Tag Archives: investing

May 22, 2014 · 8:00 am

Transcript of 2014 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Q&A with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

Last Saturday, May 3rd, Berkshire Hathaway held in Omaha its annual shareholder meeting, attended by over 30,000 shareholders. The most expected part of that weekend is the Q&A session of the meeting, in which Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger answer to dozens of questions.

The meeting is neither televised, nor recorded or streamed. However, the financial website Motley Fool has done a terrific job publishing a transcript of the session. Find the link here and allow yourself at least a couple of hours to read through it (the Q&A session takes hours itself!). I strongly encourage the reading. As a teaser, find below some of the gems:

“No CEO looks at proxy statements and comes away thinking that I should be paid less.” Warren Buffett.

“We can’t earn same return on capital with over $300 billion market cap. Archimedes said he could move the world with a long enough lever. I wish I had his lever” Buffett

“If you are in any social organization, if you keep belching at the dinner table, you’ll be eating in the kitchen” Buffett (on Boards of Directors)

“Cash or available credit is like oxygen: you don’t notice it 99.9% of the time, but when absent, it’s the only thing you notice” Buffett

“By the standards of the rest, we over-trust. […] because we carefully selected people who should be over-trusted” Charlie Munger

“There’s something about owning a brand to educate yourself about things you might do in the future.” Buffett

“At the beginning, we knew nothing. We were stupid. If there’s any secret to Berkshire, it’s that we’re pretty good at ignorance removal.” Munger

“… if you think you understand, you’re not paying attention.” Munger

“There’s changes going on with all our businesses. We want managers to think about change, what’s going to be needed for the future” Buffett

“Being realistic when realizing your own shortcomings is important.” Buffett (on the circle of competence)

“There’s a point you start getting inverse correlation between wealth and quality of life” Buffett

“I think America made a huge mistake by letting the public school systems go to hell…” Munger

(on home mortgage market) “you had the biggest bunch of thieves & idiots running things, I’m not trusting private industry in this field” Munger

“The net utility from finance majors has been negative.” Buffett

—

Some other readings I recommend in relation to this post:

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March 6, 2014 · 8:00 am

Warren Buffett’s 2013 letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway

Last Friday (28/02/2014), Warren Buffett’s 2013 letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway [PDF, 252 KB] was released. As always, I strongly encourage you to read it (23 pages).

From this year’s letter, I wanted to bring attention to the following passages, on value creation, insurance business, intangible assets amortization, simplicity of some transactions, fundamentals of investing and a sound investing strategy.

***

On what is the focus of Warren and Charlie to create value:

“Charlie and I hope to build Berkshire’s per-share intrinsic value by (1) constantly improving the basic earning power of our many subsidiaries; (2) further increasing their earnings through bolt-on acquisitions; (3) benefiting from the growth of our investees; (4) repurchasing Berkshire shares when they are available at a meaningful discount from intrinsic value; and (5) making an occasional large acquisition. We will also try to maximize results for you by rarely, if ever, issuing Berkshire shares.”

On the keys of insurance business:

“[…] a sound insurance operation needs to adhere to four disciplines. It must (1) understand all exposures that might cause a policy to incur losses; (2) conservatively assess the likelihood of any exposure actually causing a loss and the probable cost if it does; (3) set a premium that, on average, will deliver a profit after both prospective loss costs and operating expenses are covered; and (4) be willing to walk away if the appropriate premium can’t be obtained.

[…] That old line, “The other guy is doing it, so we must as well,” spells trouble in any business, but in none more so than insurance.”

On the different views to be taken of certain intangible assets amortization no matter what accounting rules say about them:

“[…] serious investors should understand the disparate nature of intangible assets: Some truly deplete over time while others in no way lose value. With software, for example, amortization charges are very real expenses. Charges against other intangibles such as the amortization of customer relationships, however, arise through purchase-accounting rules and are clearly not real costs. GAAP accounting draws no distinction between the two types of charges. Both, that is, are recorded as expenses when earnings are calculated – even though from an investor’s viewpoint they could not be more different.

[…] Every dime of depreciation expense we report, however, is a real cost. And that’s true at almost all other companies as well. When Wall Streeters tout EBITDA as a valuation guide, button your wallet.”

On simplicity of some transactions and trust:

“I think back to August 30, 1983 – my birthday – when I went to see Mrs. B (Rose Blumkin), carrying a 1 1⁄4-page purchase proposal for NFM that I had drafted. (It’s reproduced on pages 114 – 115.) Mrs. B accepted my offer without changing a word, and we completed the deal without the involvement of investment bankers or lawyers (an experience that can only be described as heavenly). Though the company’s financial statements were unaudited, I had no worries. Mrs. B simply told me what was what, and her word was good enough for me.

