on the cloud. The hundreds of future SaaS companies in China will be powered by Alibaba.

Digital Media and Entertainment

Digital media and entertainment platforms account for 4% of revenue. This includes its video streaming platform Youku Tudou, its streaming music platform Alibaba Music, streaming video services for its e-commerce sites (like Tmall TV), its Alibaba Pictures movie division, and its UC web browsers. Alibaba initially created the digital media and entertainment segment to expand its ecosystem against China’s other two tech giants, Baidu and Tencent.

Alibaba’s digital expansion trailed behind Baidu and Tencent. Youku Tudou still ranks third in the streaming video market behind Tencent Video and iQiyi. Alibaba Music is also trailing far behind in the streaming music market. Tencent Music controls about 78% of that market, while NetEase Cloud Music ranks second with a 16% share. Alibaba and everyone else is fighting over the remaining 6%. The UC Web Browser controls 14% of the Chinese web browser market today, which puts it in second place behind Chrome (43.7%). Alibaba Pictures has financed some major film releases, including two Mission Impossible films and Star Trek Beyond.

Innovation Initiatives

Innovation initiatives/other accounts for 2% of revenue. This segment aims to innovate and develop new services and products that can meet the needs of its customers. Past innovations include digital-navigation app Amap and network-communication app DingTalk.

The History of a Great Copycat

It was founded in 1997 by Jack Ma, an English teacher, and almost 20 other cofounders as an online bulletin board that allowed small Chinese manufacturers to tell buyers around the world they were open for business. Alibaba and Tencent are two of the important companies that helped bridge the gap between Old China and New China. It copied American things that worked. Most of its early products were copy cats. It had no reason to innovate.

Alibaba.com was started as a B2B pathway between merchants and suppliers. It started Taobao, the eBay of China, in 2003. It built Alipay, which was the payment system for Taobao merchants, like Paypal was for eBay. Then it built Tmall by 2008, where brands like Nike, Adidas and local Chinese brands would create shops. It built Alibaba Cloud in 2009 after seeing how Amazon would take that infrastructure and give it to the world. Then they layered on logistics, SaaS applications, home goods, food delivery and so on.

In the early 2000’s, the Chinese people weren’t expecting delivery in 1 day. The standard delivery was 7-10 days. Alibaba’s genius was they took it to 6 days. EBay was in China when Alibaba was built, but by the time positions were routed from Beijing to the Bay area, it was game over for eBay. This is also why Amazon wasn’t successful in China. Alibaba has a history of executing. It has innovated, copied and squashed competitors. It has some techniques that got it into trouble recently, because it’s aggressive in everything it does.

Some things Alibaba hasn’t done as well is buy businesses and invest outside the country.

Reducing friction is probably the #1 reason for business scaling. Alibaba built Taobao by aggregating millions of merchants by taking costs to $0. The ethos in Alibaba is all about platform creation. Take friction to 0, create collective good for everyone, let everyone benefit in the process and be the mega aggregator on top of it.

Some Company Statistics

It is the world’s largest ecommerce business. They have more cash than any competitor in China. The commerce retail division accounted for 69% of revenue with Taobao generating revenue through advertising and other merchant data services and Tmall deriving revenue from commission fees. The average new customer buys $400 year 1 and by year 5, they are buy $2,000 per year.

In 2015, it sold $500 billion in volume through Tmall and Taobao. In 2020, that more than doubled to $1.2 trillion. It is expected to double again to $2.5 trillion by 2025. In 2015, it was 10% of total retail spending in China. In 2020, it was 20% of total retail spending in China. It is expected to be 25% of total retail spending in China by 2025. It is capable of doubling again because China’s GDP is still small compared to America’s GDP and the Chinese middle class is growing.

There were 800 million active customers in 2020 and each person on average bought something twice per week.  These are just discretionary purchases. These aren’t purchases on food or living. Five years ago, it was mostly fashion and apparel. Today, it is in almost every category of Chinese lifestyle. Alibaba’s products affect every part of a person’s life in China, whether they’re a consumer or business. There might not be any other business in the world that has that level of impact on a country.

In 2015, Alibaba was 80% of all ecommerce in China. That’s just not healthy because competition is good. Therefore, Alibaba is likely to lose market share. Just because a company is losing market share doesn’t mean it’s losing relevancy though. Amazon is constantly losing market share to companies like Wayfair and others growing faster than Amazon, but Amazon is still a wonderful company.

Ant Group

Ant Group, an unconsolidated related party, provides payment services and offers financial services for consumers and merchants on Alibaba’s platforms. It is formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay. It is 33% owned by Alibaba.

Alipay was incubated in Alibaba in the early 2000’s as an escrow mechanism to pay merchants. There was no real closed-loop payment system in China until Alipay. It is the same as eBay needing Paypal by assuring that money transferred only after the consumer seen the product.

Ant Group is likely to grow bigger than Alibaba over time. Ant Group is one of the two defacto ways for consumers to manage their financial lives. It’s the largest money market product in the world, even bigger than JP Morgan. It has wealth management, insurance and lending products. Ant Group has more active users than Alibaba, which means 60-70% of the Chinese population uses an Alibaba service.

The Industry

What Industry is the Company In?

Internet Retail

Do I Think This Industry Will Grow, Shrink or Stay the Same Over the Next 10 Years?

I believe this industry will grow. Some people think in-person shopping will be more of an entertainment experience in 10 years. Shopping malls are already taking a hit. Amazon.com and Alibaba are already 2 of the largest companies in the world. As the world population continues to grow and continues to be provided with internet, more people will shop online from the comfort of their homes.

Gurus

How Many Gurus Own the Company?

13 total on Dataroma

Guru(s)% of PortfolioLast Reported Price Paid
Greg Alexander20.69%$226.73
Charlie Munger19.02% $226.73
Mohnish Pabrai14.61% $226.73
Thomas Russo2.32% $226.73
Tweedy Browne Co.2.24% $226.73
Leon Cooperman1.20% $226.73

Moat

Which Moat(s) Does it Have?

Network effect, economies of scale and a government-protected moat

Explain the Moat(s)

According to one analyst, there aren’t really any historical brands in China, but there will probably be hundreds of new brands over the next 30 to 50 years. He was explaining this as the old China and new China. Alibaba doesn’t really have a brand moat. It doesn’t have a switching moat either, because it is easy to switch and there aren’t high switching costs between internet companies.

Economies of scale and operational processes really matter in China. It is the world’s largest retailer by GMV. It also has the leading cloud business in China. The hundreds of future SaaS companies in China will be powered by Alibaba. Ant Group is likely to grow bigger than Alibaba over time. Ant Group is 1 of the 2 defacto ways for consumers to manage their financial lives. It’s the largest money market product in the world, even bigger than JP Morgan.

Alibaba’s hack for logistics was to build a software on top of all the logistics companies and buy a stake in each company to have soft control of them. That network effect is now so strong that it discourages the attempts of any company to break into the game. The only way to compete with Alibaba in China is to focus on smaller, niche segments and slowly build things over time. Even then, the company has to be ready to offer deep discounts and exponentially lose money for at least a few years.

China has a long history of not allowing foreign companies to thrive in their market at the cost of local companies. So, when a company like Alibaba comes along and showcases a new way to invigorate the economy, the government supports it without reservation. The only threat to it within China has to come from within China. That’s going to be nearly impossible.

Has the Company’s Moat Been Attacked in the Past? How Did it Respond?

It’s aggressive in everything it does. In the past, it has copied and squashed competitors. It has some techniques that got it into trouble recently. About the only way to beat Alibaba is to be more aggressive. Pinduoduo is a company that has accomplished this, but Alibaba hasn’t been drastically affected from this. Alibaba’s financial statements still look great.

The Historical Growth Rates

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage Growth Rates
BVPS Growth Rate62%56%34%35%34%44%
EPS Growth Rate56%30%16%31%9%28%
OCPS Growth Rate59%35%32%21%39%37%
SPS Growth Rate60%44%48%40%52%49%
Average of the Averages40%

What is the 5-Year Analyst Consensus Growth Rate?

17%

Is this Company Capable of Growing at These Rates?

It’s possible that it can grow at 17% for 10 years. I am going to be more conservative and go with a 15% growth rate. Alibaba is expected to lose market share and have slower growth because of its size, but it has many fast growth opportunities with some of its subsidiaries. The growth of the Chinese population, more of the population entering the middle class and China’s GDP being small compared to America’s GDP makes me more comfortable using 15% as a growth rate.

What Kind of Growth is the Company Expecting?

Serve 1 billion consumers in China within 5 years. By 2036, serve 2 billion globally, create 100 million jobs and provide infrastructure to support 10 million small businesses in becoming profitable on its platform.

Management

Who is the CEO?

Daniel Zhang

Is the CEO a Founder, Long-time CEO, Recent CEO Promotion or Recent CEO Hire?

Recent CEO promotion

What is the CEO’s Story?

Daniel was born and raised in Shanghai, where his father worked as an accountant. He earned a bachelors degree in finance from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He is also a certified accountant. From 2005 to 2007, he was the CFO of Shanda Interactive Entertainment. Prior to that he was a senior executive of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Audit and Business Advisory Division in Shanghai.

He joined Alibaba Group in August 2007 as CFO of Taobao Marketplace. In 2008, he was appointed chief operating officer of Taobao Marketplace and general manager of Taobao Mall. Under his leadership, Taobao Mall rapidly became one of Alibaba’s most important businesses. When Taobao Mall was rebranded as Tmall and became an independent business unit, he was named president of Tmall. In May 2015, he was named chief executive officer. In September 2019, he was elected chairman of Alibaba.

