"The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own." – Warren Buffett
This is just a quick sort of diary/placeholder post that I will plan to go back and update a bit at some point in the future.
I am considering purchasing some Greenlight Reinsurance (GLRE). GLRE is David Einhorn’s Cayman/Irish domiciled reinsurance operation, which has an investment management agreement with his hedge fund. So basically it is a reinsurance operation with investments handled by Greenlight. Continue reading “Greenlight RE”
I am going to try and regularly do a quick post on some nice online resources available for investors. The first of these is the asset allocation tool on the Research Affiliates website. Continue reading “Resource Roundup: Research Affiliates Asset Allocation Tool”
This will be a quick post. I wanted to suggest a few “year end” sort of personal finance moves for the more retail investor types among us.
First, you should max out your tax advantaged accounts. If you are unable to max them out for 2017, you should increase your contribution in the new year to move in that direction. In the future, I plan a post about why we should automate our savings. For now, pay yourself first by automatically saving. If you are not able to max out available tax advantaged accounts, consider increasing your contributions by 100% of any raises you receive (50% if you are particularly strapped for cash). I will leave the Roth versus Traditional analysis for your consideration. Go to the MadFientist blog for more information to be used in making your decision.
Second, you should consider buying $10,000 (or whatever you desire your bond allocation for this year to be) in U.S. Treasury Series I savings bonds (“I Bonds”). There are compelling reasons why investors should purchase zero additional bonds until they have purchased all of the I Bonds the U.S. allows each year. Continue reading “Series I Treasury Bonds”
Just a quick post to record my thoughts for future evaluation. I purchased WisdomTree (WETF) earlier this year for ~$9 per share. I am going to sell 2/3 of the position @ ~$12 and just let the 33% profit run (in a tax deferred account, or I would not bother). The basic evaluation when I bought was that I liked the business, insiders/founders are in control (reducing principal-agent conflicts), and it was trading with an enterprise value of around 2% of AUM. Continue reading “WETF Update: Winter (Vanguard) is Coming!”
I will discuss fundamental investing on this site, so I can chronicle some of my adventures in stock picking. The vast majority of my marketable securities portfolio (modest though it is) is indexed. The majority of that money is in market capitalization weighted index funds (in retirement vehicles).
Yet, I am convinced of the merits of value investing and the persistence of the value factor. I will plan to post more on this in the future, with some links to better sources than this blog. If you can’t wait, you might go ahead start perusing:
http://www.researchaffiliates.com, http://www.alphaarchitect.com, or http://www.aqr.com.
The gap between value stocks and the market cap weighted indexes in foreign funds is larger than in the US and seems historically large. These markets also appear to be cheap relative to history and the U.S. Many would point out this is probably because these indexes are more heavily weighted to financial, mining and energy companies (which may all be facing obsolescence, or at least decreased margins due to US fracking and other technological advances) and the indexes are devoid of FAANGS/tech darlings.
I acknowledge these risks, but that is life as a value investor. As Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Asset Management says, “buy it cheap and something good might happen.” An example of this is what happened with U.S. banks over the last several years. They were cheap for good reason: they were going to be regulated into oblivion, rates would never move, and they would never earn their cost of capital. The narrative has since changed and the stocks have roared back.
I am also primarily exposed to U.S. assets, so foreign stocks should provide me with (modest) diversification benefits. So, I have decided to allocate some additional money to foreign value funds. As part of this process, I have been comparing some of the available foreign value ETFs. Continue reading “Best Foreign Value Factor ETFs”
Welcome to the Corpraider Blog. I am not an actual “Corporate Raider” or activist investor. I am, however, aware of principal-agent problems that investors in publicly traded companies face. I attempt to minimize these problems in my investments (I also grew up in the 80’s).
I plan to use this site to create a record of my thoughts, primarily, about investing and personal finance (mostly for my future evaluation). I also hope the record I create will allow me to “compound” some knowledge over time. I will also try to compile links to blogs and other resources which I find informative and relevant. I hope that you will find the information here useful and perhaps even entertaining!