[…] Aspiring business managers should look hard at the plain, but rare, attributes that produced Mrs. B’s incredible success. Students from 40 universities visit me every year, and I have them start the day with a visit to NFM. If they absorb Mrs. B’s lessons, they need none from me.”

Offer Letter for NFM (retrieved from BRK annual report [PDF, 6.5MB])

Offer Letter for NFM (retrieved from BRK 2013 annual report [PDF, 6.5MB])

On certain fundamentals of investing:

  • “You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren’t, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick “no.”
  • Focus on the future productivity of the asset you are considering. If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on. […] omniscience isn’t necessary; you only need to understand the actions you undertake.
  • If you instead focus on the prospective price change of a contemplated purchase, you are speculating. […]
  • […] I thought only of what the properties would produce and cared not at all about their daily valuations. Games are won by players who focus on the playing field – not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. […]
  • Forming macro opinions or listening to the macro or market predictions of others is a waste of time. […]”

A sound investing strategy:

“[…] The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners – neither he nor his “helpers” can do that – but should rather be to own a cross-section of businesses that in aggregate are bound to do well. A low-cost S&P 500 index fund will achieve this goal.

[…] My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) […]”

His best investment ever:

“[…] I learned most of the thoughts in this investment discussion from Ben’s book The Intelligent Investor, […]

[…] For me, the key points were laid out in what later editions labeled Chapters 8 and 20. […]

I can’t remember what I paid for that first copy of The Intelligent Investor. Whatever the cost, it would
underscore the truth of Ben’s adage: Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Of all the investments I ever
made, buying Ben’s book was the best […]”

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February 25, 2014 · 8:00 am

Our investment fund in 2013

It is 5 years now since Luca and I started investing together. This is the 4th year publishing this post in which I explain how our investments fared along the year (1). In previous years’ post I had explained how we had adopted for our personal investments the same approach mutual open-ended funds have.

Brief recap for newcomers:

As I explained last year, we had to define a net asset value per share (valor liquidativo de la participación) at the beginning of the period. This net asset value per share rises and decreases as the aggregate share prices of the stocks in the portfolio rise or decrease. When an investment fund informs about its yearly results it is referring to the performance of this net asset value per share.

Each time that there is an addition of capital (new investments, in this case by Luca or me) it is treated as an issue of new shares to ourselves. It doesn’t matter that we are the only “shareholders”. Depending on whether the net asset value has increased or decreased we are acquiring the new shares at a higher or lower price than we acquired the previous ones. Exactly as it works in a fund.

Let’s go to this years results: How did the year 2013 go? In line with 2013 good year for stock markets it wasn’t a bad one.

In 2013 we have not been very active investors, not doing many transactions nor adding lots of funds to the investments (with a wedding in sight for mid year and a baby to come we had a preference for cash). We mainly held previous investments and sold a couple of positions which already earned what we expected (2).

During 2012 I took note of the fund value about 22 times, so we could get an idea of how the fund evolved. As you may see in the graphic below, the net asset value per share at the beginning of 2013 was 44.63€ while at the end it increased to 51.03€, that is +14.34%. That was the performance of the fund in 2013 (not good enough to sell subscriptions to the fund! :-) ).

J&L investment fund performance during 2013.

J&L investment fund performance during 2013.

How does it compare with the main indexes?

  • S&P 500, +29.6% in $ terms [+23.9% in € terms, after taking into account F/X (3)] (this is the target index)
  • Dow Jones, +26.5% in $ terms [+20.9% in €]
  • NASDAQ, +38.2% in $ terms [+32.1% in €]
  • IBEX 35, +21.4% 
  • Euro Stoxx 50, +18%

The gains of the fund since its creation in January 2009 have been+66.51%, with a compounded annual gain of +10.85% (remember this always refers to the net asset value per share – marked by the first 2 positive years – and cash gains cannot be directly derived from the net asset value performance times the total assets).

Two years ago, I introduced the comparison with leading Spanish value investing fund managers from Bestinver (4). Let’s do the exercise again:

  • Bestinfond, +31.82%;
  • Bestinver Internacional, +32.54%;
  • Bestinver Bolsa, +29.72%.

All in all, 2013 has been a good year to present results, though it would had been even better if we had a bigger stake in Bestinver ;-).

I’ll keep you informed next year of this year’s results.

—–

(1) See previous posts showing 2012, 2011 and 2010 results.