At Ant Group, he is a member of the investment committee. Cainiao Network, a comprehensive global logistics network, was built by him and he is the chairman. He also leads several of Alibaba’s strategic investments, including Haier, Intime Retail and Singapore Post. At Ant Financial’s investment committee, he is a member and he is a founding member of the Alibaba Partnership.

He is the chairman of Sun Art and also serves on the board of Weibo. In a garage, he worked on the new business Freshippo with a small team. He was part of the team that created Singles Day, which is an online shopping event bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

Does the CEO Write Letters to Shareholders?

No, but there is a letter at the beginning of the 20F

Does the CEO Have a Big Audacious Goal or Make Accountability Statements? If so, what?

Serve 1 billion consumers in China within 5 years. By 2036, serve 2 billion globally, create 100 million jobs and provide infrastructure to support 10 million small businesses in becoming profitable on its platform.

Does the CEO Seem Trustworthy?

He has a firm belief that customer value creation should be at the root of all innovation and he wants to build and develop the infrastructure for the digital economy. Alibaba will continue to invest and incubate for the future. He wants Alibaba’s innovations to contribute to a better tomorrow for everyone. He believes that once our society, economy and people’s lives are better, Alibaba will be better.

Return On Equity

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage
23%20%17%18%16%19%

Return On Invested Capital

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage
20%16%14%15%14%16%

Is ROE and ROIC Increasing, Remaining Constant or Decreasing?

Decreasing

What’s the Current Debt/Earnings Ratio?

0.90

Competitors

Who Are its Top 3 Competitors?

Alibaba has many competitors, because it stretches across so many markets. Tencent, Meituan, Baidu and many more are all competitors, but I am not including them. Most of them compete with a less significant segment of Alibaba or don’t hold enough market share to be considered significant. Meituan is an example.

Every business becomes an omnichannel business when they achieve some scale. No business stays purely digital. Let’s take food delivery in America for example. They start as pure marketplaces, but eventually have to build logistics and a full-stack solution. Meituan is a lot like JD in the way that it’s full-stack and food delivery first. It also moved into hotels and accommodations.

The potential for huge success by Meituan and the disruption of Alibaba is in the same situation we’re seeing with Amazon right now. Amazon was the alpha predator in America when it came to price. It was built on price, selection and convenience. We can get 80% of what we want within 2 days in America from Amazon. Doordash aggregates all the existing retailers and brings it to you within 3 hours. How does Amazon compete with that? This is what Meituan does in China.

The idea of community group buying around food is big in China. Everyone wants fresh food delivered to their home. Meituan, Pinduoduo, Alibaba and Didi all have their own version of this. Meituan comes up with this community group buying strategy and our expectation is Alibaba will just copy it, do an equally good job and provide the same service and quality level for its 800 million users.

It competes with Alibaba on an insignificant level though. The food delivery portion of Alibaba is small. The significant competitors that compete with the core commerce segment of Alibaba are Jd.com, Pinduoduo and Amazon.com.

Company SymbolMarket CapYears To Pay DebtAverage ROIC
BABA$594.090.9020.29%
JD$117.590.25-16.84%
PDD$165.6510+-107.06%
AMZN$1,616.971.497.97%
Rank#2#2#1

Competitor #1: JD.Com

A few years after Alibaba was started, there came about a full stack solution company called JD.com. JD’s thing was the third-party Taobao marketplace doesn’t stand for trust or quality. It decided to build a first-party marketplace. They also built a high quality self-contained logistics chain, because you can’t control when things are delivered when using thousands of different logistics companies. This forced JD to go to higher margin and AOV products. This restricted its products in the beginning to electronics and apparel.

JD is a first-party, full stack, most Amazon like business in China, but when it comes to technology, JD is inferior to Amazon. Alibaba is much more technologically superior than JD claims to be. JD decided to only focus on the bigger cities, build a full logistics system, stand for trust and quality and be the offline retailer. It understood this meant lower margins, being more cyclical, it wouldn’t offer all categories and scale of uses are lower than Alibaba.

Competitor #2: Pinduoduo

Pinduoduo has more of an advertising model than ecommerce. Pinduoduo competed by practically taking prices to $0. It did this by promoting directly to the manufacturer or distributor. Between a manufacturer and retailer, there are many levels of distributors, like county and city distributors. It cut out the middleman. If you aggregate them on the front-end, like a Groupon, you can build a business around that.

Pinduoduo benefited from the infrastructure that Alibaba built. Alibaba trained merchants for 20 years. Those merchants recognized a new channel, Pinduoduo, and jumped on it. If Alibaba hadn’t educated a country on ecommerce, Pinduoduo probably wouldn’t exist.

Competitor #3: Amazon.com

Some people say Alibaba is the Amazon of China, but some people will disagree. It’s a lot like Google in many ways also. Its original business model is monetizing and advertising. There would be a bigger impact on the Chinese economy if Alibaba died tomorrow than there would be on the American economy if Amazon died tomorrow. JD.com is the most Amazon-like business in China.

Risk Factors

What are At Least the Top 3 Risk Factors?

It’s an ADR

You don’t technically own a share of the company. Instead, it is a shell company in the Cayman Islands that shares the profit with Alibaba.

Government regulation

The Chinese government can clamp down on regulation at any time. There is also the threat of the US government delisting Chinese stocks that don’t meet PCAOB standards.

Untrustworthy

A lot of people distrust Chinese stocks because their financial reports aren’t very trustworthy.

Why are These Risks Unlikely or Manageable?

Large companies with an international presence like Alibaba have a much smaller risk of being fraudulent. It is unlikely that the US government will delist Alibaba for the sake of business. Delisting it would cause a big revenue loss for the NYSE. China doesn’t want to hurt its homegrown ecommerce success story, nor does it want to alienate it from international and domestic investors.

The fact that so many gurus are comfortable putting a good size portion of their portfolio into Alibaba comforts me.

Event

Is There an Event?

There has been a series of events knocking the company lower and lower. China regulators fined the company $2.8 billion after an anti-monopoly case. Sellers knocked BABA lower after the Ant Group IPO was suspended by Chinese regulators. There was fear around the company being delisted from the NYSE. Quarterly earnings were reported lower than expected.

Is the Event Company-Specific, Industry-Specific or Market-Wide?

Company-specific and industry specific

Will This Event Be Resolved Within 3 Years?

The anti-monopoly fine is 4% of the $70 billion in cash Alibaba holds. It made a deal with the Chinese regulators over the Ant Group IPO and restructured. I don’t see the companies being delisted from the NYSE, because it would affect so many Americans. I don’t care about quarterly reports. Some of these issues have already worked themselves out and I believe the rest will be worked out within 3 years.

Valuations

What “Normal” Year Am I Using to Value the Company?

2021

The Current Price is?

$213.96

How Many Shares Outstanding?

2.71 billion

What 10-Year Future Growth Rate Am I Using for My Calculations?

15%. It is lower than the analyst and historical, but this will make me feel more comfortable with the company being Chinese and at its size

What is My Future P/E Ratio?

30

Could I Find the Maintenance Portion of Capital Expenditures or Am I Using 70% of Total Capital Expenditures?

70% of total capital expenditures

Ten Cap Valuation

Operating Cash Flow$231,786.00
Maintenance Capital Expenditures($95,733.40)
Total Income Tax$29,278.00Ten Cap Value$610.08
Total Owner Earnings$165,330.60
Shares Outstanding2,710.00
Owner Earnings Per Share$61.01

Margin of Safety Valuation

EPS TTM or Normal Year$8.47
Future Growth Rate15%
Future EPS$34.27
Future P/E Ratio30MOS Price$127.05
Future Value$1,027.98
Minimum Return Acceptable15%
Intrinsic Value$254.10

Free Cash Flow

Year20102011201220132014201520162017201820192020
Operating Cash Flow$2,182$9,275$14,476$26,379$41,217$56,836$82,854$125,805$150,975$180,607$231,786
Capital Expenditures($172)($2,168)($2,503)($4,776)($7,705)($10,845)($17,546)($29,836)($49,643)($45,386)($136,762)
Free Cash Flow$2,010$7,107$11,973$21,603$33,512$45,991$65,308$95,969$101,332$135,221$95,024
Diluted Average Shares5,078.822,332.002,389.002,332.002,500.002,562.002,573.002,610.002,623.002,668.252,747.75
Free Cash Flow Per Share$0.40$3.05$5.01$9.26$13.40$17.95$25.38$36.77$38.63$50.68$34.58

Payback Time Valuation

Year 0Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5Year 6Year 7Year 8
Operating Cash Flow$231,786.00$266,553.90$306,536.99$352,517.53$405,395.16$466,204.44$536,135.10$616,555.37$709,038.67
Capital Expenditures($136,762.00)($157,276.30)($180,867.75)($207,997.91)($239,197.59)($275,077.23)($316,338.82)($363,789.64)($418,358.08)
Free Cash Flow$95,024.00$109,277.60$125,669.24$144,519.63$166,197.57$191,127.21$219,796.29$252,765.73$290,680.59
Future Growth Rate15%
Total Cash Flow Received$1,500,033.85
Diluted Average Shares2747.75
8 Year Payback Time Value$545.91

What is My Buy Price?

My buy price is $250. $420 is the average of the valuation methods. These valuations were very skewed, so I also added in the payback time valuation provided on the toolbox which gave me an average price of $360. Gurus could have paid up to $270 in quarter 1, 2021. I am going to go more conservative than these valuations and put my buy price at $250, because this is a Chinese company that’s hard for me to understand.

I think the intrinsic value of this company is around $500 and I can tell that it has a great moat to support this value.

Conclusion

Is the Company on Sale?

