Boston or Southern NH Area Meetup - Summer Session

[TREVNI]

Anyone interested in getting a group together sometime this summer? In May we had a decent turnout at a restaurant in Stoneham for lunch.  Depending on interest we could stay closer to Boston, or perhaps venture into NH. 

 

What sort of topics would people be interested in discussing? Specific company valuations? Research into industries / areas outside of current competencies? Trends, strategy? Another idea could be a TED talk-type meeting where people can share their knowledge on any subject, and perhaps tie that into how it's helped them with respect to investing.

[Jurgis]

I'll attend if there is interest and if I'm free/around.

[EricSchleien]

I'm in Hudson, NH and interested. Keep me posted!

[Jurgis]

This seems to have died. So let me throw out some things that I might be interested to discuss:

 

- Discussing/valuing a particular company. Unfortunately, there are not many companies that are interesting ( for me  8) ) and cheap at this time. Couple companies that might be somewhat interesting: AXP, PCP, PYPL ( if there's enough data ).

- Discussing opportunities in oil sector: what is cheap, what is not, why, etc.

 

Or we could have another lunch and just chat.

[TREVNI]

Thanks for reviving this, Jurgis.  I have a few suggestions:

 

1. Let's do an exercise that Buffett/Gates and crew have done where they pick a time period, say 1990, and see which companies were on top.  Then fast forward to today and see where those companies are and how they got there / how they fell by the wayside. 

 

1a. Or, let's invert Buffett's exercise and take companies that are on top today, and trace them back to their beginnings, seeing if there are commonalities, etc.

 

2. If - if - we can agree on one or two companies, let's all value them separately and then present to the group what that value is and how we arrived at it. 

 

3. Let's take an industry - maybe oil/gas since that's in the news - and do a risk analysis.  To be honest, not having spent much time studying it, oil/gas is outside my circle of competence at the moment.  I wouldn't mind a look at it, how it operates, key economic characteristics, determining the 3 or 4 key variables crucial to success, and of course 'what can go wrong' with oil/gas investments. 

 

Jurgis - just as an aside - I wrestle with looking at what's cheap at the moment vs. studying good companies that might eventually get cheap.  I feel there's room for both of course, though I'm drawn to the latter, namely, doing my homework in advance on companies I'd love to own at the right price.

[Carvel46]

Thanks for bumping thread Jurgis, missed it earlier.

 

I would like to attend. #1 sounds fun.

 

Also, i enjoy hearing industry experience based on someone working/following an industry for a while. Or if someone has owned a business for 10+ years. Enjoy hearing about competition, maturity cycle of business, sentiment cycles....

 

Open to other ideas mentioned also.

[Jurgis]

I'm fine with doing 1 if someone (TREVNI?) organizes it.

 

I'm fine with 2 or 3 if we can agree on a company or industry and there's more than one person (everyone?) preparing for it.

[TREVNI]

Alright, I'll attempt to take the reins here.  Let's do #1 and start with 1995.  That's 20 years - fairly recently but certainly long enough for long-term business strategy / events to play out.  Plus it's before the dot com bust so we shouldn't have too many tech companies (hopefully, I haven't looked yet).  Plus there should be a decent enough amount of information out there (again, hopefully).  My guess is we'll naturally drift into risk / industry analysis as we discuss the ways in which businesses succeeded or failed.

 

In terms of meeting space: I think a restaurant was conducive to our relatively small group.  Last time I got the distinct impression there are many vegetarians / vegans among us.  Just guessing that Outback would not be on the top of everyone's list? The thinking was there's one in Methuen right off 93 and they'd have space / the ability to accommodate our conversation.  Another option is slightly further north right into Salem, NH called Kashmir - Indian food.  http://www.kashmirindianfood.com/  It's very good and while smaller in size it might actually be ideal for us.

 

Dates: Saturday's are probably best? For lunch? Is August 15th too soon? If not maybe the 29th? Maybe I should look into one of those poll things on here...

 

 

[Jurgis]

Vegetarian here.

 

I won't vote in the poll since currently all these weekends work for me. I will also forward this to my friends, so I may have +1 or +2 depending.

 

Can you elaborate a bit what I'm supposed to prepare for the meeting? :) Look at what companies were on top (marketshare? sales?) in 1995 and where they went from there?

[TREVNI]

Jurgis - I've updated the poll to remove 8/15 (probably too close anyway) and added an "all dates are okay" and "none are okay" voting button.

 

I've also attached a list of the top 10 companies on the Fortune 500 in 1995.  The exercise basically asks: What happened to these great companies in 1995? If they're still on top, why, and what caused them to remain so? If they fell off, why, and what were the underlying causes?

 

You can find the annual list here: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1995/

[Jurgis]

Voted: all of the above (currently, things may change).

Probably have +1 joining us.