(2) Unhappily among others we are not any longer shareholders of Metlife (will miss the iconic view of its landmark building in NY) and GE (will miss the good feeling when seeing a GE truck anywhere)…

(3) Since our investments account is based in the Euro zone, it is important to take into account dollar-euro exchange fluctuations for good and bad. Take a look at this website for interesting graphics, perpe. The USD gained 4.70% against the EURO in 2013 (or the EURO lost a 4.49%)

(4) Disclaimer: Since sometime in 2011, we have also positions in Bestinver, though I don’t get any fees for promoting it in the blog. (Our positions with Bestinver are excluded from the calculations of “J&L” fund to allow for clean comparisons).

NOTE: “J&L fund” numbers are pre-tax of capital gains realized, include dividends (twice taxed) and are net of transaction costs & brokerage commissions.

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February 11, 2014 · 10:00 pm

Time Value of Money

In courses about finance in the past, as part of job-related investment projections, for personal investments and as part of exercises related to posts in this blog I have discounted cash flows several times. Discounted? To those not initiated: it is about the time value of money.

Many course of finance start with the explanation of time value of money. You can find Wikipedia’s article here.

I recently came across the most descriptive and ancient (to my knowledge) explanation of the concept.

“A bird in a hand is worth two in the bush”, Aesop, 600 B.C.

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, Peter Bevelin.

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, Peter Bevelin.

I found it while reading “Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger”, by Peter Bevelin, in which the author retrieved a passage from Warren Buffett’s 2000 Letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway [PDF, 93KB, pg. 13]

Leaving aside tax factors, the formula we use for evaluating stocks and businesses is identical. Indeed, the formula for valuing all assets that are purchased for financial gain has been unchanged since it was first laid out by a very smart man in about 600 B.C. (though he wasn’t smart enough to know it was 600 B.C.).

The oracle was Aesop and his enduring, though somewhat incomplete, investment insight was “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” To flesh out this principle, you must answer only three questions. How certain are you that there are indeed birds in the bush? When will they emerge and how many will there be? What is the risk-free interest rate (which we consider to be the yield on long-term U.S. bonds)? If you can answer these three questions, you will know the maximum value of the bush ¾ and the maximum number of the birds you now possess that should be offered for it. And, of course, don’t literally think birds. Think dollars.

Aesop’s investment axiom, thus expanded and converted into dollars, is immutable. It applies to outlays for farms, oil royalties, bonds, stocks, lottery tickets, and manufacturing plants. And neither the advent of the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity nor the creation of the automobile changed the formula one iota — nor will the Internet. Just insert the correct numbers, and you can rank the attractiveness of all possible uses of capital throughout the universe.

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December 31, 2013 · 11:00 am

Summary of (my) 2013

Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2013. (1)

I defined my 2011 as a year on the run and my 2012 as a year of change, and yet 2013 brought more running and more change that either 2011 or 2012! To me 2013 will be a family year: as Luca and I got married and we got a baby, Andrea.

At the beginning of 2013 I did not set a list of objectives to be fulfilled along the year as with the wedding preparations and the coming of Andrea I was going to have plenty of occupations. However, that does not mean that it was a quiet 2013.

Getting married.

Getting married.

May 11, 2013. On that day Luca and I celebrated our wedding. That was our highlight of the first half of the year. We celebrated it close to my parents’ place, in the hills close to Madrid, on a great spring evening , surrounded by most of our relatives and friends (many of you, coming not only from all corners in Spain but from Canada, Brazil, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Switzerland…). Apart from being a very emotive day we had lots of fun.

The monday after the wedding we departed for a honeymoon around the US west coast. We took the opportunity to visit the usual suspects of the area (LA, San Francisco, Grand Canyon, Sequoia Park, Yosemite…) and the not so common places: the aircraft cemetery known as The Boneyard and the AF Flight Test Center (this required visiting 2 US Air Force bases: Davids-Monthan and Edwards), the aviation museums of Pima and Seattle, the Lowell observatory, the Boeing 787 / 777 /747 Final Assembly Lines…

Family Irastorza Van Veen.

In February we announced here that we were expecting a baby. On August 11th, Andrea was born in Toulouse (2).

She weighed 3,610 grams at birth and measured 50cm tall. Now, 4 and half months later she is over 7kg and over 63cm. She has been the highlight of the second half of the year.

Family 2.0. All these events made me slow down the blog posts production rate at some times during the year, though not for the lack of ideas or contents! Nevertheless, I managed to write about 90 posts! Plus the blog received over 50,000 visits in 2013 and surpassed the 100,000 since I started it in 2010.

On top of that, we saw how Luca went forward with her own blog, check it here.

Learning. What did I learn this year? The main job here has been to internalize on time the turn to becoming a father. Once that was assumed, I would say that, with the good health Andrea has had so far, it has been rather easy, albeit energy and time-consuming.