Yes It is currently on sale

Is it a Buy, Watchlist or Too Hard?

Buy

Story Conclusion

This is a hard company for me to understand because it is a Chinese company and has a bunch of subsidiaries. It gives me some comfort knowing that multiple gurus are owners.

I have read that Mohnish Pabrai has close to $1 billion under management (around $700 to $900 million) and even though Dataroma states Alibaba makes up 14% of his portfolio, I think it actually makes up around 5% of his total portfolio. It makes up 14% of his American holdings. I did watch the most recent video posted on his website and he stated that he is still buying into Alibaba.

If the price is still below $250 when next quarter’s 13Fs are released, and gurus are still heavily buying, I will consider making it a larger percentage of my portfolio. As of right now, I feel comfortable putting 5% of my portfolio into Alibaba at a price of $250 or below.

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Change My LifeChange My LifeChange My Life

My Ideal Portfolio

My ideal portfolio

I follow the way Warren Buffett invested while running his partnership. I also mix it up with his newer investment style and some of the riskier stuff the younger gurus do. Many other gurus that I follow have their portfolios set up this way. They have a few differences from Warren, but the foundation of their investment ideas is the same. This is the way my ideal portfolio will be set up.

A few of the differences that other gurus have from Warren are cigar butts, options trading, shorting, IPO’s, etc. Charlie Munger pulled Warren away from investing in cigar butts. I have seen some horrible looking companies that gurus buy into and I have to assume there are some cigar butt investments happening. Options, shorting and purchasing of recent IPOs are in the portfolios of a few gurus as well.

Risky Business

I got the risky business idea from Phil Town. His daughter, Danielle Town, and him talk about it in their book Invested. Risky business will be a category in my portfolio. It will contain all the things that I can’t comfortably place a value on, I’m not comfortable in the future prospects, there’s not enough history to research, etc.

The categories contained in the risky business portfolio will be cigar butts, sophisticated options trades, shorting, IPOs, and anything new I learn but haven’t tested. Risky business will make up 10% of my portfolio. The only way I will go above 10% is if I have a lot of confidence in an investment that I consider risky. I’ll have to be as confident as Michael Burry was about shorting the subprime market, which isn’t very likely anytime soon.

Cigar Butts

Cigar butts are companies that you can buy at a sufficiently low price. There will usually be a hiccup in the price and that gives you the chance to unload it at a decent profit, even though the long-term performance of the business may be terrible. Charlie convinced Warren that this approach wouldn’t scale, because the cigar butt opportunities wouldn’t have a meaningful impact on Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire had grown too big.

Cigar butts won’t be a category in my portfolio. I don’t have plans to buy any cigar butts right now. I am more focused on wonderful companies. If I do find a cigar butt investment, it will go into the Risky business category of my portfolio.

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price

Charlie Munger

Options

Warren has used options, but he is too big now. Years ago, he sold puts on Coca-Cola and made an instant $7.5 million. The brokers have contract limits though. For the amount of stock he wants to buy, he would have to go through multiple brokers to sell enough puts on a security. It’s a waste of time for him, even though he can make some extra money.

I have to learn more about options before I attempt some of the more sophisticated trades. I don’t understand enough about Bull Put Spreads, Bear Call Spreads, Iron Condors, etc. These more sophisticated trades will be part of the Risky Business portfolio.

I understand selling puts and calls though. I do not consider these risky trades. Selling puts and calls is used in all of my portfolio categories.

Selling Puts

Selling puts can be a win-win situation. You know the price you want to buy a stock at and you sell a put option. If you get put the stock, that’s great because you wanted to buy it and you get paid a premium. Sure, you could have bought it at a lower price, but you’re already buying it at a margin of safety and you’re not worried about getting the last nickel. If you don’t get put the stock, that kind of sucks because you wanted to buy it, but it’s great because you get to keep the premium. Win-win.

Selling Calls

Selling calls can also be a win-win situation. You are now willing to sell the stock, at a great profit, and you sell a call option. If the stock gets called away, that’s great because you wanted to sell it and you get paid a premium. Sure, you could have sold it at a higher price, but you’re already selling it at a great profit and you’re not worried about getting the last nickel. If the stock doesn’t get called away, that’s great because you get to keep owning this wonderful company and you get to keep the premium. Win-win.

Waiting for the bottom is folly. What, then, should be the investor’s criteria? The answer’s simple: if something’s cheap, based on the relationship between price and intrinsic value, you should buy, and if it cheapens further, you should buy more

Howard Marks

Shorting

Warren believes that eventually shorting works out, but it’s painful. It’s a lot easier to make money on the long side. Making big money shorting is tough, because the risk of big losses means you can’t make big bets. It has ruined a lot of people and you can go broke doing it. There are some gurus that successfully include shorting in their portfolios though. Michael Burry is maybe the most famous for this. The Big Short was the book that put him on everyone’s radars. Then The Big Short movie really put him in the spotlight.

Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It’s not worth it to have that much irritation in your life

Charlie Munger

I have to learn more about shorting before I attempt it. My research with my gurus that have successfully done it. I’ll see what they have to say about it and look for books recommended by them on the subject. 

IPOs

The purchasing of recent IPO’s is something else I see in the portfolios of some of my gurus. This really interests me. It’s tough to get into venture capital or early stage investing with no money, so purchasing recent IPOs is the closest thing I’ve found to it. It’s exciting to buy that new, up-and-coming, hot stock every now and then.

Venture capital is so exciting because you get to help build or assist a startup for a portion of the company. The companies are usually cutting edge innovations that everyone loves. One day I hope to have the financial capability to get into venture capital and/or angel investing.

Recent IPOs will consist of small positions (around 1% of total assets) in each of five to ten IPOs. I want IPOs to make up 5% to 10% of my portfolio.

The Buffett Partnership

During the Buffett Partnership, Warren killed the market. He was able to kill it because he wasn’t managing nearly as much money. The law of large numbers states that as a company or fund grows, it becomes more difficult to sustain its previous growth rates. Many investors follow his partnership’s investment style, because it is applicable even today and many investors see the same returns.

You can see Warren’s investment style while managing his partnership by reading his Buffett Partnership Letters. In the letters, he split up his investments into three categories: Generals, Work-outs and Controls.

Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I’ve ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was managing peanuts then. It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that

Warren Buffett

The Generals

The “generals” were generally undervalued securities where he had nothing to say about corporate policies and no idea when the undervaluation would correct itself. This was the largest category of investment and the category that made the most money. The generals were made up of larger positions (5% to 10% of total assets) in each of five or six generals, with smaller positions in another ten to fifteen.

The generals are what make up the largest percentage of all my gurus portfolios as far as I know. They will also make up the largest percentage of my portfolio. I will have large positions (5% to 10% of total assets) in each of five or six generals, with smaller positions in another five to ten. The generals will make up around 50% to 60% of my portfolio.

The Smaller Positions

I believe I am going to split up my position totals by years since IPO. If there is 1 year of data, I’ll put up to 1% of my portfolio into that position. If there’s 2 years of data, I’ll put 2% of my portfolio into that position, and so on. When it gets to 10 years of data, I’ll put 10% of my portfolio into that position.

I like to see a company with at least ten years of data before I put double digit percentages into that position. You don’t really know how a company will act or the risks it’s taking until faced with adversity. I believe ten years gives a company sufficient time to face adversity and prove its durability.

Roughly every ten years our stock market has seen a crash of sorts. Warren calls them economic storms. This means the average company will face an event every ten years. Seeing how a company has handled an event in the past gives me the comfort of putting 10%, or maybe even more, into one position.

The Work-outs

The “work-outs” consisted of securities whose financial results depended on corporate action rather than supply and demand of buyers and sellers of securities. He could reasonably predict when he could get how much and what might prevent it from happening. Work-outs included mergers, liquidations, reorganizations, spin-offs, etc. He would have ten to fifteen work-outs in the portfolio. When he borrowed money, it was only as an offset against work-outs, and never more than 25% of the total portfolio.

Work-outs can be seen in the portfolios of gurus also. A great example is Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the spin-off of Ferrari. The work-outs will consist of five to ten positions in my portfolio. The work-outs will make up around 20% to 30% of my portfolio. When I borrow money, it will only be an offset against work-outs and to do perform a control situation. I will never borrow more than 25% of the total portfolio.

The Controls

The “controls” were companies that he took control of or bought a large position and attempted to influence policies of the company. He would sometimes buy into a general with the thought in mind that it could develop into a control. I don’t see myself having the funds to perform any controls in my near future, so this category is on the backburner until I have the funds available.

Cash

Most of the gurus I follow keep cash. They want to be prepared when an opportunity arises to pile in to a company. Warren calls this being prepared with a bucket instead of a thimble when it rains gold.

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble

Warren Buffett

The Deceiving Public Portfolios

Guy Spier has said in the past that he likes to be fully invested. More recently, in one of his The Education of a Value Investor podcasts, he has said that he is selling off some of his profitable investments to get to 20% to 30% in cash.

You wouldn’t know that Guy was doing that without him making it public knowledge. 13F filings don’t require a manager to release how much cash they have. In the case of Guy, he jokingly said on the podcast that his portfolio size will shrink from $250 million to $200 million. It has been said that Mohnish Pabrai has close to $1 billion under management. According to Dataroma, his portfolio is $262 million. The other $700 million or so is in cash and companies not traded on the American stock exchanges.

I plan to follow Guy and constantly hold 20% to 30% in cash.

It’s Only Ideal

I know the math isn’t perfect, but it’s practically impossible to set up a perfect portfolio. Mine will grow organically and change as I obtain more knowledge. I will make investments as the opportunities arise. This is just my ideal portfolio that I am working towards.

