Posts By: Geoff Gannon

Seeking Out Strange Stocks: How to Create a Value Investing Basket that MIGHT Get Decent Returns Even When the Market Falls

Someone emailed me this question:

“I know you are a stock only person.

But just for a minute I need your knowledge…I don’t look for 15% per year. I look for 6% a year for the next 5-7 years…on my money.

What would be the best/safest way to get it? Will a certain ETF, a dividend stock? SPY?  Japan ETF? India or Russia?”

I don’t know of anything that can safely guarantee you anything like 6% a year. To give you some idea, even junk bonds now yield about 5.5%.

And I wouldn’t call junk bonds safe. Their prices would fall as interest rates rose and the economy entered a recession. Both of these things will happen at some point. Will it be in the next 5-7 years? I don’t know. But, you can’t buy assets like that at today’s prices if you’re hoping to make 5-7% a year over the next 5-7 years even if the stock market does badly.

However, you can certainly find things that should return at least 5% to 7% a year over the next 5-7. It’s just that:

1) Some of them will be specific stocks – not ETFs

2) Some of them may return a lot more than 5% to 7%

3) Some of them will lose money

4) It will take a lot of work on your part to find them

5) You will need to use a basket approach

6) Actually: I’m going to recommend a “basket of baskets” approach

I don’t diversify widely. But, if you’re looking to find something that will return 5% to 7% a year over the next 5-7 years, your best bet is to own a basket of very cheap (probably obscure) stocks. If these stocks are cheap, small, obscure, illiquid, etc. – it’s less likely they will move with the overall market. Special situations (like spinoffs and other things mentioned in Joel Greenblatt’s “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius”) should also help get you closer to your goal of 5% to 7% annual returns over 5-7 years no matter what the market does.

The reason I’m starting off a discussion with “cheap, small, obscure, and illiquid stocks” is that I’m not at all confident I can find an entire stock market for you that will return 5% to 7% a year over 5-7 years given today’s starting price. Although, in a moment we will discuss the possibility of putting 20% to 40% of your portfolio in things that are either directly or indirectly “funds” rather than specific stocks. More on that later.

But, first, let’s start with the specific stocks.

If you aren’t doing a lot of intense stock picking that results in you only owning maybe 3-5 stocks at once (like me), you need a process for finding investments that is a more formulaic, “wide-net” approach.

A fund manager has to worry about putting large amounts of money to work. So, they lean in the direction of owning even more …

Working My Way Through Your Stock Write-Up Requests

I just sent out replies to everyone who requested a stock write-up. I got a lot of requests. So, it may take me several months to work through the backlog.

People have asked if I will open myself up to requests for stock write-ups again. The simple answer is: it depends on how this first batch goes. How long does it take me to do them? How much do the people who receive them like or hate the write-ups?

(And, of course, how many people actually pay me. I’m doing the write-ups up front and getting payment – only if the requester is satisfied – after I send them the write-up. We’ll see if that was a dumb idea on my part.)

If I open myself up to requests again: 1) The price will probably be higher and 2) The request window will probably be shorter. Or maybe I’ll come up with some better way to ration things so the backlog doesn’t get this big again.

For those who requested write-ups, I’m sorry that the volume of requests means I can’t promise a reasonably quick turnaround time. If your stock request is time sensitive, I may not be able to help you.

Sorry.…

How I “Screen” For Stocks – I Don’t

I get asked a lot how I screen for stocks. And the basic answer is that I don’t. I sometimes run screens, but I rarely find ideas off them.

I can rephrase the question though. When most people ask me how I screen for stocks, what they’re really asking is something more like: “How do you decide which 10-K to read next?”

In other words: “How do you come up with new names to research?”

Other Investors Tell Me What They’re Interested In

I meet about once a week with my Focused Compounding co-founder, Andrew Kuhn, to just talk stocks. We both read a specific 10-K and analyze that stock. We bring our notes, Excel sheets, etc. to a local restaurant. And then we have a cup of coffee together and take 2-3 hours to go over the idea. Recent ideas Andrew has wanted to talk about include: Hostess Brands (TWNK), Cars.com (CARS), Green Brick Partners (GRBK), and Howard Hughes (HHC). I wouldn’t have researched these stocks if Andrew hadn’t pick them as our next meeting topic.

