biaggio Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 Great discussion, sounds like a good exercise to go through. I'm a bit scared to undertake it, mostly because I fear what it might reveal. I think the end result will probably result in some sort of strategy clarification for me. So how do you measure, only sold positions? I spent a few minutes counting up all my purchases over the last several years...short term(less than 3 years) it is scary (less than 50%) ...for holdings >3 years doing better ~80% , I counted those holding held for 3 years or longer (those up vs those down) + those I sold...if I sold (does not matter how long I held it for) at higher price I scored it as a "success" if I sold it as a loss I subtracted a success or hit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Hester Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 I spent a few minutes counting up all my purchases over the last several years...short term(less than 3 years) it is scary (less than 50%) ...for holdings >3 years doing better ~80% , I counted those holding held for 3 years or longer (those up vs those down) + those I sold...if I sold (does not matter how long I held it for) at higher price I scored it as a "success" if I sold it as a loss I subtracted a success or hit I find that interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alwaysinvert Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 In one of the annual letters Buffett mentions 98% success rate for investments. I seem to remember reading this too, but could you or anyone else point to what year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uccmal Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Biaggio, maybe you sold your losers, because they were losers? That is what I normally do. A better measure would be to estimate the success rate off all of the investments excluding time held, or better yet, total returns. There is ,ore than one way to skin a cat. On topic, I saw that John Paulson has added to his Bac position as well during q3. The really exciting thing for me is that all of them paid much more than I did, especially Berkowitz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrB Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Biaggio, May I suggest that in its simplest form I would just calculate the hit rate using 1 and 0. If you only had one purchase and it was out of the money then your hit rate was 0, not -1 (or -100%). Once you have played around with the basic numbers you can start using -1 etc. Also, I prefer to use only my initial purchase, because it then enables me to figure out whether I went in to early. That is also what your numbers seem to indicate. If your short term numbers are worse than the long term it seems to indicate you are going in way early. If you refine the numbers you can actually work out your average time frame for going in early and it almost looks like it might be a year or so in your case. I had a similar issue and one of the benefits in my case was as soon as I faced the facts of my own numbers it immediately had an effect on my behavior. I found it a lot easier to just hold off, do more work and put off the initial buy decision. It almost sounds like you are already feeling the benefit of the process. As I said before. I think any serious investor should know their number. Not knowing your hit rate is like playing golf and not wanting to know your handicap. Makes no sense to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beerbaron Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Bank of America Declares Quarterly Dividends http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Ffinance%2Fcompany_news%3Fq%3DNYSE%3ABAC%26output%3Drss Why oh why are they wasting any money in dividends if they are also considering issuing shares at 1/4 of BV? BeerBaron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 just the $0.01 like it is since 3 years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beerbaron Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Yes, they should not spend a penny (literally) on dividend, they probably need all the capital they could get their hands on. BeerBaron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ERICOPOLY Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Yes, they should not spend a penny (literally) on dividend, they probably need all the capital they could get their hands on. BeerBaron Breast augmentation is sometimes better than acting lessons? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
biaggio Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Good points UCCMAL & MR.B. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PLynchJr Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Fairholme just posted a presentation on BAC. http://www.fairholmefunds.com/pdf/fairholme_stays_the_course.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Fairholme just posted a presentation on BAC. http://www.fairholmefunds.com/pdf/fairholme_stays_the_course.pdf Nice presentation. I love the slide that compares FAIRX to "our heroes" -- BRK and LUK. Thanks for posting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beerbaron Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Breast augmentation is sometimes better than acting lessons? Yes, sadly some people look at div yield as a metric... if only those poor Yellow Media shareholder would have looked at the cash flow instead of the div yield. 0.01$ dividend is so useless that they should cut it to 0.00$ . At least it would send the message that the problem is understood by management. BeerBaron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlanMaestro Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 I hope so. I don't think there was anything wrong with his original investment philosophy. He got hit hard in 2008 because of the general market correction, correlated risk and not enough cash. The actual 10 stock portfolio wasn't the problem. You can have 20 stocks and still watch your portfolio go down if you don't have enough cash or there is correlated risk. Cheers! Absolutely agree. His original philosophy was right, his picks were wrong. Too many cyclicals and small caps in his portfolio. Wipeouts are the consequence of bad picking not diversification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alwaysinvert Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 I hope so. I don't think there was anything wrong with his original investment philosophy. He got hit hard in 2008 because of the general market correction, correlated risk and not enough cash. The actual 10 stock portfolio wasn't the problem. You can have 20 stocks and still watch your portfolio go down if you don't have enough cash or there is correlated risk. Cheers! Absolutely agree. His original philosophy was right, his picks were wrong. Too many cyclicals and small caps in his portfolio in his portfolio. Wipeouts are the consequence of bad picking not diversification. I run a hugely concentrated portfolio myself, but I have to say that I find that a gross oversimplification. The size of the graveyard is unknown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlanMaestro Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 I run a hugely concentrated portfolio myself, but I have to say that I find that a gross oversimplification. The size of the graveyard is unknown. isn't this the whole point of rules #1 and #2? delta financial, compucredit, cryptologic, RAIL, HNR, no cash, were risky plays. And while other picks were OK (PNCL, WCG) the market is relentless when you are bleeding as for example Berkowitz today (w/o wipeouts). And despite all that the guy is back. Can you be more specific with the graveyard comment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
berkshiremystery Posted November 22, 2011 Author Share Posted November 22, 2011 Here's just a minor off topic note about BAC: ;) Malcolm Gladwell becomes BAC’s new spokesman. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/malcolm-gladwell-bank-of-americas-new-spokesman/2011/11/16/gIQAAE0ASN_blog.html Malcolm Gladwell, is a bestselling author, a Canadian journalist, and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He has written 4 books, "The Tipping Point (2000)", "Blink (2005) ", "Outliers (2008)", and "What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009)". All four books were New York Times Bestsellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrB Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 Absolutely agree. His original philosophy was right, his picks were wrong. Too many cyclicals and small caps in his portfolio in his portfolio. Wipeouts are the consequence of bad picking not diversification. I run a hugely concentrated portfolio myself, but I have to say that I find that a gross oversimplification. The size of the graveyard is unknown. At the risk of misinterpreting what you said, my point about knowing your hit rate underscores that your hit rate should be known. In other words, you should know the bodies in your graveyard and how they got there. You can then also assume that I do think picking is more important than diversification and with picking downside is more important than upside. When I looked at the stocks PM listed my initial reaction was to recognize a mistake that I've made; getting seduced by the upside at the expense of not focusing enough on the downside. Not being intimately aware of the downside has led to two mistakes for me in the past; I either got killed or got shaken out when the stock got hammered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookie71 Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 WSJ on BAC http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/11320384/1/bank-of-america-may-face-regulatory-warnings.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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