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Company Analysis and Investment Guide

Company analysis and investment guide

Checklists Keep Life In Order

I have a checklist for almost everything. I’m not a checklist needing psychopath though. Although it’s harder for me to keep up with things without a checklist, I can get by without one. I just try to create a checklist everywhere it can be useful. Checklists are useful to me for house chores, daily workouts, groceries, activities at work, vacation packing, etc. I created a checklist-style company analysis and investment guide for myself.

Many of the investors I follow swear by checklists. Mohnish Pabrai, Guy Spier and Phil Town are three gurus I’ve heard talk extensively about checklists. They also say their checklists are constantly changing as they learn more.

Using a written checklist for investing as mandated by the FAA for pilots reduces, by at least 30, the number of IQ points required for successful investing

Mohnish Pabrai

I haven’t found where Mohnish talks about the specific items on his checklist. He created his by reverse engineering the mistakes of other great investors. He has said he doesn’t talk about specific items, because his checklist is his competitive advantage.

Guy Spier has his checklist in his book The Education of a Value Investor. I can guarantee he has edited his checklist since his book though. In his The Education of a Value Investor podcast, he talks about how he thinks differently about some things since he got screwed by his investment in Horsehead Holdings.

Phil Town talks about his checklist on the InvestED Podcast.

Some of the Best Checklist Books

Three books I’ve came across, and you will too, while looking for the checklists of gurus are The Investment Checklist, The Checklist Manifesto and The Manual of Ideas. You will likely come across these books at some point just by researching value investing or books recommended by investors.

The Investment Checklist is on Mohnish’s Bookshelf, along with The Checklist Manifesto. You have to check out his Bookshelf. He has hundreds of books on different subjects with personal thoughts written on some. Phil Town also recommends this book.

The Checklist Manifesto is recommended by pretty much every investor along with professionals from many different fields of study. It was written by Atul Gawande, a medical doctor, and has since been heavily adopted by the investment community. It also has been recommended by Phil Town on his podcast multiple times.

The Manual of Ideas is one of Guy’s Favorite Books for Investing and Life. It too has been recommended by many other investors. You have to check out his list of recommended books also.

My Checklist

My checklist-style company analysis is a layout of questions for me to answer about a company before investing. By the time I answer all the questions on the layout, I will have made an analysis of the company for myself. I answer these questions by following along with my investment guide.

I created my checklist from following investors. In research, I have read that Mohnish’s checklist is over 100 questions and mine will be eventually, but right now it is around 50 questions. My checklist has questions about the company, the industry, guru ownership, the moat, the management, competitors, risk factors, an event that caused it to go on sale and valuation. To answer all of these questions, I simply follow my investment guide.

My investment guide was created by following investors also. Warren Buffett has talked many times about how anyone can have as much information about a company as he does. Over the years, he has told many of the ways to get the same information he gets. You can get all of the information about a company for free, but there are some subscription websites that make like easier. Phil also does a great job at showing you where to find information.

There’s nothing that I know about that product, or its distribution system, its finances, or anything that, really, hundreds of thousands–or millions–of people aren’t capable of.

Warren Buffett

How it’s Set Up

I have my investment guide split up into 5 sections. The sections are Before the first investment, second investment, third investment, fourth investment and after fully invested. I haven’t included anything about selling in the guide.

I have my investment guide set up this way, because I like to get into a company in four blocks. It will differ depending on the amount of years a company has been public. Four Blocks is my standard for a company that is at least 10 years old.

My Investment guide includes the reading of the 10K’s, 10Q’s, analyst reports, news articles, competitors 10K’s, earnings calls, shareholder letters and other things. I have a certain amount of reading I must complete before making each investment block. This gives me the confidence that I don’t go all in on a company that I don’t understand like I thought I did and get screwed. It also gives me the chance to buy a company at a lower and lower price if the price is dropping. Phil calls this “Stockpiling” and talks about it in his book Payback Time.

Company Analysis

The Company

Company name:

Stock symbol:

Today’s date:

The company is headquartered in:

How did I discover this company (Stock screener, Guru buying, media, website, etc.)?

Company overview/description (What it does, its subsidiaries, its products/brands, etc.):

Company history:

Some company statistics:

The Industry

What industry is the company in?

Do I think this industry will grow, shrink or stay the same over the next 10 years? Why?

Gurus

How many Gurus own the company?

Guru(s)% of Portfolio(s)Last Reported Price Paid

If a Guru doesn’t own the company, why do I think that is (Is the market cap too small, trading volume too low, price too high, etc.)?

Moat

Which Moat(s) does it have (Brand, Secrets, Price, Toll Bridge, Switching, Network)?

Explain the moat(s) (Why does it have a durable competitive advantage and why will this protect the company from competition for the next 10 years):

Has the company’s moat been attacked in the past? How did it respond?

The historical growth rates (Base these rates off the most recent “normal” year):

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage Growth Rate
BVPS Growth Rate
EPS Growth Rate
OCPS Growth Rate
Sales Growth Rate
Average of the Averages

What is the 5-year analyst consensus growth rate?

Is this company capable of growing at these rates (How big will it be in 10 years)?

What kind of growth is the company expecting (Growth rate specified, cash flow prediction, how many stores, states, countries, users, etc., and by when)?

Management

Who is the CEO?

Is the CEO a Founder, Long-time CEO, Recent CEO Promotion or Recent CEO Hire?

What is the CEO’s story (biography, past performance, the dirt)?

Does the CEO write letters to shareholders?

Does the CEO have a Big Audacious Goal or make accountability statements? If so, what?

What is the CEO’s compensation (Latest proxy statement)?

What percentage of the CEO’s net worth is in the company?

Is the CEO selling 30% or more of his shares (Insider Trading/gurufocus)? If so, Why?

Does the CEO seem trustworthy (Does he write letters to shareholders, make things easy to understand, expose the negative things, etc.)?

The average ROE:

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage ROE
ROE

The average ROIC:

10 Year7 Year5 Year3 Year1 YearAverage ROIC
ROIC

Is ROE and ROIC increasing, remaining constant or decreasing?

What’s the current Debt/Earnings Ratio?

If debt is higher than 3 years or ROIC is low, why (what was the money borrowed for)? When will ROIC reflect that?

Is Long-Term Debt increasing, remaining constant or decreasing?

Competitors

Who are its top 3 competitors? (This company on first line, Rank as #1 through #4)

Company SymbolMarket CapYears to Pay DebtAverage ROIC
Rank

Competitor #1 description (Company overview, statistics, how do the numbers compare between these companies, etc.):

Competitor #2 description (Company overview, statistics, how do the numbers compare between these companies, etc.):

Competitor #3 description (Company overview, statistics, how do the numbers compare between these companies, etc.):

How is this company outperforming or differentiated from its competitors (Better moat, oligopoly, niche market, etc.)?

Risk Factors

What are at least the top 3 risk factors?

Why are these risks unlikely or manageable?

Event

If the numbers have taken a hit recently, why is it still a wonderful company (Last fiscal year was bad due to an event, it’s not growing as fast from its size, it’s changing the moat, etc.)?

Is there an event? If so, describe the event (What’s the impact? Did stores close, how will the numbers be affected):

Is the event company-specific, industry-specific or market-wide?

Will this event be resolved within 3 years? If so, explain why (Has the CEO explained it or did I have to look elsewhere in news articles and analyst reports):

Valuations

What “Normal” year am I using to use to value the company?

The current price is:

How many shares outstanding?

What 10-year future growth rate am I using for my calculations (The lowest growth rate between the company, analyst or mine)?

What is my future P/E Ratio (The lower of 2x future growth rate or historical high P/E ratio)?

Could I find the maintenance portion of capital expenditures or am I using 70% of total capital expenditures (In the 10K, 10Q’s, earnings calls or analyst reports)?

Ten Cap Valuation

Operating cash flow
Maintenance capital expenditures
Total income tax
Total owner earnings
Shares outstanding
Owner earnings per share
Ten Cap value

Margin of Safety Valuation

Normal year EPS
Future growth rate
EPS in 10 years
P/E ratio in 10 years
Value in 10 years
Minimum acceptable ROR15%
Sticker price
Margin of safety price

Free Cash Flow

Year20102011201220132014201520162017201820192020
Operating cash flow
Capital expenditures
Free cash flow
Diluted average shares
Free cash flow per share

Payback Time Valuation

Normal YearYear 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5Year 6Year 7Year 8
Operating cash flow
Capital expenditures
Free cash flow
Future growth rate
Total cash flow received
Diluted average shares
8-year payback time price

What is my Buy Price (Highest or average of all valuation methods)?

Conclusion

Is the company on sale (Yes, no or within 20%)?

If there’s no event and the company is on sale, why do I think it’s on sale (Be very wary)?

Is it a buy, watchlist or too hard?

Story conclusion (Buy, watchlist, or too hard, how much am I allocating, etc.): Explain:

Investment Guide

Before 1st Investment

  • Read most recent 10K. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”.
  • If available, read 4 short and 4 long analyst reports, along with comments.
  • If available, read 12 news articles. One from each month for the trailing 12 months.
  • Read most recent 10K’s of the top 3 competitors. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”.
  • Read all 10Q’s released after the most recent 10K.
  • Listen to all the earnings calls, while reading the transcripts, for the current year or listen to the latest earnings call, while reading its transcript.
  • Read 2 article on the CEO. 1 negative and 1 positive article.
  • Read most recent proxy statement (DEF 14A or DEFA14A) and look for executive compensation.
  • If available, read the latest annual letter to shareholders.
  • Create company analysis with what I have.
  • If everything is good and the current price is at or below my buy price, buy the 1st 25% block out of the total capital to allocate for this business. Otherwise, set an alert for my buy price and move on to the next company.
  • Draw Fibonacci retracements and trend lines on the price chart to see what the price “should” do.
  • Set up google alerts for news on the company.
  • Set up email alerts on the company’s investor relations page.

