Thanks to Dealbook Conference, we could listen to ideas of the most influential leaders in their own area about the theme this year “PLAYING FOR THE LONG TERM”. Guests include Al Gore, Peter Thiel, Reed Hastings, Gary Cohen, Larry Fink & James Gorman, etc. What attracts me the most are the interviews with legendary investors like Stan Drunkenmiller and Carl Icahn.
Investing
REITs （房地产投资信托）简介
This is an article I wrote in Chinese for introducing REITs investing to retail investors. I had a friend of a family member asking about income assets. I provided this as an educational piece and recommended IRC who yields 6~% and has 8~ FFO multiple currently.
If you can read Chinese, keep reading.
Strange Price Pattern of KLXI on 9/8/2015
I noticed stock KLXI had a very strange price chart today, see below chart.
There are two abnormal observations:
- There were some block activities around 10:40 AM
- After that, the price hovered over very tightly around $39 for almost the rest of the day
Such a straight line pattern usually can happens in short period, where a big buyer or seller had a large order placed at a limit price, absorbing all the liquidity on the other side when the price is coming into that person. In KLXI’s example, the stock went up from 38.5~ to 39~ in the first hour and seemed to hit a resistance level after the block/s. In other words, this pattern looks like a big seller sitting in a bull run, however I find it is very confusing. Nowadays, how could someone uses limit order in such a unsophisticated way? This is like shouting out to everyone else that I got a huge position to get out of.
I hope I could find something more from tick data.
Shoulders of Giants – Whitney Tilson’s lesson from World Acceptance Corp. Short
Short ideas are harder to implement than longs, as you need to pay interests to maintain the position. On the other hand, market can stay wrong longer than you expect, causing both loss of the position and shorting interest costs. Tilson’s story with WRLD shows how important a catalyst is for a short position. For influential active investors, if there is no catalyst, they can create one by publish some 100+ pages presentation (David Einhorn’s Green Mountain Coffee short, and Bill Ackman’s Herbalife, for example). For others, I think Tilson’s advices are very valuable: if you believe in your thesis about a short, start your position small and keep following the name, wait for a catelyst and you can double up.
Shoulders of Giants – Takeaway From Interview with Southeastern’s Josh Shores
Southeastern Asset Management is one of the most well regarded value money managers, with whom I happened to had some interaction on the trading side at work. Their orders are chunky and may take the desk weeks or even months to get in/out of a position. The order size clearly resonates with the firm’s investment approach Josh Shores mentioned in this interview conducted by The Manual of Ideas. Many products had about 20 positions which seems to be quite concentrated for firm like their size.
As a value investor, I find this transcripts very informative, here I had some thoughts and takeaways:
How Far is Too Far: Tesla’s Valuation
Since the first positive earning was posted in the most recent quarter, Tesla‘s stock price has been on a rocket, tripling from around $50 to a historical high level of $150. I’ve been following Tesla since 09, long before it even went public, because I did a valuation on it as a class project. I remember I got a 30ish price from a multi stages DCF model, which is not too far from its IPO price later. Did I buy any of it afterwards? Sadly no.
Tao of Value 