Blogvesting

I liquidated ZINC today at $6.99, less than a week after I bought it for $7.90, for an excruciating 12% loss. I bought this position because of its compelling valuation, despite deteriorating technical indicators. This is what I deserve for disregarding the old adage about not catching a falling knife. Still, I had to follow [...]

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I liquidated WMT today at $59.08, for a gain of 25%. When I bought this position about a year ago, I felt that its overseas operations, which make up more than 20% of revenue now, was being under-valued, and that a potential recession could boost its domestic market share. Also, Joel Greenblatt’s huge position in [...]

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I took advantage of the market upswing today to liquidate a few positions that I feel are near their fair value. First up on the chopping block is Methanex, which supplies 20% of the world’s methanol, used mainly in the chemical industry. I first bought MEOH on August 2007, and my investment thesis was that [...]

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Dow Chemical requires no introduction. Buffett financed Dow’s acquisition of Rohm and Haas with a convertible bond yielding 8.5% and convertible at a share price of $41. There is some debate about whether Dow overpaid for its new acquisition, but the consensus is that the company has a better product mix and market share after [...]

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Having just written up a couple of my most recent stock purchases, I am suddenly struck by how naive some of my bullish commentary sounds. In every investment thesis, there is some risk, and it is always possible to find reasons why a stock can tank. In the current pessimistic climate, writing a negative article [...]

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Himax is a Taiwanese company which make semiconductor components that go into an LCD display, including display drivers, timing controllers, and power management ICs. It has a 20% market share in display drivers, and is the industry leader in this niche. Its stock has been dropping in recent months due to worries about the drop-off [...]

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Horsehead Corporation is a major producer of zinc in the US, using as raw material EAF dust from steel mini-mills. EAF dust is a hazardous byproduct of steel refining, and environmental regulations in the US mandate that EAF dust be either recycled or carefully dumped in a sealed landfill. Horsehead gets paid to take EAF [...]

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Recently, I have re-examining my investment style, and reading many investment books as part of the process. The book that has most influenced my thinking is Invest Like a Shark by James DePorre. DePorre believes most small investors are making a mistake when they use a long-term buy-and-hold strategy and buy mainly large-cap blue chip [...]

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Recently, the technology component of my portfolio has reached 15-20%, invested in companies with dominant market shares and minimal debt (DELL, INTC, NVDA and CYMI). The entire tech sector has been in slump in recent months due to a combination of the saturation of the desktop market in the US, and the flop of Windows [...]

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I managed to snag a copy of Even Buffett Isn’t Perfect from the local library the past weekend. I’m only halfway through it, but it has set me thinking about quite a few issues. Basically the book is about some of the inconsistencies and flip-flops Buffett has made over the many years he has pontificated [...]

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