Before 2nd Investment

  • Read 10K’s from 3 oldest years. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 10Q’s from 3 oldest years. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the earnings calls for the 3 oldest years, while reading the transcripts. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the new earnings calls, while reading the transcripts.
  • If available, read the annual letters to shareholders from 3 oldest years. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read proxy statements (DEF 14A or DEFA14A) from 3 oldest years. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 3 short and 3 long analyst reports, along with comments, from oldest 3 years. This is 1 short and 1 long for each year. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • If available, read any new analyst reports. 1 short and 1 long report.
  • If available, read 2 more articles on the CEO. 1 negative and 1 positive.
  • If available, read new news articles. 1 for each month since last investment.
  • Update company analysis.
  • If I have the funds available, sell a put option for the 2nd 25% block. Continue selling the put option monthly until the 2nd block is purchased, or as long as I can meet a 20% ARORC while still buying at a margin of safety.
  • If I don’t have the funds available to sell a put option, buy the 2nd 25% block if it’s still below my buy price.

Before 3rd Investment

  • Read 10K’s from years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 10Q’s from years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the earnings calls for years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet listened to, while reading the transcripts. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the new earnings calls, while reading the transcripts.
  • If available, read the annual letters to shareholders from years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read proxy statements (DEF 14A or DEFA14A) from years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 3 short and 3 long analyst reports, along with comments, from years 5 through 7 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. This is 1 short and 1 long for each year. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • If available, read any new analyst reports. 1 short and 1 long report.
  • If available, read 2 more articles on the CEO. 1 negative and 1 positive.
  • If available, read new news articles. 1 for each month since last investment.
  • Update company analysis.
  • If I have the funds available, sell a put option for the 3rd 25% block. Continue selling the put option monthly until the 3rd block is purchased, or as long as I can meet a 20% ARORC while still buying at a margin of safety.
  • If I don’t have the funds available to sell a put option, buy the 3rd 25% block if it’s still below my buy price.

Before 4th Investment

  • Read 10K’s from years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 10Q’s from years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the earnings calls for years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet listened to, while reading the transcripts. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Listen to all the new earnings calls, while reading the transcripts.
  • If available, read the annual letters to shareholders from years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read proxy statements (DEF 14A or DEFA14A) from years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • Read 3 short and 3 long analyst reports, along with comments, from years 2 through 4 or oldest 3 years I haven’t yet read. This is 1 short and 1 long for each year. Start with oldest year and work towards today.
  • If available, read any new analyst reports. 1 short and 1 long report.
  • If available, read 2 more articles on the CEO. 1 negative and 1 positive.
  • If available, read new news articles. 1 for each month since last investment.
  • Update company analysis.
  • If I have the funds available, sell a put option for the 4th 25% block. Continue selling the put option monthly until the 4th block is purchased, or as long as I can meet a 20% ARORC while still buying at a margin of safety.
  • If I don’t have the funds available to sell a put option, buy the 4th 25% block if it’s still below my buy price.

After all investments are made

  • Read new 10K’s as released. Focus on “Business”, “Risk Factors” & “Management’s Discussions”.
  • Read new 10Q’s as released.
  • Listen to new earnings calls as released, while reading transcripts.
  • If available, read new annual letters to shareholders as released.
  • Read proxy statements (DEF 14A or DEFA14A) as released.
  • Read any new analyst reports as released.
  • Read any new articles on the CEO as released.
  • Read at least 1 news article per month if available.
  • Update the company story as necessary.

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Quarter 1 2021 Guru Buys

Quarter 1 2021 guru buys

I don’t Like Being Screwed

I want to have the best chance at being successful and limit my chances of getting screwed. I also want to have the best chance at finding wonderful companies on sale. Looking at the quarter 1 2021 guru buys is a great way to do this. This the list of companies traded in the American stock exchanges that were purchased by my gurus this past quarter.

I am a shameless cloner as Mohnish Pabrai says. Cloning the ideas of the greatest investors in the world is simply the best way to do it. They have to be ideas I can understand though.

I’m a shameless copycat, everything in my life is cloned…. I have no original ideas

Mohnish Pabrai

How I Found the Buys

I used Dataroma to see what companies were purchased by the Superinvestors in quarter 1, 2021. I went to the “Grand Portfolio” page and selected “Qtr buys”. Then I sorted the list of companies by most buys to least buys by selecting the “Buys” tab. I recorded the companies on my “Quarterly Guru Buys” excel document to keep track of my findings.

For my first filter, I went through the list of 1075 companies and looked at Return on Invested Capital of the companies purchased by gurus that I follow. I want ROIC to be consistently above or around 10% over the last 10 years or since IPO. ROIC also needs to be above or around 10% over a 7 year, 5 year, 3 year and 1 year period.

I used the Rule 1 Toolbox on the Rule 1 website to quickly look at ROIC. The toolbox prevents me from having to input all the numbers into my excel document. I had to use my excel calculator for the companies that weren’t on the toolbox by getting the information from the financial statements in my TD Ameritrade account.

You can actually do this very quickly just using the toolbox. You can use a screener to filter the companies that gurus own with a good ROIC. A problem is that the website is delayed and at the time of writing this, it still only has the quarter 4 information. Another problem is that the companies that aren’t available on the website won’t show and I’ll miss them. This is why I used Dataroma.

This filter gave me 59 companies.

Ways to Help

I’m not perfect and there are probably flaws in the calculator that I haven’t found yet. I’m also not an expert in Microsoft Excel. I literally had to research how to create everything in the calculator and it took up no less than 20 hours of my weekend. You are welcome use this calculator if you’d like. If you find it beneficial, feel free to make a donation and support me on my path.

If you don’t already have a TD Ameritrade account and you’d like for me to receive $50 for referring you, shoot me an email with your first name, last name and email address, and we can do the “Refer A Friend” program. The qualifications are: you must be of legal age in your state of residence and you must fund your account with at least $3,000 within 90 days. If you don’t/can’t meet the qualifications or you just don’t want to help me out, then just click this TD Ameritrade link.

Checking Out the Financial Statements

For my second filter, I checked each company’s complete history of Book Value Per Share, Earnings Per Share, Sales Per Share, Operating Cash Flow Per Share, Return on Equity, Return on Invested Capital and the Long-Term Debt to Earnings ratio.

I was looking to see if I could make sense enough of the numbers to place a value on the company. If the numbers were all over the place, I passed on that company. All the numbers growing consistently year over year is awesome. Most of the companies had a down year or two, but rebounded back to normal.

I didn’t look to see what the growth rates of any of these numbers were. I would prefer a company that’s growing at over 10% per year, but it’s difficult to find that wonderful of a company on sale in this market. Warren Buffett has said you are sometimes better off buying a company that’s growing slowly or not growing at all than buying a fast grower. This is especially true if the company is taking on a lot of debt to fund the growth.

I believe in buying $1 of value for 50 cents no matter what kind of growth rate the company has. Mr. Market isn’t afraid for long and when he realizes he’s offering up a bargain, he raises the price. This price rise can allow you to make high percentage returns on slow growing companies.

This filter gave me 39 companies. Out of the 1,075 companies purchased by gurus, there are only 39 that I believe I could possibly understand and make a reasonable prediction on. I understand these companies on the surface of their financial statements. I still need to dig deep into the annual reports, quarterly reports, news articles, etc. This process is just a filter for me to find companies to begin researching.

This Could be A Lot Easier

Gurufocus could make my life so much easier and I will have a subscription when I save the money to buy one. It allows you to select the gurus that you want to follow and shows you the portfolios and activity from your gurus. This would cut the amount of companies I look at each quarter in half, because the gurus I follow usually purchase less than 500 companies combined each quarter.

On my quarterly guru buys list, I put the companies into categories of: “Less than 3 years of debt”, “3-5 years of debt” and “5+ years of debt”. I sorted the companies in these categories by “Number of Guru Purchases” and “Largest Portfolio Position”.

The Company Killer

I will start by researching the companies with the least debt. The reason I’m starting with the companies with the least debt is because debt kills. Warren Buffett once said “You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out”. When a company leverages itself (takes on debt) and things don’t go as expected (The tide goes out), that’s when problems occur from the obligation to pay that debt (You find out who’s swimming naked).

You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out

Warren Buffett

In the inevitable market crashes, the overleveraged companies are the most likely to go bankrupt. When public companies go bankrupt, the holders of common stock get screwed. Obviously. I believe a company with less than 3 years of debt is less likely to be caught swimming naked.

Debt makes a company fragile. “Antifragile” companies, as Nassim Taleb explains in his book Antifragile, emerge from tough times stronger. Companies with low debt and high cash flow are likely the most “Antifragile”. When the market takes a crash, they can buy competitors or buy their way into new markets when everything is selling for below value. When the market rebounds, it is a much stronger company thanks to the crash.

This is what Buffett has to say about a market crash, “I feel like an oversexed man in a harem. This is the time to start investing.” This is why the greatest investors in the world and greatest businesses in the world love a market crash. It’s when wealth is made.

I feel like an oversexed man in a harem. This is the time to start investing

Warren Buffett

Quick “Wrong” Valuations

The toolbox has a quick valuation calculator. I made a prediction just based on the historical numbers of what the intrinsic valuations could be. These valuations are 100% wrong and I do not stand behind the valuations at all. I have done no research into these companies, so I have no idea what the future prospects for each company look like.