I also talk via Skype’s text messaging system with investors around the world who I’ve never met in person.

I spend several hours a week doing all this.

But I guard my time pretty closely. If you’ve ever asked to chat with me this way – you’ve probably noticed two things: 1) I don’t talk on the phone (or do audio on Skype) with anyone no matter how nicely you ask and 2) I insist we agree on a specific stock to talk about. I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about, but I’m not interested in any sort of general discussion.

These are anti-time wasting rules I’ve learned to adopt through experience.

I Mine My Favorite Blogs for All They’re Worth

I’ve mentioned before that my favorite blogs are:

Richard Beddard’s Blog

Value and Opportunity

Clark Street Value

Kenkyo Investing

I go through all their archives and make up lists of stocks they’ve written about. Some of them also have “portfolio” type pages (Value and Opportunity, Richard Beddard) that help generate a list of stocks they’ve covered.

Now, I’ll tell you a secret. Although I love these bloggers and the way they look at things – there’s one situation where I specifically don’t read what they’ve written. It’s when I’m interested in a stock they’re writing about.

So, let’s say I’m reading Clark Street Value’s write-up on the Hamilton Beach (HBB) spin-off from NACCO (NC) or one of Richard Beddard’s articles on Howden Joinery and something in that post makes my investing antennae twitch. I stop reading the post the second I hit that line. I just go off and research the stock myself. Then – and only then – I come back and read what one of my favorite bloggers has written.

This brings up a bigger point. Once you know an investor you think is a clear thinker owns a …

The Chains of Habit

In my last post, I mentioned Twitter is a distraction most investors are better off keeping themselves clear of. I got some responses like:

“Agree (Twitter) can be (a) distraction. I’m careful who I follow, restrict my usage, save leads for later like you!”

But also:

“…if it’s a distraction for him I get it. But you can literally pick who you follow, don’t have to tweet, connect (with) other investors…”

And:

“…get Geoff’s (point) here, but Twitter has led me to some great ideas, resources, convos. Great tool if used correctly.”

All of these responses are right, of course.

Some people I’ve gone on to meet in real life have mentioned the first place they saw my name was on Twitter. It helps that my Twitter profile says I live in Plano, Texas. This has encouraged investors who live in Texas or are passing through one of Dallas’s airports to reach out to me for a face-to-face meeting. In a couple cases, good things have come from that. And I have Twitter to thank for it.

So, why don’t I think Twitter’s so great?

Part the First: Wherein Geoff Complains All the Good Playwrights have Gone to Hollywood

I started blogging on Christmas Eve 2005. Back then, I used to read a lot of value blogs. Most of them don’t exist anymore. And not enough good ones have been stared up since. Why? Twitter. Some of the best “would-be” value bloggers spend their time on Twitter instead of blogging.

I talk stock ideas with a lot of people via email, Skype, etc. You wouldn’t know the names of anyone I talk with. But some of them are good. Very good. And they know small, obscure stocks in their home regions – Benelux, Nordic countries, India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Latin America, wherever – so much better than I do or likely ever could. In the past, I’d tell them “you should start a blog.” And sometimes, they would. Now, I tell them “you should start a blog”. And they say: “If I have something to say, I can put it on Twitter.”

And they can. And in terms of visibility, I think they’ll get more out of Twitter. They’ll reach a bigger audience. But, if I can be selfish here for a second…

They are robbing me of depth.

Part the Second: Wherein Geoff Complains that All Music Ought Not to be Pop Music

They are robbing me of a considered, potentially contrarian take. Because Twitter is many things. But the one thing it is above all else is: “catchphrase”. To appear on Twitter, an investment idea has to be distilled into a single phrase. And that phrase – if it’s to be re-tweeted widely – has to be catchy.

I’m writing this post in a noisy environment. There are other people here doing other things. And they’re a distraction. So, I have on some good headphones and I have a piano version of “…

Hostess Brands (TWNK) Warrants

Note: Hostess stock is down about 8% as I write this; the warrants are down 10%. Make sure you check for an updated quote on both.