I would say that trickiest that I am finding is the balancing of time between family, hobbies and work. And it has been at the other side of the work-life balance, at the work, where another leap forward was required: in terms of new concepts, new position within the team and several challenges encountered. Though, with the great courage and support from Ruth and Loreto, the year has passed way smoother than one could have suspected.

Other than that, this year I did not manage to formally study neither French (booh! to myself) or Dutch (another big booh! to myself), and this is something that I will have to make up for in 2014 (otherwise I risk to be left out in conversations between wife and daughter!).

Online education: after getting started in 2012 with online courses, in 2013 I completed in Coursera platform the following 4 courses: “Energy 101” (Georgia Tech), “Model Thinking” (Uni. of Michigan), “Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health” (Uni. of Pittsburgh) and “Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within” (Uni. of Melbourne). On the down side, I did not fully complete other 3 online courses for which I obtained only about 60% of the credits, even though I enjoyed them even more than the previous ones: “Game Theory” (Stanford), “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior” (Duke) and “Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity” (Stanford), in all three cases I missed some deadlines due to being travelling without time and proper connections to complete assignments.

Reading. This year I didn’t set any objectives in terms of books due to the reasons mentioned above. Add to that that my eReader broke at the beginning of the year and I only replaced it in June and only started to use the new eReader in December (!). I have only read 7 books in 2013 (“Thinking Fast and Slow”, “Calico Joe”, “Born to Run”, “Les Cow-boys d’Airbus”, “Personal Memoirs of US Grant”, “Moneyball” and “The Art of War” for a second time). I think I will soon write a post about them.

Sports. After about 16 years, I got to practice again skiing (!), which used to be one of my favourite sports. We went with colleagues to Val Louron, Saint-Lary and Baqueira. I also got to play soccer again after about 3 years without playing… with the misfortune of getting injured (left leg adductor) just weeks prior to a marathon.

Skiing in Val Louron (France).

Running the San Diego marathon.

As you can imagine if you are a frequent reader of the blog, what I practiced often was running. In 2013 I managed to run over 2,000 kilometres, I took part in 16 races including: 3 marathons (Rome, San Diego – while on honeymoon!- and Athens), 2 half marathons (La Latina – Madrid – and Toulouse) and 4 trails of around 20km each. For the last marathon I manage to complete a training plan to the end which made me very proud and helped to beat my 10k and half personal records.

I don’t remember from whom I picked the sentence “the running shoes, always in the suitcase”, but I follow it to the point: The year 2012 caught me running in Toulouse (all kind of corners in the French south west region), Gruissan, Madrid (the day I got married included), Torrelodones, Rome, Santander, Murcia, Santa Monica, San Diego, San Francisco (Bay to Breakers race included, and along the Golden Gate bridge), Sequoia National Park, Mojave desert, Tucson, San Diego, Everett, Oakland, San Lorenzo de la Parrilla (Cuenca), Comillas (Cantabria), Athens, Wijchen… so in a way it was also a year on the run. Many of these times I have been running with friends (Jaime, Serna, Manuel, Juan, Kike, Jon, Nacho, Gon, Juan, Nervi, Pablete…), which made it even better.

Investing & helping others: with the organization of the wedding in sight, I had a cash preference for the use of savings. With the wedding gone, I will re-start looking for investment opportunities in 2014 (hopefully the stock market isn’t so hot then).  In a few weeks I will publish how our investments (made in previous years) have fared in 2013, but they have gone well (as most of the stock markets). On the charities side: this year I directed 1.1% of my net income to different NGOs and non-profits (soon I’ll make a similar contribution, check out which ones will I support this time).

Travelling. This year either with Luca, with friends or alone, I visited Santander, Murcia, United States (LA, SF, Seattle, Mojave, Flagstaff, Tucson, San Diego…), Comillas, Greece (Athens, Delphi, Meteora, Marathon), The Netherlands (Wijchen, Den Bosch)… take the case of Andrea, who with just 4 months has been 3 times in Spain, 3 times in The Netherlands and Greece (having flown 11 times already)… those were the leisure trips; the job made me go to Madrid another 20-25 times (?), that made it tiresome and difficult to combine with other things.

My first flight on-board the A400M.

My first flight on-board the A400M.

Flying: again, 2013 has been a difficult year to find slots to fly with the instructor. Due to weather conditions, work, etc., we had to cancelled several sessions. In the end I could only fly over 13 hours. However, on August, 30, I did my first solo flight!. That was another highlight of the year. During the summer time, while my parents and in-laws were visiting to see our newborn, I could take onboard my mother and father-in-law. 

