March 20, 2010

Victory For Gold


Which business am I? Would you be long or short? In 2009, I had 2.1 trillion of revenue and 3.5 trillion of expenses, for an operating loss of 1.4 trillion. For 2010, I’m predicting a small increase in revenues to 2.2 trillion while expenses stay roughly constant at 3.5 trillion. Through heroic efforts, losses will be staunched to only 1.3 trillion this year. I Read More
Categories: Investments
Positions Mentioned:
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
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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
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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
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