My Focused Compounding co-founder, Andrew Kuhn, recently wrote up Hostess Brands (TWNK) common stock on the member site. Today, I put up a link on my Twitter noting that the company’s CEO is leaving and the Executive Chairman (billionaire Dean Metropoulos) will assume additional duties in the interim. From these two facts, you can probably guess Andrew and I have been looking at Hostess.

That’s true. But, this post isn’t going to be a write-up of Hostess stock. It’s a good business with very strong brands (most famously Twinkies). But, it’s also highly leveraged. Hostess Brands is essentially a publicly traded LBO. And, in the past, Metropoulos has flipped the food companies he’s turned around (example: Pabst Blue Ribbon 2010-2014) fairly quickly.

The above suggests there may be two important limitations on Hostess Brands common stock:

1.       The company is so leveraged the stock may be unsafe even if the brands are safe

2.       The company may be sold within 5 years, limiting the stock’s long-term potential

Downside protection and unlimited time for your idea to work out are usually two of the biggest advantages a common stock holder has over an option holder. If, in this case, the common stock itself is a very leveraged bet and is less likely to be public in 5 years than is normal – you might want to consider buying options instead.

Or better yet: long-term warrants.

Hostess has publicly traded warrants (they trade under the ticker TWNKW – that’s TWNK with an extra “W”) that expire on November 4, 2021 (so, just over 4 years from now).

You need two warrants to get one share of common stock. So, I’ll simplify things by talking in terms of a “pair” of warrants. A pair of warrants are exercisable at $11.50 a share. However, they really must be exercised once the stock exceeds $24 a share, as you can see from this quote taken from the prospectus:

“Once the Public Warrants become exercisable, we may call the Public Warrants for redemption: 

• in whole and not in part;

• at a price of $0.01 per warrant;

• upon not less than 30 days’ prior written notice of redemption to each warrant holder; and

• if, and only if, the last reported sale price of the Class A Common Stock equals or exceeds $24.00 per share for any 20 trading days within a 30 trading day period ending on the third trading day prior to the date we send the notice of redemption to the warrant holder.”

So, if you buy 2 warrants today, what you get is: 1) 4 years during which you only need to put down the price of 2 warrants instead of the price of the common stock (as of yesterday, the common stock was over $13 a share and two warrants were priced …

Roam Free From the Value Investing Herd

Although allegedly a value investor, my own portfolio is usually idiosyncratic in two respects:

1.       The position sizes I take (right now they’re 50% / 28% / 15% / 7%) are not the position sizes well-known value investors use.

2.       The stocks I own are not owned by well-known value investors.

A lot of readers comment on point #1 (my level of portfolio concentration is by far the topic I get the most emails about). No one ever comments on point #2.

To prove to you that almost none of the stocks I own are owned by well-known value investors, I’ll use Dataroma.

Dataroma tracks the portfolios of about 60 investors. I would call most of them “value investors” and some of them “famous” in the sense that the sort of folks who read this blog would have heard of them.

Here’s my portfolio’s popularity according to Dataroma:

·         Undisclosed Position (50%): One of the investors tracked at Dataroma owns this stock. He has less than 1% of his portfolio in it.

·         Frost (28%): No investor tracked at Dataroma owns this stock.

·         BWX Technologies (15%): No investor tracked at Dataroma owns this stock.

·         Natoco (7%): This is a Japanese stock that Dataroma doesn’t track.

Basically, no famous value investor has a meaningful amount of his portfolio in any stock I own.

This is very different from almost all the stocks I get emails about. People want to talk to me about stocks that a lot of value investors own. They want to talk about stocks that you can find in portfolios over at Dataroma or GuruFocus and that you can read threads about on Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax or read write-ups about at Value Investors Club.

My favorite investing book is Joel Greenblatt’s “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius”. If I can cheat a bit, I’d say my second favorite investing book is the section of “The Snowball” that details Warren Buffett’s career from about 1950-1970.

Both books teach you the importance of doing your own work. In fact, my favorite Ben Graham quote is:

“You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.”

The key word here is “your” data and “your” reasoning. At some point, you have to go into a room alone with just the 10-K. And when you come out of that room you need an appraisal value for that stock that’s yours and yours alone.

I would say that 90% of the investors I talk to never get this far. They pick their own stocks. But, they don’t do their own work.

