Jump to content

charlie

Members
  • Posts

    75
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by charlie

  1. Why the incredulous tone? Of course LTV multiples are going to rise.- that's now explicit government policy. And I think it's clear that the govt would also like to see income multiples rise, and yes some new form of liar loans too. Come to think of it, the deposit guarantee and interest-free loan schemes are structured to allow a new type of liar loan. The schemes are "intended" to assist purchasers of first homes, but Osborne has been explicit that there will no checks and no enforcement of this "intention."
  2. Well well well. In the 1980s, the Conservative wheeze was Right to Buy. In the 2010s, Obsorne can do better. Not Right to Buy. More like Right to Default. LOL. I predicted this, sort of, on this board in March 2010..... Orginal post: http://www.greenener...120#entry159360 If the taxpayer wants give me an interest-free loan of 20% of the cost of a new-build, OK, I'll buy a new-build. Not intended for second homes, the Treasury says. But there's clearly going to be lots of wriggle room - see Osborne's refusal today to deny that second homes may qualify. Sorry, first-time buyers. But don't blame me. I don't make the rules..
  3. Not really. But I wasn't really trying to any open doors, and perhaps one could with a more promotional approach. For example the author's biography in the book is deliberately minimalist, wasn't placed on the cover, no picture, no claims about my own investment returns, etc. If there was some indication that I was looking for offers - of work, speaking engagements, or whatever - that might be different.
  4. I think the above quote is still true three years after I wrote it, and I find it quite strange. Anyone who can achieve some step-change in the useability of bulletin boards will make a big difference to many people (although I'm not sure they'd make any money from it). One idea for such a step-change is the solar magnitude forum desccribed by Philip Greenspun. Briefly: a planet can appear big either (1) because it big, or (2) because it's nearby. So the solar magnitude forum preferentially shows each user a custom set of topics which are either (1) objectively big, or (2) close to that user's interests. But that page describing the solar magnitude forum has been there for 5 years. There are no other discussions about it, and I haven't seen any BB which implements it. So presumably the problem is hard.
  5. Sold about 5,000 copies in first year. To the best of my knowledge all 12 investors are still prospering, 2-3 years after my original interviews. No detail on performance, but I think I would have heard if one of them had had to go back to employed work or similar!
  6. There has been some other overseas interest. A German publisher wants to do a German translation, which surprised me, but hey why not, I've accepted their (very small) advance and half-royalties. There is also going to be an "Indian edition". Same text, probably a different title, and a lower price for this market. Slightly nervous about arbitrage, or a pdf copy leaking out of the production chain somewhee. But in the end I'm not doing it for the money, so go with the flow.
  7. A question received on the BOOK thread on ADVFN..any thoughts? (Hong Kong...so DrBubb...?) zangdook - 5 Jul'11 - 11:53 - 117 of 117 I've just been going round a few bookshops in Hong Kong. No-one seems to have the book, or have heard of it - does anyone happen to know a shop here which does stock it? More or less every bookshop has a big shelf of investment books near the front, mostly American, so I suspect there might be demand for it. I don't really know how publishing works, but if such a thing can be done it might be worth the publisher's while trying to get a few copies on shelves here. I saw a few copies of Anthony Bolton's book. Perhaps he's been knocking on some doors since he moved here, trying to flog a few. freecapital - 5 Jul'11 - 13:20 - 118 of 118 Thanks for the intelligence zangdook. I will ask Harriman. Also Nigel in the book, as he's based in Hong Kong.
  8. A further comment on the dealmaker Fat Tony (streetwise, loud, school of life) versus the engineer Dr John (analytical, studious, book smarts). In praising Fat Tony's abilities over the engineer's, Taleb is probably thinking of a particular person. But Fat Tony makes me think of a different person: a 'local' (independent self-employed trader) on the old LIFFE trading floor. These guys (usually from Essex - British readers will understand ) made a very good living in the 1990s in the open outcry futures pits. But when trading went electronic, many of them couldn't adapt. Yes they were streetwise, but they were very dependent on a particular ecology of market institutions. This leads (obliquely, and probably going OT, but here goes anyway), to what I think is the most general definition of intelligence. (As far as I know this is orginal. I have not seen it anywhere else.) Intelligence is not just IQ (the engineer Dr John) nor is it just streetwise smarts (the dealmaker Fat Tony). Intelligence is the ability to think and behave like both Dr John and Fat Tony as the situation demands. That is, Intelligence = anchored adaptability where Adaptability = ability to think and act in radically different ways in different environments Anchored = not just behaving the same as other people in your current environment But this does beg the question of what your adaptability is anchored to! Rationality, perhaps. Or perhaps other values.
  9. Well I guess you could see the 4/12 early school leavers in the book as Fat Tonys. But whilst the concept of the ludic fallacy is a helpful one, I don't really agree with Taleb's association of personalities and insight. He says "Fat Tony would outperform Dr. John in any other possible ecological, real-life, situation." Well, maybe the particular Fat Tony he has in mind (I think Taleb is probably thinking of someone he once knew). But in general, no. I think the engineers (and actuaries!) are in general much better at thinking outside the box than the Fat Tonys.
