Quarterly Update: March 2020
So, almost everything I wrote in mid March getting ready for the end of quarter has been invalidated in the month since. Make of it what you will. Markets, eh? With the recent set of opportunities and portfolio positioning, I would expect a professional investor in my position to deliver some of the best …
FEAR
Note to readers today: This post was published at the very lowest point of the Covid Crash in 2020. It is designed to be bombastic and provocative, and at that, I think it succeeds. – Sean Can you feel it? FEAR If you do not look it in the eye, it cannot GET YOU Let …
10Foot Scuttlebutt: You’ve Been Unwise, And Four Other Fun Thoughts
Markets are tricky. I’m down 22% this quarter peak to trough, probably a little less start to finish, but who’s counting. I have marginally less money than I started with in September last year when I began this portfolio, put it that way. Some thoughts on markets Coronavirus is rotting your brain. I’ve never ever …
Annual Review: CY2019
I began investing again at the end of September this year. I published an interim investment update last month to get some thoughts on paper, but you can consider this a formal investment update and a record date of the portfolio for a return to performance tracking in future quarters. (Performance until April 2019 was …
Investment Update – Oct 2019
After a hiatus since April I’m overdue for an update. There are a couple of things to talk about. I’ve made a couple of mistakes, but on the plus side I have solved several problems and performance has been good – really good. Previously in my quarterly investment updates there were two recurring issues. Position …
Brasilian Hotels, Airbnb, And Other Thoughts
I recently spent three weeks in Brazil, my second trip in three years. It is a great country, and I have some general thoughts on it below. However, one thing that really stood out to me this time was the burgeoning supply of Airbnb apartments. The last time I travelled was in the July prior …
The Evolution Of A Hypothetical Start-Up
I’ve been pretty busy lately on a couple of projects. As always, inspiration strikes at the strangest of times and I have been assembling some thoughts on the challenges faced by growing businesses, from the perspective of an investor who has followed a couple of reasonably large ones like Nearmap and Xero through their many …
The Challenge Of Selling A Managed Fund
I have a friend who is starting a funds management business. I joked with him that, in order to market to investors, he should say that he is a long-only value investor that believes in Warren Buffet, only holds high quality stocks for the long term, real money is made in the holding, lower prices …
Argentina
I have a strong interest in emerging markets. When Turkey blew up, I looked at Turkish stocks. The Argentine stock market vomited the other day, so most recently I have been looking there (some might also remember my Despegar posts). Argentina now holds the title of the second greatest single-day stock market meltdown in history (in …
Revenue Is A Trailing Metric
An interesting discussion I heard recently was “how can we enhance an organisation’s ability to hit its targets”? The natural response is to ask “how do you hit a target” and the answer of course is that you can’t. You can’t go out and hit a target because the target (sales, in this case) is a …