Nothing is going to make you a better investor faster than just picking the 10-K of a stock that’s not well-covered and coming up with an appraisal value for that stock on your own. Repeat this every week. And you’ll be a better investor in no time.

To get you started, here are …

My 4 Favorite Blogs

I get asked a lot what my favorite blogs are. I started blogging in 2005. Most of my favorite blogs are no longer active.

However, the four blogs I’d recommend right now are:

1.       Anything by Richard Beddard

2.       Value and Opportunity

3.       Clark Street Value

4.       Kenkyo Investing

You can also follow some of these authors on Twitter (but, you shouldn’t). I’m on Twitter. But, again, you shouldn’t be on Twitter.

Why?

I just wrote a post about how you need to go into a room alone with just a 10-K and sit still there for several hours.

You’re not going to do that if you can check your Twitter feed instead.

So, I have three pieces of advice about learning from bloggers:

1.       Read: Richard Beddard, Value and Opportunity, Clark Street Value, and Kenkyo Investing.

2.       Don’t follow any bloggers on Twitter (because you should delete your Twitter account if you’re serious about investing).

3.       Whenever you come across a potentially interesting blog post, print that post out and put it in a folder somewhere that you read all the way through like once a week. Don’t “browse” from one post to another and one blog to another. The way to get a lot out of any reading material is to focus on it and read it closely (like with a pen and calculator). Don’t skim.…

The Dangers of Holding on to Great Stocks

Someone emailed me a question about Activision (ATVI), a stock I put 100% of my portfolio into a little over 16 years ago (the stock went on to return 22% a year – but, of course, I didn’t hold on to it these last 16 years):

“Would it be fair to say that your returns would have been much better had you just put all your money into Activision at the time you initially bought it… and just sat on your butt until now? Let’s assume that this is a fair assessment for now.

So if we brought ourselves back to the year you bought it, early 2000s was it? If we looked at it with the models you currently possess but likely did not possess back then, could you have made a better allocation based on those models alone?”

The only “model” I can think of that would have improved my performance is not letting myself make any conscious sell decisions. In other words, just selling pieces of all the stocks I own in proportionately equal amounts to fund new purchases, never selling just to hold cash, etc.

I wrote an article discussing some of this. Overall, my sell decisions haven’t added much (if any) value to my investing record. My investment results are primarily a result of taking larger than normal positions in some stocks and then secondarily in picking the right stocks more often than I pick the wrong stocks.

With hindsight, I would have done as good or better while doing far less work if I’d just stuck with a stock like Activision that I once (16 years ago) had the conviction to put 100% of my net worth into it.

However, I think there is both: 1) A valuable truth and 2) A dangerous falsehood in this kind of thinking. Basically, what you’ve uncovered here is a good idea. But, a good idea can be taken to a bad extreme. And, I think the combination of 1) abusing hindsight and 2) going off the stock performance rather than the business performance can skew just how good and certain an idea Activision really was in September of 2001 (when I allocated 100% of my portfolio to it).

I couldn’t have foreseen that Activision would return something like 20% to 25% a year for the next 15-20 years. At the time, I thought I was able to foresee Activision could return 10% to 15% a year for the next 10-15 years though. Now, it’s true I thought this thought with enough “certainty” that I was willing to put 100% of my portfolio into the stock. But, I didn’t go “all in” on Activision believing I could make 20% to 25% a year. I did it believing I could make 10% to 15% a year (with greater confidence than I had in any other stocks).

Since 2001, Activision’s capital allocation has turned out to very good, or very lucky – or some combination of the two. Should …

Bought a New Stock: 50% Position

I bought a new stock today. This is the first buy order I’ve placed in about 2 years.

As of this moment, the new stock is just under 50% of my portfolio.

To fund this purchase, I had to:

·         Use my 30% cash balance

·         Sell one-third of my position in Frost (CFR)

·         Sell one-third of my position in BWX Technologies (BWXT).

I’ll reveal the name of this new position on the blog sometime within the next 30 days.…

My Portfolio as of October 2nd, 2017

Stock I Bought Today: 50%

Frost (CFR): 28%

BWX Technologies (BWXT): 15%

Natoco: 7%

Yes, I am now 100% invested.…