On top of that, on August 29, I got to fly onboard the aircraft I work on at Airbus Military, the A400M! (yet another highlight).

Other reasons for joy in 2013 have been:

  • Family: My brother switched jobs within the same company and will soon depart again for Germany. My sister, after completing her degree in Political Sciences, pursuing a course on Energy Security in Madrid and getting yet another certificate in English, moved to Odense (Denmark) to study a Master in Energy Security (you can follow her in her blog). My mother keeps working on her massage business, and my father is now engaged with 2 or 3 NGOs spending part of is time as a pensioner teaching maths, physics, etc., to disfavoured people in Madrid.
  • Some more friends and relatives got married: Marlies, Pablo, Jose, Unai, Marlies.
  • And apart from Andrea, these newborns will share her promotion: Julia, Aaron, Mencía, Diego, Julia, Maeva…

Now it’s time to rest, celebrate and soon to plan how we want the 2014 to turn out. I believe the next year I’m going to give it a try to the processes’ approach at the time of setting goals. I have been repeating to myself for years that each year that passes is getting better than the previous one. If I see at the account above, improving 2013 seems difficult, but who am I to question that 2014 will be, again, the best year of my life!?

I wish you the same: the best for 2014, enjoy it!

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

—

(1) This post is becoming a classic of the blog (like those talking about aircraft discounts, best and worst posts, charities I support, etc). You can see my 2010, 2011 and 2012 recaps.

(2) For the avoidance of doubt: despite of being born in France and due to her parents being Dutch and Spanish, Andrea is of Spanish and Dutch nationality, not French. Quoting a work colleague: “here [on the possibility of getting French nationality at birth or not], French law protects our children…” 🙂

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January 26, 2013 · 12:00 pm

Our investment fund in 2012

It is 4 years now since Luca and I started investing together. This is the 3rd year publishing this post in which I explain how our investments fared along the year. In previous years’ post I had explained how we had adopted for our personal investments the same approach mutual open-ended funds have.

Brief recap for newcomers:

As I explained last year, we had to define a net asset value per share (valor liquidativo de la participación) at the beginning of the period. This net asset value per share rises and decreases as the aggregate share prices of the stocks in the portfolio rise or decrease. When an investment fund informs about its yearly results it is referring to the performance of this net asset value per share.

Each time that there is an addition of capital (new investments, in this case by Luca or me) it is treated as an issue of new shares to ourselves. It doesn’t matter that we are the only “shareholders”. Depending on whether the net asset value has increased or decreased we are acquiring the new shares at a higher or lower price than we acquired the previous ones. Exactly as it works in a fund.

Let’s go to this years results: How did the year 2012 go? As last year, this is going to be a humbling exercise :-).

In 2012 we have not been very active investors, not doing many transactions nor adding lots of funds to the investments (with a wedding in sight we had a preference for cash). We mainly held previous investments and sold a couple of positions which already earned what we expected (1).

During 2012 I took note of the fund value about 30 times, so we could get an idea of how the fund evolved. As you may see in the graphic below, the net asset value per share at the beginning of 2012 was 47.28€ while at the end it fell to 44.63€, that is -5.6%. This was the performance of the fund in 2012 (again not good enough to sell subscriptions to the fund! :-) ).

"J&L" investment fund 2012 performance (built in Google spreadsheet linked to Google Finance data, thanks to a friend's invaluable suggestion).

How does it compare with the main indexes?

  • S&P 500 ~ +13.41% (this is the target index)
  • Dow Jones ~ +7.26%
  • NASDAQ ~ +15.91%
  • IBEX 35 ~ -4.6% 
  • Euro Stoxx 50 ~ +13.65%

The gains of the fund since its creation in January 2009 have been+53.69%, with a compounded annual gain of +11.3% (remember this always refers to the net asset value per share – marked by the first 2 positive years – and cash gains cannot be directly derived from the net asset value performance times the total assets).

Two years ago, I introduced the comparison with leading Spanish value investing fund managers from Bestinver (2). Let’s do the exercise again:

  • Bestinfond ~ +16.52%;
  • Bestinver Internacional ~ +16.89%;
  • Bestinver Bolsa ~ +14.88%.

All in all, 2012 has been a good year to present general results, except in Spain and for us, due to some shipping and mining stocks that didn’t fare well in 2012. Let’s see how they go in the coming years.

I’ll keep you informed next year of this year’s results.

—–

(1) Unhappily we are not any longer shareholders of Pzifer, with its bluish star pill…

(2) Disclaimer: Since sometime in 2011, we have also positions in Bestinver (which we increased in 2012), though I don’t get any fees for promoting it in the blog. (Our positions with Bestinver are excluded from the calculations of “J&L” fund to allow for clean comparisons).