  10. Well I am going to be like an English judge - no matter if the names are tweeted, my super-injunction will stay!
  11. Yes. Quite a few had some sort of windfall - usually after some years of investing. But none of them spent the windfall on cars / houses / yachts. Now I come to think of it, none of them even alluded to the idea that they could have spent the windfall. Just not on their radar. Future time perspective (page 250).
  12. Well the book has a tentative theory about that ...on page 44... "Bottom-up surveyors focus on hard financial facts about particular companies, which can best be obtained directly from company accounts and news announcements. Top-down geographers, on the other hand, focus on changes in market sentiment, which cannot be discerned from company accounts or news announcements. For this reason, insights into sentiment from bulletin boards are probably a more important input for geographers than for surveyors." ...but I am not very confident about this theory. There may be other explanations.
  13. If I had the discipline, I would copy Owen, the closed-end funds activist. Exceptionally good results from a relatively narrow focus, which makes him very time-efficient. From page 179 : "His approach is focused and opportunistic, concentrating on situations where activism can release value in a time frame of a few months. This focus helps him to be unusually efficient. Because of this economical use of time, his approach is the one in this book which I most wish I could emulate." To be honest I don't believe this would work well for the average private investor. There is no reason why it shouldn't. But few ordinary private investors would have the ruthless focus and discipline which Owen has. Look at what he actually does... (page 177) "Owen keeps most of his notes in electronic files. In terms of information sources, he looks at the RNS and annual accounts for the companies which attract his interest. For closed-end funds, he checks the listing documents and the company’s articles of association, taking particular note of the management fee, any discount protection mechanism, and winding-up provisions. He spends no time reading bulletin boards, and only a little discussing possible investments with other investors. He rarely meets with company management. All this probably makes him unusually efficient compared to other investors in this book." ...Checking listing documents and articles of association? No bulletin boards? No talking to management? It ain't a bundle of laughs. But by having the discipline to work like this, with none of the fun bits, Owen has a lot of time to play golf.
  14. The book does say quite a lot about the probability that the 12 investors have been lucky. For example the first chapter, available free online, has a couple of pages on luck http://www.guythomas.org.uk/investment/freecap.php#introduction The first chapter also says "...this book is a work of observation; it makes no claim that what the investors have done is easy, or that there are simple recipes whereby anyone can do this." But none of the people in the book are newsletter writers, or trading coaches, or share tipsters or commercial authors of investment books. The first chapter also says something about this... "It would have been easy to write a book using real names about a different class of investor (or purported investor): those who are seeking publicity for investment seminars or coaching or share tips which they want to sell. But the claims of such self-promoting ‘investors’ usually do not withstand close scrutiny, and they are ultimately less interesting than the publicity-shy but genuinely successful investors in this book. " But in the end, the potential reader must make up his own mind. Nobody is forced to read the book!
  15. All but two were in the age range 44-56 at interview in 2009/10. The other 2 were in their 60s. I think this age range and upwards is inevitable if you're looking for people who have made several million as portfolio investors, ie without selling a business, inheritance, a lottery win, or very high earnings.
  16. There is one who uses technical indicators on individual stocks in conjunction with short-term newsflow. Relative strength (which is well known) and TD indicators (which are not - but Google has more). Nobody in the book makes money just from "markets in general", although the geographers (top-down investors) are closer to that. I've wondered about making money from fundamental analysis of markets in general...with ETFs everywhere maybe it is possible to always be long the cheapest obscure market in the world on simple value metrics. But I haven't tried this. The advantages of the UK for me (and most people in the book) are familiarity and time-zone. Absent these factors, I suspect the others you mention would be more attractive. But UK is better than many European countries. Eg Peter Gyllenhammar (chapter 10) invests mainly in UK despite living in Sweden.
  17. Page 233 says something about that conundrum... "Contrarianism in investment is like originality in art: all serious artists think they are original, and all serious investors think they are contrarian. But for most this is an affectation: conscious that being original or contrarian is often admired, they assure themselves and others that they are. To identify real contrarians, it helps to look at behaviour outside the investment arena: is the investor willing to hold unpopular beliefs in other fields?" ...But I am not sure about this "look at behaviour outside the investment arena" meme. Contrarianism is not quite the same as eccentricity (which the quote seems to be saying). And anyway, who cares whether you're "contrarian"? All that matters is whether you're right.
