Quarterly Review: Q2 (December) FY 2019
It’s been a while since my last quarterly report, and in fact I was late recording the data for this one – but what’s a 99 day quarter between friends. The 10foot portfolio is down 4% since inception at 30 March 2017. This compares to its main comparison index, the XNT, which is up 5% …
10foot reading list
I was recently flattered to receive an email asking if I had a reading list that would help somebody who wanted to learn about investing. I thought that I would tidy my emailed response up further and publish it for the benefit of all. With the caveat that I am not a professional investor and …
Despegar: Further thoughts
Following on from my recent post I have some further thoughts on Despegar (NYSE:DESP). The IPO The company was clearly IPO’d at precisely the right time. 53% holder Tiger Global sold four million shares at $26 in an IPO that I think was clearly overpriced. It may have been an interesting short for somebody that did …
Despegar: Thoughts so far
I don’t get a lot of time to research these days. After a month, I’m currently about halfway through researching one stock and I want to get some thoughts down on paper. My research is necessarily incomplete and I am writing this post from memory at an airport at 1am so do be aware there …
Donaco International: High risk, high reward?
With apologies to entrapped shareholders, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the recent Donaco International (ASX:DNA) AGM update. Trouble with Chinese gangsters, and one of the company’s larger shareholders and a former vendor of an asset Donaco bought, is threatening to cut off power and build a wall around Donaco’s largest asset! I also …
Some brief thoughts on ownership
I recently read a letter from Edelweiss Holdings that has both prompted some new thoughts and sharpened up some old thoughts about a crucial concept in finance – ownership. The whole letter is worth a read, but this quote in particular threw bare some implicit assumptions that I had largely taken at face value: “A …
An update on Just Group plc
I recently posted to Twitter that I have been torched on my Just Group plc (LON: JUST) position so far: I recently pitched Just Group to a sophisticated investor with experience in complex financials and had the idea shot down pretty quickly (“too hard”). While that should serve as a warning to others considering investing here, …
Quarterly Review: Q1 (September) FY 2019
This quarter turned out better than I thought. I tweeted a month ago that it had been a bit rough- down 12% QoQ and down 5% since inception. However, when I was updating my spreadsheet to include my latest sales of Probiotec (after quarter end – more on that below) I noticed that a previous …
The Domino’s Pizza Mystery
I tried to order pizza from Domino’s Pizza (ASX: DMP) on the weekend – strictly for due diligence purposes, you understand. Eight Meats pizza, gluten free base, barbecue sauce. Price: $18.95. Plus $2.10 Sunday surcharge and a further $2.95 for the gluten free base. Add a second pizza – the Godfather, from the same range …
The Titomic question
There is a Peter Lynch anecdote from the 80s (?) that goes something like “it’s better to buy shares in companies that benefit from the widget, instead of shares in the widget developer.” He gives the example of barcode scanning for supermarkets – while the barcode scanners themselves were a total revolution, the biggest beneficiaries …