NOTE: “J&L fund” numbers are pre-tax of capital gains realized, include dividends (twice taxed) and are net of transaction costs & brokerage commissions.

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December 31, 2012 · 11:00 am

Summary of (my) 2012

Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2012. (1)

Seychelles

Finally engaged.

I defined 2010 as a learning year, 2011 as a year on the run… I would describe my 2012 as a year of change:

  • I proposed to Luca and we’ll getting married in May 2013.
  • Luca came to live in Toulouse together with me last September, 4 years after having left Madrid to become a lawyer in The Netherlands.
  • My boss at the beginning of the year, Werner, moved to Germany thus I started reporting to his boss. A colleague, Paula, moved to another department and I had to fill the gap for some months trying to learn a complete new field for me. Yet another colleague, Rosa, moved to another country, and I will partially take over her role… and this implies managing a small team of 3 from January 1st.

I guess that all these changes didn’t give me the stability needed to fulfil all the objectives I had set myself at the beginning of the year… but don’t think 2012 wasn’t rich of events and fun. Have a seat in the roller coaster and run with me:

Sports. I wanted to do plenty of sports… in the end I run some 1,500 kilometres. I competed in 9 races, including tonight’s San Silvestre and two marathons: Paris and Berlin. I set personal best times in marathon (Paris, 3h45′) and 10k. I was not able to do so in half marathon due to an injury in the summer. Injuries forced me to run some 300 kilometres less than in 2011.

The year 2012 caught me running in Toulouse, Paris, Berlin, Torrelodones, Madrid, Sevilla, Rijswick, Papendal, Huelva, Asturias, Gaillac… so in a way it was also a year on the run. I also played some paddle, swam some days (including at North Sea, latitude 58º…) and got started with golf!

Learning. This year was also heavy on the learning side. It could have been much heavier if I had reached all my objectives. On the job I had to learn a great deal about configuration management in Airbus and will have to continue to do so, about leading and managing teams, about A400M aircraft systems…

Off of the job:

  • I subscribed to 4 online courses from Coursera and other platforms at the beginning of the year. I kept up with Codecademy for some 2 months while could not finish any of those courses (on valuation, corporate finance, game theory and model thinking). However, at the end of the year I took on some other 3 courses from Venture Lab and this time I did complete all 3 of them!
  • Languages: I started studying Dutch at the beginning of the year and I kept up with it for some 2-3 months… 2013 will force me to re-take it. French…
  • Toastmasters: I almost didn’t attend to my club meetings. I took part in the contests, though. having good experiences in the Spring winning both speech and evaluation and not so good in Autumn, not winning any, though being able to compete also at the area level.

Reading. At the beginning of the year I wanted to read at least 15 books. I started well, but in the end I have finished just 10 while being half way through other 4. Check out “my 2012 reading list“, including just the finished ones.

Investing & helping others. I again set myself high objectives for saving and investing. This year however, the engagement changed the focus of the savings: from stock market to a preference for cash, at least until all the wedding expenses have been paid out. On the charities side: this year I directed 0.9% of my net income to different NGOs (soon I’ll make a similar contribution, check out which ones will I support this time).

Travelling. This year either with Luca, with friends or alone, I visited Monaco (flying aboard a helicopter again!), Seychelles (where I proposed to Luca!), Asturias (twice), Huelva, The Netherlands (Papendal, Rijswick), Berlin – Nürnberg – Munich, Sevilla (twice), Madrid, Scotland, Corsica, Nancy, Geneva… those were the leisure trips; the job made me go to Madrid another 20-25 times (?), that made it tiresome and difficult to combine with other things.

Javi 2.0. For another year I kept it up with the blog. I recently reached 300 posts. I’m not sure whether I’ll always write about 100 posts per year, but if life keeps getting more interesting and I’ve got the time, count on it.

Change of plans due to the bad weather in the mountains, heading south to the coastline, re-calculating the route.

Flying back from Corsica.

Flying. Last year I took on flying lessons. I was slower in this front that had wished to, though it wasn’t always easy to find time slots to fly with so many trips on weekends. I recently surpassed 20 flight hours and started with go-arounds in the airport. Without any doubt, the trip to Corsica with a colleague was the best flying experience of the year. I’ll hopefully start with solo flights at the beginning of 2013 (beware!).