For the companies not available on the toolbox, I had to use my excel valuation calculator.

Once again, I’m not perfect and there are probably flaws in the calculator that I haven’t found yet. I’m also not an expert in Microsoft Excel. I again had to research how to create everything in this calculator and it took up an entire weekend. You are welcome use this calculator if you’d like. If you find it beneficial, feel free to make a donation and support me on my path.

I Might be Making a Mistake

I am probably making a mistake just by doing quick valuations. It could persuade me into thinking a company is worth more than it really is. I am just trying to better my chances at starting my research with companies really selling at a discount right now.

I have a full-time job where I work 40+ hours per week, so I have to use my free time wisely until I’m able to turn investing into my full-time job. Investing wouldn’t really be considered a “job” to me though, because I’d be doing something I love. So, the companies that appear to “possibly” be selling at a discount are the first companies I will research.

The Problem Gurus Face

The reason I say I want to find the companies “Really” on sale is because some of the gurus face the problem of having their investors breathing down the back of their necks. This pressure from their investors causes them to buy companies at higher prices than they would like. Most people think if their fund manager isn’t constantly active, he/she isn’t doing a good enough job.

You, me and the investors in the funds of my gurus are constantly being fed “investing” news that makes us feel like if we don’t act now, we’re going to miss out. This “You better act now” news has created short-term thinking by most investors. 90+% of fund managers have a short-term investing method. They might say they’re long-term, but the reality is they rarely hold a stock longer than 1 year.

Charlie Munger says you make money when you wait. Some of the gurus know they should wait on a company to have a more depressed price before buying, but they buy with a smaller margin of safety to please their investors.

Look at those hedge funds – you think they can wait? They don’t know how to wait! I have sat for years at a time with $10 to $12 million in treasuries or municipals, just waiting, waiting…As Jesse Livermore said, ‘The big money is not in the buying and selling…but in the waiting

Charlie Munger

The Wizard of Wall Street

Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger funds, is considered one of the greatest hedge fund managers of all time, if not the best. From 1980 to 2000, Tiger funds had a compound rate of return after all fees of 31.7%. Nobody had a better record, and yet people started pulling their money away from him. There is a book about him. It is called Julian Robertson: A Tiger in the Land of Bulls and Bears.

These people pulled their money away from possibly the greatest hedge fund manager of all time with a better record than everyone because they wanted momentum and potential short-term gains in highly speculative stocks.

As you have heard me say on many occasions, the key to Tiger’s success over the years has been a steady commitment to buying the best stocks and shorting the worst. In a rational environment, this strategy functions well. But in an irrational market, where earnings and price considerations take a back seat to mouse clicks and momentum, such logic, as we have learned, does not count for much

Julian Robertson

My Advantage Over my Gurus

I don’t have investors breathing down my neck. I can wait until a company gives me a 50% margin of safety. Of these 40 companies, I am hoping for at least 1 that I can understand that is selling at a great margin of safety right now.

I will research the companies in the order of least debt, most guru purchases and highest percentage of a guru’s portfolio.

Here’s my Quarterly Guru Buys list of companies. I also have my list for quarter 4, 2020 in this document. These lists work with one another by showing what the gurus did with the quarter 4 purchases during quarter 1. If gurus are continuously purchasing certain companies quarter after quarter, that tells me to pay extra attention to those companies.

If you’d like to have a little more of an overview of the way I think about investing, check out one of my previous posts, This is an Overview of My Investment Style.

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Risky Business in My Portfolio

Risky Business

I got tired of reading Alibaba’s analyst report after seeing that Charlie Munger is buying in. I decided do something more exciting by looking for businesses to add to my “Risky Business” portion of my portfolio. I wanted to start with recent IPO’s. I just googled “all recent IPOs” and I found the Stock Analysis website. It has all the IPO’s of 2021, 2020 & 2019. I went through the list in reverse order from most recent IPO to the first IPO of January 2019.

My 1st Filter

For my first filter, I searched the “symbol” on Datorama. If a “Superinvestor” that I follow didn’t own it, I moved on to the next IPO until I found a company that is owned by a Superinvestor. I also didn’t want one that was being sold the previous quarter. Once I found one, I took note of how many gurus owned it, the “Reported Price” each Superinvestor paid, the “% of portfolio” of each Superinvestor and what quarter/year they were buying. Then I added the current price.

There are so many good ideas around. You don’t need to create your own ideas – you can clone them

Mohnish Pabrai

I created an Excel document and called it “Research List to keep track of my findings. I also created a “Watch List” document for companies I want to buy after performing further research on each company.

I know there has to be a better way of doing this instead of going through every IPO in 2-1/4 years. I found what could possibly be a great screener on Gurufocus, but I’m not prepared to spend $500+ at this moment. I will a little later on. I believe it’s worth it.

Once I have a proven track record and start managing money as a profession/lifestyle, I’ll have all the subscriptions to make life easier. Until then, I’ll just have to put in the hard work. Looking through 1,163 IPOs took some time. Especially to only have 22 possible companies that will go on to my next filter.

What I Look For in A Guru’s Portfolio

All the Superinvestors on Dataroma are…well, Super. I do not follow all of them though. I’m personally not smart enough to keep up with 100+ companies. The investment style that makes the most sense to me is Buffett/Munger style. You can learn more about this in my post “This is An Overview of My Investment Style“.

I like to see that a “Guru” or “Superinvestor” isn’t afraid to put most of their eggs in the one or a few “right” baskets. I like to see gurus with less than 100 companies in their portfolio or 60% of their portfolio in the top 10 companies. Unless you’re Warren Buffett with a $270 billion portfolio.

As a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven’t done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what’s going on at any one of those companies at this moment?

Bill Ackman

His portfolio says it consists of 47 companies as I’m writing this, but I know from research that he owns over 100 companies, public & private. That being said, 85% of his public portfolio is in his top 10 holdings.

My 2nd Filter

For my second filter, I checked each company on the Rule 1 Toolbox to view the complete history of Book Value Per Share, Earnings Per Share, Sales Per Share, Operating Cash Flow Per Share, Return on Equity, Return on Invested Capital and the Long Term Debt to Earnings ratio. I checked it on the toolbox instead of using my Excel Calculator so that I didn’t have to plug in all the numbers myself.

If the numbers were all negative, I immediately passed on that company. I’m not good enough yet to value a company operating in the negative as short as its history is. This filter left me with 13 possible companies.

All of the companies were not available on the toolbox. The companies that have not yet been added to the toolbox, possibly because it has barely been 1 quarter since IPO on some, were put on my “Research List” along with the companies that passed this filter. I will have to use my excel calculator for these companies. This was to remember to find the information from the financial statements in my TD Ameritrade account.

Ways To Help

I’m not perfect and there are probably flaws in the calculator that I haven’t found yet. I’m also not an expert in Microsoft Excel. I literally had to research how to create everything in the calculator and it took up no less than 20 hours of my weekend. You are welcome use this calculator if you’d like. If you find it beneficial, feel free to make a donation and support me on my path.

If you don’t already have a TD Ameritrade account and you’d like for me to receive $50 for referring you, shoot me an email with your first name, last name and email address, and we can do the “Refer A Friend” program. The qualifications are: you must be of legal age in your state of residence and you must fund your account with at least $3,000 within 90 days. If you don’t/can’t meet the qualifications or you just don’t want to help me out, then just click this TD Ameritrade link.

My 3rd Filter

For my third filter, I checked where each company is headquartered. I only want companies headquartered in the United States. If it is headquartered in another country, it gets taken off the list.

I have nothing against investing in companies outside the United States, but I am wary. They aren’t required to follow the same SEC regulations as American companies and it can be a headache trying to find some information. Personally, I might not even be comfortable investing a large percentage (+10%) of my portfolio into a foreign company that has been public for more than 10 years. I’m especially uncomfortable investing in a foreign company that’s less than 2 years old. I will eventually learn more about foreign markets to ease my comfort level.

This left me with 8 companies. Yeah, 8 possible companies out of 1,163. There was definitely a better way of doing this.

These are just the companies that passed my first 3 filters. I haven’t put them through my investment checklist, nor have I researched any into these companies yet. They just look good on the surface to me. They don’t have the track record to prove they have a durable competitive advantage.

The “Possible” List

This is the list I came up with. The order I am going to start researching these companies in is based on the highest number of guru holdings, highest percentage of their portfolios and the ones currently selling below the guru purchase price. The order in which I plan to research these companies will probably go like this:

SymbolCompany# of Gurus% of PortfoliosPurchase ActivityPurchase PriceCurrent Price
DASHDoorDash Inc.51.17 – 0.22%Q4 2020$143$137.37
AVTRAvantor Inc.32.39 – 0.42% Q4 2020 $29$31.17
UPSTUpstart Holdings Inc.14.01% Q4 2020 $39$153.85
FUBOfuboTV Inc.12.08% Q4 2020 $28$20.29
LESLLeslie’s Inc.10.96% Q4 2020 $28$28.22
WPFFoley Trasimene Acquisition Corp.10.58% Q4 2020 $16$10.39
WISHContextLogic Inc.10.52% Q4 2020 $18$9.32
MNRLBrigham Minerals Inc.10.31% Q3 2020 $11$17.87

I know these are not the exact prices that gurus purchased the companies at, but it is pretty much impossible to know the exact price. This is not a recommendation or investment advice in any way. This is just how I went about finding recent IPO’s with the resources available to me at this moment.

Follow Others, But Think For Yourself

The companies I choose after deep research into each one will go into my “Risky Business” portion of my portfolio. The risky business portion of my portfolio will consist of no more than 10% of my total portfolio. There will also be no more than 10 companies in my risky business portfolio.