  18. The last chapter in the book focuses on what they have in common and where they’re different. The most fundamental thing they have in common is what psychologists call a future time perspective. Time perspective is about how you parcel personal experience and consciousness into a past, present and future, and how much attention you give to each. Do you think a lot about the past, and explain your lot in life by reference your past? That’s a past time perspective. Do you live mainly for the moment? You have a present time perspective. Do you spend most of your time thinking about the future? You have a future time perspective. The people in the book tended to have a strong future time perspective from an early age, long before they ever thought about investing. They weren’t all teenage money-makers (some were), but they have all lived their whole lives mainly in their own futures. This has drawbacks as well as benefits. A strong future time perspective won't make you the life and soul of any party. The people in the book don't care. They are certainly not very attached to things their millions could buy. There is a paragraph in the conclusion about this... "A common trait for all interviewees is the attitude that investment represents first and foremost a source of quiet freedom, rather than a source of ostentatious spending power. Most interviewees appear to live modest lifestyles relative to their accumulated wealth. Sushil and Nigel explicitly identified reducing wants rather than increasing assets as a way of gaining freedom. Others are less ascetic, but still seemed to lack the urge of many high earners to spend to the limits of their resources every year. This restraint in spending may be one of the mechanisms by which an investment fortune is accumulated. " As a global explanation, market efficiency is a good first approximation. But there are local inefficiencies, and if you want to make money from the markets, you need to spend most of your time thinking about them. Or put it another way, beliefs are true if they are useful. If you want to explain or understand the whole world at a high level, “markets are broadly efficient” is a good start. (If you don’t believe this, why do you believe in capitalism?) But if you want to make money from the markets, it isn't useful to focus much on this belief (except as a reminder that making money isn't easy – and why should it be?) I think it can be learnt. I’m not sure it can be taught. One common trait emphasised in the conclusion is the investors’ intellectual independence, and unusual antipathy towards the unremarkable and everyday notion of taking expert advice: they tend to have "a psychological predilection for self-reliance and figuring things out for themselves." If you’re the sort of person who needs / expects to be taught stuff in a structured way, rather than preferring to figure it out for yourself, you’re not like most of these investors. Yes, measured against the benchmark of average investor returns, portfolio investment must be largely a zero sum game. (This is not market efficiency, it’s mere arithmetic.) But as in an earlier answer, it isn’t useful to spend much time thinking about this – except as a reminder that the game isn’t easy.
  19. The Amazon price seems to change by pennies quite frequently. This is interesting. Is it demand-related (eg how many books they sold the previous day)? Or seasonal (eg raise the price at weekends / evenings?). Could be, but I think the most likely is they have a web crawler watching other vendors' prices and they aim to match the best including postage.
  20. My prior prejudices favoured smallcap stock-picking, spending many hours every day on fundamental analysis and reading bulletin boards. Surprise: some people in the book don't know much about company fundamentals. Some never look at bulletin boards. I was forced to accept that very different approaches can work. Most had a long period of little success, until they figured out something which worked. Once they got successful, they tended to stay successful. If conditions changed, they changed their approach. For example some stockpickers became moe macro traders in 2007-09. Optimism - with the implication of looking on the bright side - is not a universal trait of these investors. But it also doesn't help to be completely jaded, thinking nothing will work, it's not worth trying because markets are efficient, etc. There is a sort of optimal level of naivety.
  21. ANother thing which the autopsy on failed companies brings out is that prominent, respected and seemingly well-informed people often don't have a clue. For example in the Madoff case, here is the funds-of-fund manager Nicola Horlick in the Financial Times earlier in 2008, speaking of the 10% of her funds invested with Madoff: "He [Madoff] is someone who is very, very good at calling the US equity market," she said. She added: "This guy has managed to return 1% -1.2% per month, year after year after year."
  22. The most general lesson is that frauds rarely appear out of the blue. There are usually plenty of clues for people who look. A classic exaample was the Langbar fraud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langbar_International. Langbar was previously Crown Corporation, and its fraudulent nature was explained in exquisite detail in the first post of this thread, many months before the shares were suspended http://www.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=8724327 I'm sorry for anyone who lost money, but there was no excuse for anyone to be in Langbar. This applies to many, perhaps most, frauds.
  23. Hi, The short answer is that it probably doesn't. This is discussed a little in the book's first chapter (linked above). "Hearing that I was writing about successful investors, a sceptical friend pressed the point about luck by asking if the book would include an equivalent sample of unsuccessful investors? The short answer is that it does not, although it does include unvarnished accounts of setbacks: Peter Gyllenhammar went bust twice earlier in his investment career. But this book is a work of observation; it makes no claim that what the investors have done is easy, or that there are simple recipes whereby anyone can do this. There must also be people who have lost fortunes as private investors; there may be an interesting book which can be written about them, if they can be persuaded to tell their stories; but it is a different book to this one. " The bold is an important obstacle, to which I would add "if it is saleable to a publisher". A sensationalistic book about "great investment disasters"? Probably yes, but of limited applicability to everyday decisions. A book of miserable small-time losers making boring everyday mistakes? Less marketable. It may be easier to persuade a publisher if this first one sells well. But in principle you are right that that studying mistakes is at least as useful as studying successes. This is discussed in chapter 7 (Vernon), with an extract here http://guythomas.org.uk/blog/?e=9. I do it myself. When a stock goes spectacularly bust, read and take notes on the ADVFN thread in the week before the end. Sort of corporate autopsy.
  24. Latest intelligence on Amazon delivery: someone who previously received an email saying "estimated delivery 20 April" yesterday received an update saying "estimated delivery 11 April". So looks like the supply bottleneck has been resolved. Paperback is now £9.59 on Amazon UK. Kindle £9.11.
  25. Link to original thread detailing the concept of the book http://bit.ly/gAxGZ1
×
×
  • Create New...