Hottest links for Saturday – Sunday, February 22nd – 23rd, the weekend edition. Get our free daily newsletter and never miss a single linkfest. Also, now if you sign up you will get our new e-book on value investing.
Top stories for today are included below. Remember that ‘hedge fund’ which was not accepting bitcoins? Sounded a bit strange right? Well Roddy Boyd dug up a treasure trove of information about the supposed hedge fund and the background of the founder. On a related note, you can now sign up for Fantex!! As always, we warn readers caveat emperor; Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) paid a lot of money for WhatsApp, so what did it get? Well at least a three hour outage so far; What type of investor are you? Jason Zweig has a superb article on value investor ‘dna’; Warning bells flash as individual investors start day trading derivatives on their smartphones during dates; That and much more in today’s hottest links.
Hottest Links: Stories
How To Effortlessly Earn A Riskless 90% On Your Bitcoins
Let’s discuss an ambitious African immigrant named Obawtaye Folayan who appears to have a very big American dream but an unfortunate approach to getting there. [Roddy Boyd, SIRF]
G Asset Management Makes 2 Offers for Part of Barnes & Noble (BKS)
G Asset Management put out a press release announcing 2 different offers for different parts of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS): …a proposal to acquire 51% of Barnes & Noble, Inc., valuing the company at $22 per share, a ~30% premium to the current market price. [Geoff Gannon, Gannon and Hoang on Investing]
Humility and knowledge
In most companies the person who knows the most is seated in a corner and quickly approaching retirement. They’ve accumulated their knowledge through years of experience. [Nate Tobik, Oddball Stocks]
Signup For Fantex
Fantex, Inc. creates a unique brand building platform for athletes to increase the reach and engagement of their brand. Fantex, Inc. signs a contract with an athlete to acquire a minority interest in their brand and builds a plan with a goal to increase its value, leveraging Fantex, Inc.’s marketing expertise.[Fantex]
Value Investing
The ABCs of Investors’ DNA
Some people become value investors. Some might be born that way. Consider Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett’s mentor and the author of “Security Analysis” and “The Intelligent Investor.” [The Intelligent Investor, The Wall Street Journal]
How To Think
“Most of the major academic studies of chess miss much that is essential to the way that chess-player thinks and feels,” Jonathan Rowson wrote in his book The Seven Deadly Chess Sins. [Shane Parrish, Farnam Street]
Outcome or process — what investment focus succeeds over time?
In the course of a conversation, you learn about an acquaintance or colleague who made an unusually successful investment. For whatever reason, they put capital at risk into XYZ and the returns were extraordinary — far more than what is typical for your investment returns. [Barry Ritholtz, Washington Post]
Funds
Here Are The Asset Classes Hedge Funds Are Loving And Hating Right Now
The CFTC just released weekly Commitments of Traders data, which break down positioning in the futures markets for various asset classes as of February 18. [Matthew Boesler, Business Insider]
10 Macro Game Changers, Illustrated
Well-executed infographic from Euler Hermes on the challenges and opportunities the world faces in 2014… [Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker]
Why Investors in Herbalife and Nu Skin Should Read This Paper
A key issue in the debates on Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:NUS) and others is how much compensation comes from internal consumption vs. genuine external sales. [Herb Greenberg, Herb on TheStreet]
WhatsApp down for 3 hrs, 3 days after Facebook deal; service restored today
WhatsApp, the rapidly expanding mobile messaging app, suffered an outage for more than three hours on Saturday, frustrating users just days after its acquisition by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) for $19 billion. [Reuters, Hindustan Times]
I am out of tune with these times
Yesterday Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) did an acquisition that makes no sense to me. I had previously – on Twitter – questioned the $900 million paid by Rakuten (in Japan) for Viber. But that price looks modest compared to the price paid for the (much better) WhatsApp. [John Hempton, Bronte Capital] No breaking news here, the acquisition of Whatsapp by Facebook for 19 bn USD has been widely commented already many times. [Memyselfandi007, Value And Opportunity]
Small Investors Jump Back Into the Trading Game
After a 15-year period of volatility marked by the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis, individuals are swelling trading volume at firms such as E TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ETFC) and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE:AMTD)—and stoking worries that investors may be piling in when stocks are at their peak. [Joe Light and Julie Steinberg, The Wall Street Journal]
Hottest Links: Not The Onion
NZ Prime Minister confirms he’s ‘not an alien’
Auckland man Shane Warbrooke made a freedom of information request asking for: “Any evidence to disprove the theory that Mr John Key is in fact a David Icke-style shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement.” [NineMSN]