We have to have a price that makes sense and gives a margin of safety considering the normal vicissitudes of life

Charlie Munger

I guarantee my ideas and ways of doing things will change. My main focus is on established companies that have been public for at least 10 years. 10 years is enough time for a company to face the “vicissitudes of life” as Charlie says and to “find out if they were swimming naked when the tide went out” as Warren Buffett says.

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Gurus, Numbers and Excel Calculators

Gurus, numbers and Excel Calculators

I am going to talk about some gurus, numbers and excel calculators. Everything you read is my opinion and some things I’ve learned.

A Great Teacher

Phil town is a bit of a guru that I follow. He is a “bit” of a guru because he isn’t required to file a 13F filing. He is great at teaching beginners how to invest. A few books of his are Rule 1, Payback Time and Invested. He also has the Rule 1 website, Rule 1 Finance Blog, InvestED podcast and the Rule 1 Youtube Channel.

His teachings are basic and you can definitely find more elaborate valuation models in other books like Margin of Safety or Security Analysis. I tried starting out with Security Analysis,  because it is considered one of the best books ever written on business valuation. That was a mistake. In my opinion, it is too complex of a book to start out with. At least it was for me.

After further research, I stumbled upon Phil. I haven’t found anyone yet that is as good at explaining complicated investing topics to people looking to learn about investing, but don’t know where to start. Although Warren Buffett simply gives out the best investing education you will find anywhere, he’s so smart that it can still be somewhat intimidating to a beginner.

The Art of Business Valuation

Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman is super expensive because he only had 5,000 copies printed. There is a PDF version of Margin of Safety floating around the internet. He doesn’t really care to print more books. Probably because he doesn’t need the money. Warren even suggested that Seth is the most impressive investment professional and that he could be considered the next Warren Buffett.

The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation

Seth Klarman

Business valuation isn’t an exact science though. It’s more of an art. From my experience, Phil’s methods are awesome at finding wonderful companies. His valuation methods also do a pretty good job at reaching an intrinsic value somewhere in the same ball park as the gurus.

What I Look For in A Business

Phil teaches that when finding a company with a moat, to look at the growth rates for Book Value Per Share, Earnings Per Share, Sales Per Share and Operating Cash Flow Per Share. These rates growing greater than or equal to 10% signifies a historic moat.

He teaches that Return on Invested Capital and the Debt to Earnings ratio is great for determining how management has historically performed. A ROIC greater than or equal to 10% signifies that management is doing a good job at allocating capital. The least amount of debt compared to earnings is best, because you are less likely to get screwed from a company filing for bankruptcy. A company with a Debt to Earnings ratio of less than 3 is good, between 3-5 is alright and 6+ is not so good.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked

Warren Buffett

He also teaches to look at the growth rates and ROIC on a 10 year, 7 year, 5 year, 3 year and 1 year basis. Looking at the numbers over these various time periods will show you if they are shrinking, remaining constant or growing. Whatever it is that the growth rates are doing, you have to keep that in mind when choosing a “Windage” growth rate for company valuations.

The Toolbox

I am subscribed to the Rule #1 Toolbox. I have learned a lot from reading Phil’s 3 books, watching his youtube channel, listening to his & Danielle’s podcast and reading his blog. Later, I am going to do this with all the guru investors that I follow. This is so that I can install into my brain the way they think. Phil just simplifies it better than anyone I’ve found so far.

Not only do I subscribe to his Toolbox as a way of giving back for everything I’ve learned, but I’ve found it to be a great tool for finding companies. It turns out that most of the “wonderful” companies that gurus pile into are usually some of the top ranked companies on the Toolbox. It also has 10 years of data, calculators, growth rates, regulatory filings, news, insider trading and analyst ratings. I believe it is worth the monthly subscription.

The only flaw I’ve found so far is in the growth rates. This flaw is that the growth rates are calculated from numbers of the most recent year. If the company is going through a temporary “event” that produces bad numbers or magnificent numbers for this most recent year, the growth rates will be flawed. If the event doesn’t really affect the numbers or there’s no event, then the growth rates work great. To combat this flaw, I created my own Microsoft Excel calculator.

The Calculator

With this calculator, I am able to go back to whatever year was “Normal” and see what the growth rates were leading up to that year before the event. I created a calculator for all the growth rates: BVPS, EPS, SPS and OCPS. I also added Return on Invested Capital and the Debt to Earnings ratio.

Phil has an Excel Formulas PDF Document on how to calculate the growth rates in Excel using the “Rate” function. It is on the Resources Page of his website. I think you have to put in your email to receive it though. I just took his quick instructions and applied it to every year that can be calculated with all previous years for 10 years of data. This allows me to see what the numbers looked like without an event.

The other reason I created the Excel calculator is because I don’t want to be dependent upon a website. With my calculator, I can go directly to the annual reports filed by a company and record the data I need. As I start filling in this data, other parts of the calculator will automatically be filled and calculated for me.

The Usefulness of My Calculator

Let’s take Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) as an example. TXRH is in the restaurant industry and was forced to shut down their business for some time in 2020. This obviously affected earnings in a negative way big time. Earnings Per Share grew from $0.84 in 2010 to $2.50 in 2019. Then it went from $2.50 in 2019 to $0.45 in 2020. This is what a negative event looks like in the numbers.

That Makes the EPS Growth Rate 12.9% for 9 years, 13.7% for 7 years, 14.9% for 5 years, 14.6% for 3 years and 10.1% for 1 year at the time of this writing. I have all 10 years on my calculator, but just chose these for the example. If I were to base my growth calculations off the most recent year, 2020, the growth rates would have been -6.1% for 10 years, -12.5% for 7 years, -20.2% for 5 years, -38% for 3 years and -82% for 1 year. This is because of the event Texas Roadhouse experienced in 2020. The event was Covid-19.

We can take Alpha Pro Tech Ltd. (APT) as another example. APT is in the business of disposable protective apparel, building supply and infection control products. As you can guess, their earnings were affected in a positive way from the same event.

EPS went from $0.27 in 2018 and $0.22 in 2019 to $2.01 in 2020. Earnings per share grew from $0.10 in 2010 to $0.27 in 2018. That makes the EPS Growth Rate 13.2% for 8 years, 12.5% for 5 years and 8.3% for 2 years. If I were to base my growth calculations off the most recent year, 2020, the growth rates would have been 52.1% for 8 years, 90.6% for 5 years and 172.8% for 2 years.

Why The Calculator is Useful

If I were to choose a windage growth rate for my business valuations based on the numbers from the most recent year, my valuations would be flawed. The valuation for TXRH would be way too low and the valuation for APT would be way too high.

The event for both companies was the Coronavirus pandemic. It affected Texas Roadhouse negatively, because they were forced to close their restaurants temporarily. It affected Alpha Pro Tech positively, because they make infection control products. I consider 2019 the most recent “Normal” year for TXRH and 2018 the most recent “Normal” year for APT. I will use these “Normal” years for all my valuation calculations.

A cheap price alone is not sufficient reason to invest. If something is forever cheap, then it has no recognized value, and its stock may very well remain a worthless piece of paper. For a bargain to soar in price, there has to be a catalyst, and from an investment perspective, that catalyst is change

Jim Rogers

The reason I am comfortable going back a couple years to make a valuation on a business is because I know the event is temporary. As soon as this Coronavirus is in the past, I’m confident the numbers will go back to the level they were at before the event.

Use It If You’d Like

I’m not perfect and there are probably flaws in the calculator that I haven’t found yet. I’m also not an expert in Microsoft Excel. I literally had to research how to create everything in the calculator and it took up no less than 20 hours of my weekend. You are welcome use this calculator if you’d like. If you find it beneficial, feel free to make a donation and support me on my path.

This is a quick overview of some of the more detailed numbers I look for in a company. I will get more detailed later. If you’d like a broader view of my investment style, check out my previous post “This is an Overview of My Investment Style”.

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This is an Overview of My Investment Style

My investment style

My investment style is value investing, but in the way of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. It was passed down by Benjamin Graham to Buffett. Buffett, influenced by Munger, put his own take on it. There are many Gurus/Superinvestors who have followed this well beaten path and became very successful. There are even hundreds, if not thousands, of people we will never hear about that have followed this path and found success. Average people. People who are no longer dependent on a job and have the time, money and health to spend with their family. This was accomplished just by following what these gurus teach.

Success in investing doesn’t correlate with IQ … what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

Warren Buffett

Buffett says, “Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing”. This was proven when Gerald S. Martin and John Puthenpurackal published the paper “Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway”.

The paper states that if all you did was mimic Buffett’s portfolio from 1976 to 2006, buying what he bought and selling what he sold on the last day of the month that it became public knowledge, that you would have had a compounded annual growth rate of 20.43%. The S&P 500 returned 12.86% during that same time frame. You would have outperformed the market 26 out of the 31 years. The paper also states that the average money manager would have beaten the market 15.5 out of the 31 years.

Beta and modern portfolio theory and the like – none of it makes any sense to me

Charlie Munger

You could have brainlessly followed Buffett and outperformed the market and the majority of fund managers that believe in Efficient Market Theory (the crap they teach in school). This is what Charlie Munger has to say about EMT, “Corporate finance is beneath contempt. Believing just by buying volatile stocks you make an extra 7 percentage points per annum, I mean those people still believe in the tooth fairy and yet it is taught to children”.

