A Model Culture Makes This Diamond Shine – Morningstar – Fund Spy.
This is a positive article on Diamond Hill by Morningstar. Hopefully it will generate some new AUM for the company.
Disclosure: Long DHIL.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
A Model Culture Makes This Diamond Shine – Morningstar – Fund Spy
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Insider buying at PNI Digital Media and Salary.com
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009In a change of recent activity, Peter Scarth has now bought 1000 shares of PNI Digital Media (formerly PhotoChannel Networks, I’ll have more on the name change later). This is nothing compared to the ~70k shares he sold in March through May, but at least it’s a change.
And hitting my inbox yesterday afternoon were form 4’s from 2 Salary.com insiders. After the 50% increase in the prior week, I assumed these were sales. But they were actually buys! Last Thursday, as the stock was going up, directors Robert Trevisani and Edward McCauley bought 2,500 shares at $2.56 and 14,175 shares at $2.76, respectively. They still only own less than 100k shares combined, but it’s still nice to see some buying. Apparently they got the message that they better start buying shares if they want to stay on the Board of Directors.
We’ll see if some more hit my inbox today and maybe last Friday’s crazy move was just an insider buying shares without using a limit order and driving the price up unintentionally.
Disclosure: Long pndmf.ob, SLRY.
Tom Brown goes through the past 2+ years
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009Tom Brown is one of the investment commentators that I read often. He writes articles on the financial services industry for his website, BankStocks.com. He also runs a hedge fund called Second Curve that invests only in the Financial Services sector. Obviously this was not a good place to be over the past 2 years!
Sometimes I wish I had never heard of Tom Brown as I lost a fair amount of money in on of his recommendations, First Marblehead. I don’t blame him for the money lost in FMD–every investment decision I make is my own–I actually am thankful that he posted so much detailed information about the company.
But anyway, Tom goes through his investment mistakes over the past 2 and a half years and what he’s learned. Even a 25+ year veteran has learned a lot in the past 2 years! Here’s the article, on his website Bankstocks.com.
Stock Performance by Market Cap in 2008
Monday, March 2nd, 2009So I did some bloomberg screening and grouped the 2008 total return by different market caps:
|
Market Cap |
2008 Total Return |
|
< $100m |
-68.7% |
|
$100m-$250m |
-61.9% |
|
$250m-$1B |
-51.0% |
|
$1B-$5B |
-42.9% |
|
$5B-$20B |
-45.5% |
|
> $20B |
-37.9% |
Total Return is the Median Total Return of all stocks whose market cap fell into the grouping as of 12/31/2007.
2008 was a brutal year for investors across all market caps, but espcially brutal for those investing in companies under $250m in market cap.
Welcome to Small Cap Values
Monday, January 19th, 2009I plan on discussing small and micro cap stock ideas on this site. Feel free to share your own ideas with me as well! While I look at many different kinds of companies, my favorites are small, fast growing companies, preferably with recurring revenue streams. The cleaner the balance sheet the better, however a debt free company is not a requirement. I care about competitive advantage more than valuation, however sometimes I’ll gladly buy a company without a competitive advantage as long as it trades at a discount to net asset value (preferably cash).
I’m not a trader and don’t invest on technicals or momentum. My time horizon is usually 3-5 years, however I will take profits it stocks become over valued and will gladly sell at a loss if the situation changes or my initial reasoning turns out to be flawed. I generally want to make at least twice my initial investment using conservative assumptions to as much as 5x using more aggressive assumptions, with little downside risk. These are high standards, however I am willing to wait to find the right opportunities. I estimate future upside values using “conservative multiples on optimistic assumptions” as one fund manager once told me. I estimate the downside risk by looking at net asset values, cash, or what the company would be worth in a take under by management.