Other reasons for joy…

  • It goes without saying it: Luca came to Toulouse!
  • My sister, Beatriz, completed her masters in Political Sciences. My father spent some 5 months in Bolivia working for NGO teaching children a bit of maths and who-knows-what (he is doing similar work for NGOs now in Madrid), mom kept on giving massages and Jaime had roller coaster year with the A400M!
  • Some friends and relatives got married… Fernando, Diego, Héctor, Sergio, Ceci.
  • Newborns: Clara, Lenny…

Now it’s time to rest, celebrate and soon to update the objectives setting for 2013. I believe I’ll give myself a more relaxed set of personal goals to cope with job changes, personal changes and else. One thing I am sure of: 2013 will be, again, the best year of my life!

I wish you the same: the best for 2013, enjoy it!

—

(1) This post is becoming a classic of the blog (like those talking about aircraft discounts, best and worst posts, charities I support, etc). You can see my 2010 and 2011 recaps.

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January 10, 2012 · 8:00 am

Our investment fund in 2011

Luca and I have been investing together for 3 years. Last year I wrote a post in which I explained how we had adopted for our personal investments the same approach mutual open-ended funds have.

As I explained last year, we had to define a net asset value per share (valor liquidativo de la participación) at the beginning of the period. This net asset value per share rises and decreases as the aggregate share prices of the stocks in the portfolio rise or decrease. When an investment fund informs about its yearly results it is referring to the performance of this net asset value per share.

Each time that there is an addition of capital (new investments, in this case by Luca or me) it is treated as an issue of new shares to ourselves. It doesn’t matter that we are the only “shareholders”. Depending on whether the net asset value has increased or decreased we are acquiring the new shares at a higher or lower price than we acquired the previous ones. Exactly as it works in a fund.

And why do we go through all this hassle? So we can now handily compare how our investments fare in relation to broad market indexes or specific investment funds.

How did the year 2011 go?

Let’s start with the humbling exercise :-). I had taken along the year above 50 samples, so we could get an idea of how the fund evolved. As you may see in the graphic below, the net asset value per share at the beginning of 2011 was 57.19€ while at the end it fell to 47.28€, that is -17.3%. This was the performance of the fund in 2011 (not good enough to sell subscriptions to the fund! :-)).

"J&L" investment fund 2011 performance (built in Google spreadsheet linked to Google Finance data, thanks to a friend's invaluable suggestion).

How does it compare with the main indexes?

  • S&P 500 ~ +0.07% (this is the target index)
  • Dow Jones ~ +5.5%
  • NASDAQ ~ -2.3%
  • IBEX 35 ~ -13.1% 
  • Euro Stoxx 50 ~ -18%

The gains of the fund since its creation in January 2009 have been+57.8%, with a compounded annual gain of +16.6% (remember this always refers to the net asset value per share – I will come back to this point in a future post, as cash gains or losses cannot be directly derived from the net asset value performance).

 Last year I introduced the comparison with the leading Spanish value investing fund, Bestinver (*). Let’s do the exercise again:

  • Bestinfond ~ -10.3%;
  • Bestinver Internacional ~ -10.1%;
  • Bestinver Bolsa ~ -12.7%.

All in all, 2011 hasn’t been a good year to present general results (for us, Bestinver or some indexes) however from the value investing perspective it hasn’t been that bad for buying (we performed 18 buy operations, while we only sold shares of 4 companies).

As any investment fund would do, prior to buying shares of a specific company we calculate the range in which we believe the target price shall be for us to sell the stock (and if the margin of safety is wide enough we buy). Taking the conservative values for each of the shares in our portfolio, we believe the target net asset value per share should be around 159€, thus having an estimated potential upside of about x3.3.

The latest factsheet of Bestinfond [PDF, November  2011] informed about a potential upside of x2.3. We may be optimistic; time will tell. And precisely that, time, being long-term value investors, we have plenty of :-).

I’ll keep you informed next year of this year’s results.

—

(*) Disclaimer: Since sometime in 2011, we have also positions in Bestinver, though I don’t get any fees for promoting it in the blog. (Our positions with Bestinver are excluded from the calculations of “J&L” fund to allow for clean comparisons).

NOTE: “J&L fund” numbers are pre-tax of capital gains realized, include dividends (twice taxed) and are net of transaction costs & brokerage commissions.

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December 31, 2011 · 6:00 pm

Summary of (my) 2011

Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2011 (as I already did last year).

If I then characterized 2010 as a learning year, I would say 2011 was a year on the run.

At the beginning of the year I set out my objectives for 2011, of which I have achieved 71.4% (just above my 70% target!). One of them was only to “become again a frequent runner”, for which I set up some modest steps, e.g., buy new running shoes, run 3 days before mid-January, run a 10k popular race before November, lose some 10kg by June… If there was a yearly objective which I widely met, it was this one:

Último kilómetro de los 100km de Millau 2011.

Last kilometre at the ultramarathon "100km de Millau".

  • I ran over 170 days along the year, covering over 1,800 kilometres.
  • I took part in 11 popular races, including 6 of 10km, 2 half marathons, 1 marathon (42km) and 1 ultramarathon (100km). More races and more kilometres than ever before.
  • I found myself running in Granada, Villa del Río, Madrid, Torrelodones, Luarca, Rijswijk, Wijchen, Toulouse, Luz Saint Sauveur, Chicago, Washington DC, Des Moines, Montreal…

Learning. After taking some classes in Madrid, I continued studying French and now I feel more confident when facing shop attendants :-). I had to learn and continue to learn lots of new things every day at the new job where I landed about a year ago.

I still enjoy as learning moments the print weekly issues of The Economist or the monthly issues of Scientific American. I delivered the necessary speeches to become ACB within Toastmasters (though lately I’ve missed more meetings than I should). Finally, I read a dozen books along the year (a bit less than in previous years, though some in the new eReader!), being the ones I liked the most the following: first, second and third.

Investing & helping others. I set myself a high objective of saving and investing: I overachieved it by around 50%. I once mentioned it in Twitter: the best thing behind investing is the discipline of saving that is behind it. I not only dedicated a percentage of personal income to savings but as I announced in a post at the beginning of 2010, I directed a percentage to different charities. I initially set it out to be 0.7% of my income, but after raising some funds and contributing others to charities related to the races in which I am taking part, in the end this percentage has been well over 1% in 2011.

Travelling. We together visited Montreal, Ottawa, DC, Chicago, Omaha, and several places in the south of France and throughout Spain. The moment that I liked the most was attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, no doubt.

Javi 2.0. I continued to often write in this blog with some remarkable posts. I admit that my twitter account is one of my biggest sources of information / distraction.

Sports. Apart from the running, I recently re-started playing paddle with colleagues, became a kind of fan of the rugby local team, Stade Toulousain, had to subscribe to Canal + not to miss any of Real Madrid matches while living abroad.

Other reasons for joy have been:

  • our friends Teresa & Alberto, María & Óscar, Isa & Pedro got married,
  • we welcomed the newborns Mar, Hugo, Luis and Eneko, while another of our friends is pregnant today (that we know),
  • my sister Beatriz started working as an intern; my brother Jaime continued to enjoy his job in Airbus and moved to a new apartment; my mother Fidela continued to take several courses (and to give wonderful massages) and my father Juan Bautista finally and happily retired (after working for 43 years!).
  • Luca completed all the requirements to become a full-fledged lawyer, winning some court cases in the process.

To close the year, I started taking flight lessons, pursuing another childhood dream. This will allow me to continue learning and experiencing new things!

Now it’s time to update the objectives setting for 2012. This year the exercise will be easier as I already have the methodology and the habit. If the objectives are well chosen and challenging enough, next year’s account will be even shinier.

I wish you the same: a shinier 2012, enjoy it!

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December 6, 2011 · 8:00 am

The Unwritten Laws of Finance & Investment

The Unwritten Laws of Finance and Investment, by Robert Cole.

I believe I have already mentioned at some point in the blog the ritual I have almost every time I get into an airport of going to one of the book shops to check whether I can find something to take with me.

I found “The Unwritten Laws of Finance & Investment”, by Robert Cole, at Frankfurt’s airport some months ago during a scale from Amsterdam to Toulouse.

The book is a collection of investment and finance maxims, advice, quotations, etc. It can be read in one shot (159 light pages).

If you are to read this book probably nothing of what you may find in it will be completely new to you, but the compilation and the witty style in which the “laws” are written make it an entertaining read and serve as repository where to find well established ideas.

Let me finish by quoting some passages from the laws that I enjoyed the most:

  • “I don’t want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones”, Philip Fisher.
  • It is impossible for investors to get their timing precisely right always. [I will come back to this in the future].
  • “In this business, if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten”, Peter Lynch.
  • Before you go in, look for the way out. – This one is beautifully explained with a story from Winnie-the-Pooh. [I will come back to this in the future].
  • “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die one euphoria”, Sir John Templeton. – This one reminds us to that of Warren Buffett “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”.
  • “There are huge mathematical advantages to doing nothing”, Warren Buffett (on compounding interest).
  • “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave”, the Book of Proverbs 22:7, The Bible.
  • “The practice of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker’s shop in London, than to empower a statesman to draw bills, in this manner, upon posterity”, David Hume.
  • “The four most expensive words in English language are ‘This time is different'”, Sir John Templeton. [I will come to this in the future].
  • “Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike”, Warren Buffett.

 

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