The Great Gurus

Buffett is not the only person you could have followed and made returns similar to this. Anyone managing over $100 million is required by law to publicize their portfolio (a 13F filing) every quarter with the SEC. There is a handful of gurus who have followed the teachings of Buffett (the path) and made the same awesome returns as Buffett. Now they are required to publicize their portfolios. You could brainlessly follow any of these investors and make better returns than the majority of “professional” fund managers.

Even these investors, who are the best in the world, follow other great investors. I’ve heard it called coat-tailing by Buffett, cloning by Mohnish Pabrai and copycat investing by Phil Town. You don’t have to brainlessly follow them though. I plan to add in a little brain by following what all these investors teach.

How I Clone the Gurus

You can find 13F filings a few different ways. You can find them directly from the source at the SEC’s EDGAR website, but you just about have to be a lawyer to use the website from my experience. You can find them at other websites that compile this data in an easy to read fashion. The websites I use are Gurufocus and Dataroma. You have to pay for Gurufocus to access most of the features on the website, but I think the features are worth the money. I just don’t have the money to pay for it yet, so I use Dataroma for now. Dataroma is free with no features.

I know there are other investment styles like day trading, traditional value investing and index investing. Value investing in the way of Buffett and Munger is just the only way that makes sense to me. 95.5% of all daytraders fail. I have a long-term view, and by long-term, I mean 10 years. As Buffet says, “Only buy something you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years”. I won’t own a company for 10 minutes unless I plan on owning it for 10 years.

This investment style has many names. I’ve heard gurus describe their funds as “event based”, “event driven”, “deep value”, etc. It’s not traditional “value investing” as Graham’s strategy was though.

I am going to go deep into research and find a few wonderful companies that are undervalued temporarily from an event. I will also do more speculative “other things” with a small portion of my portfolio as I learn them. These “other things” might consist of shorting, complex options trades, cryptocurrency, IPO’s, etc. Some gurus have their portfolios set up this way. I will also look to the gurus portfolio holdings as a foundation for mine by coat-tailing their investments, but with a brain by doing my own research to come to my own understanding of why they purchased the company and my own valuation of the company.

I am guaranteed to adapt and change as I learn. I will delve more into my investment style, how it changes, ideas and thoughts in other posts. This is just an overview of my way.

If you haven’t already, check out my previous post “This is Who I Am” to get a little understanding of my background.

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This is Who I am

Who I Am

Who I am first and foremost is an aspiring investor. My dream is to follow in the footsteps of many great investors that walked the path laid by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and start a hedge fund. A hedge fund in the style of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai, Bill Ackman and a few others. Here’s a link to my post “This is an Overview of My Investment Style“. I am also a father, husband, brother, son and friend.

I have listened to The Tim Ferriss show quite a bit. One of the most common shared habits I’ve heard from the top performers of multiple fields being interviewed by him is journaling. Journaling along with meditation, morning routines, exercise and reading. He also summed all of this up into his book Tools of Titans. So, this is my journal. The other reasons for me starting this blog is to keep a fire lit under my butt and force me out of my comfort zone. Maybe me talking about my journey could even help someone else too.

I have been learning investing for years in my free time. My free time has been between full-time college with full-time blue collar work and remodeling a house myself with full time blue-collar work. I have also tried to be a good husband, brother, son and friend. I have lacked in that department. Now I am a father and I realize if I don’t follow my dream now, it’ll never come true.

I Can’t Afford to Not Do It

The least I will let myself accomplish is financial freedom. Financial freedom is what I have to accomplish for my family. My definition of financial freedom is: not having to work a day job that isn’t my passion just to provide the necessities for my family, not drowning in debt, not having to worry about medical expenses and having sufficient time/energy to be there as a father, husband, brother, son and friend.

Where I Come From

I’m not special in any way. My mother was a waitress for most of my life. My father has built cabinets for my entire life. I’ve heard many times that “hard work hasn’t ever killed anybody” and I agree. I’ll disagree with anyone that says a life of standing on a concrete floor for 10-12 hours daily doesn’t take a toll on your body though. Both of my parents have some medical problems now and that isn’t uncommon for blue-collar workers in their 50’s. Although divorced now, I don’t think they ever had a combined annual income of more than $75,000. Neither went to college and one didn’t finish high school.

I followed in their footsteps for the most part, except I didn’t finish college. I work a blue-collar job. I stand on concrete for 10-12 hours daily building cabinets. There’s nothing wrong with being in Georgia and not having air conditioning in the summer months, heat in the winter months, breathing in sawdust constantly or standing on concrete for many hours. Some people enjoy doing just that. My grandfather loves it. It’ll make you tough, to a point, but then it just starts tearing your body down. My body feels that way at least. I might just be weak.

My parents taught me everything they could. Finance or investing just wasn’t one of them. It’s not their fault. Finance and investing isn’t properly taught in school and unless someone has a desire to learn about it on their own, they’ll never learn. You can listen to the greatest investors in the world today, investors who have outperformed the market for 70+ years, agree that proper investing is not taught in school. K-12 or college. I believe I have the desire.

Much of what is taught in modern corporate finance courses is twaddle

Charlie Munger

Since high school I have always dreamed of being a business man. I can still remember a time when some men came to speak in one of my classes and asked me what I wanted to do for a living after high school. I told him I wanted to be a business man and own things. When he asked me what kinds of things I wanted to own, I didn’t have an answer. I just didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what kind of business man just owned things or how to get there. I haven’t had anyone to teach me, nor do I know anyone in that position.

The Only Businessman I Really Know

My grandfather is the closest thing to a businessman type role model I have. He is a self-made small business owner, and the hardest worker I’ve ever met. He comes from that hard-working Vietnam war era of men. He owns the cabinet shop my father and I work at. It is a small family business. He enjoys working with his hands and would prefer to be in the shop all the time instead of in the office. I prefer to be in the office treasure hunting for wonderful businesses.

Researching the greatest businesses in the world for a chance to purchase shares of them at a discount fascinates me. I am completely happy spending 10 hours per day doing that. When I spend my weekends doing that, I have energy built up from sitting all day. I can spend that energy doing all the adventurous things I love. Some of the things I love are exercising, cliff diving, rock climbing, snowboarding, swimming, etc.

When I turned 18, my grandfather advised me to get a credit card and build my credit, because “Credit is all a poor man has”. Following that, he immediately advised me to never let the balance get so high it becomes unmanageable. He also advised me to start giving a portion of my paycheck to a mutual fund manager for retirement. This can be solid advice and he has a lot more of it. My passion is centered around investing though and I am confident that I can outperform 96% of the professional fund managers in the long-run. I could be wrong, but that doesn’t stop my confidence that eventually I will outperform them.

I can remember sitting with my grandfather after discovering Warren Buffett. I was telling him that the life of an investor is everything I’ve dreamed of and I wanted to buy businesses for a living. He told me “It’s impossible to manage that many businesses. Someone will take advantage of you”. I just took his advice knowing that he was probably right and even Warren Buffett agrees with him.

Buffett has said that there’s likely some form of corruption in all his businesses, whether it be someone just stealing a pencil. It’s not detrimental to the company though. If it is, the company management will find the corruption and fix it. If management is the corruption, Buffett will just fire them. Although he doesn’t like to, Buffett has had to fire managers before.

I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will

Warren Buffett

Why Haven’t I Started Before Now?

I can come up with a list of excuses to why I haven’t started investing until now. It boils down to me just being lazy. I believe I have also listened to/followed too much advice from others. You can benefit from anyone’s advice, positive and negative. That doesn’t mean to follow it though. Not even the good advice.

Some of the advice I’ve been given has been “You have to be born with money to be financially free”, “You don’t know how to invest and you’ll lose everything”, “People get rich on the backs of hardworking people”, etc. This sort of advice can be given to you by people who genuinely care about you and want the best for you in life. They tell you how they have come to portray the world in the hopes it’ll help prevent you from doing something stupid. Something stupid like losing your entire life savings.

Life also has a way of getting in the way. Especially when starting something new. It probably has something to do with the fact that getting started is the hardest part of anything. You have a dream, a goal, a desire and life throws something at you. Something like having to get a job, losing a job, trying to afford college, having a family to support, a death, etc. The things life can throw at you are endless. The easiest thing to do is put off following your dream and pour your focus into whatever is happening now.

There are people who come from way tougher backgrounds than me and accomplish amazing things. This is why I will just agree that I’ve been lazy.

The Goal of This Website

This is where I come from and where I am in my life right now. I am getting started on my path to becoming a successful investor. I am going to work towards my dream of starting a hedge fund and write about my journey. Showing what I learn and how I think is an attempt to follow my gurus. Many of them have written books, teach classes, have blogs, publicize their letters to investors, etc. this is my attempt to give back as they have.

All the gurus I follow have proven track records. I don’t. So take from this what you will, whether it be my stupidity or success. Most will probably be stupidity, but I have confidence. I hope this will give someone else the courage to take the leap into managing their own money.

The Only Options I Have

I have only 2 options. They are: to become a successful investor or be a complete failure. I’m tired of being the failure, so it’s time to force success upon me. Success to me means that I will be following my dream while creating a financially free life for my family and having the ability to be there as a father, husband, brother, son and friend.

This is my journey. If I become successful, I believe anyone can.

I am no genius. You will see that for yourself. I am confident that I can become a successful investor though. Through this website, I am going to show you what I’ve learned, the process of me learning and how I portray the world in the hopes of this helping someone else to have the confidence to take control of their life through investing. I am putting out there all my successes and failures. I guarantee there will be more failures to learn from.

An essential component of our education is to learn from our mistakes—and if we don’t make mistakes, sometimes we may not learn at all

Guy Spier

Becoming a successful investor is the only path I see for me. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll even take over a public company or take a company public and use it as my investment vehicle to buy both public and private companies.

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