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March 16, 2010

Mining Services (Part I)


Gold is going higher, but it’s hard to find an intelligent way to gain leverage to it. Sure you can own gold, but if it more than triples from here in the next five years, I’ll be shocked. You can buy the producers, but they all have warts. Either they’re overvalued, they keep diluting investors, their mines are in countries that you’d be scared Read More
Categories: Investments
Positions Mentioned:
March 15, 2010

What Does Cheap Really Mean?


Everyone tells you that they want to buy cheap stocks. What does that mean? There are so many metrics out there: price to sales, price to book, price to earnings or cash flow. Which are the key ones? I think people get caught up too often looking at a few key metrics and they lose sight of the bigger picture. In the end, most Read More
Positions Mentioned:
March 15, 2010

Comparing 16th Century Spain To Current Conditions


In 1492, Queen Isabella turned a small speculation into one of the greatest investment decisions of all time. Following early exploratory voyages to the New World, bands of bloodthirsty Spanish marauders arrived, conquered empires, and began exporting gold back to Spain. Seemingly overnight, Spain went from backwater to the wealthiest nation in Europe. Of course, the Spanish tried setting up a colonial administration to Read More
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March 14, 2010

Didipio


We owned shares in Oceana Gold, (OGC: Canada). They had stable yet depleted mining assets in New Zealand that were clearly worth more than the whole company. They also had acquired a gold property in the Philippines named Didipio. Didipio, once built, was going to take the company to the next level. We were enamored with it, but it was going to cost AUD$154 Read More
Categories: Investments
Positions Mentioned:
March 14, 2010

Let’s Talk Risks…


Investing is pure risk. Companies can and do go bankrupt. Go to the library and look at a list of large companies from 1950—very few of them still exist. Go back another twenty years. Almost none of the companies from 1930 still exist. Your goal is to make sure that you only invest in things that will exist for at least the next few Read More
Positions Mentioned:
March 12, 2010

An Ode To The PIPE


Public Investments in Private Equities, also known as PIPEs are one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated tools that most small company investors have. The majority of small businesses don’t make it. They fail because they are undercapitalized. That is why companies go public in the first place—to access capital. Let’s say a small company is growing quickly. They need money to expand, hire Read More
Positions Mentioned:
March 12, 2010

A Short Story


Look in the Forbes 400 list. Who’s there? Entrepreneurs who built something impressive, and the kids of those visionaries. Successful investors. The occasional Royal. Not surprisingly, there are no short sellers on the list. Short selling is dangerous to your portfolio and I no longer partake. A quick history will suffice. For a decade, on average I doubled my money each year investing in Read More
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March 12, 2010

A Trip To The Science Fair…


Green energy is a trend for the future. I always like investments when you can make money and feel good about helping the world as well. However, after years of searching, I still cannot find a way to really invest in the technology. What will be the trend for the future? Even if you knew which method would be dominant, could you profit from Read More
Categories: General
Positions Mentioned:
March 12, 2010

The CEO Who Said Too Much


By now, you know that I like get to know management. When investing in smaller companies, you are really just investing in people. When you are risking your own money, you can never know enough. There’s nothing like alcohol to ferret out the truth. I was at an industry conference to learn more about a company that I owned a small position in. The Read More
Categories: Investments
Positions Mentioned: