Hottest links for Wednesday, March 19th, the late 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. For your Wednesday afternoon reading pleasure, we’ve got a great piece on luck vs. skill, a piece on Google Trends’ predictive power, and what surely won’t be the last piece speculating on the future at Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffett bows out.
Hottest Links: Stories
Value Investing
How Good Is Jeremy Grantham’s Forecasting Record?
A reader suggested that we evaluate the stock market forecasts of Jeremy Grantham, Chairman of GMO LLC. The predictions/recommendations evaluated here extend as far back as August 2000 and come from columns in MarketWatch, CNN/Money, TheStreet.com and directly from Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly letter published by GMO. [Climateer Investing]
Emerging Markets Part 3: JSFC SISTEMA – Is A Russian Company Investible (2)?
JSFC SISTEMA (OTCMKTS:JSFCF) offers quite a lot of material for investors on their website, including some nice investor presentations, including a relatively recent one from November 2013. As with KOC HOLDINGS AS (OTCMKTS:KHOLY), I found the material surprisingly good for a Russian conglomerate. [Memyselfandioo7, Value and Opportunity]
Value Investing, the Sanjay Bakshi Way 2.0 – Part 1
After much delay owing to issues in getting mutually convenient dates, I have finally finished my interview of Prof. Sanjay Bakshi. Here is the first part of the interview. As you will find below, it’s amazing the way Prof. Bakshi has explained critical concepts in investing in a highly comprehensive yet simplified manner. [Vishal Khandelwal, Safal Niveshak]
The Future of Berkshire Hathaway Without Warren E. Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B) remains our firm’s largest holding and, while we have discussed the company in the past, several clients have asked the question, “What is the future of Berkshire Hathaway should Mr. Buffett no longer be the CEO for a variety of reasons?” [Paul Lountzis, BeyondProxy]
Funds
Who Ate Weight Watchers’s (WTW) Lunch?
Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW) has attracted a lot of attention in the past 6 months. Here is why: The stock price has declined from the $45 range to the $37 range, to $30, to $20. And, if you look further back, you will see the 2011 and early 2012 peak of $80. Terrible! [Student of Value]
You Tell Me…
In my recent public comments, I’ve been referring to the current phase of the bull market as the “acceptance phase” – in which it is widely acknowledged that we are in a bull market and bull market behavior begins to be felt outside of the markets themselves. [Joshua M Brown The Reformed Broker] Related: Josh Brown reminded us yesterday of this terrific chart from Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor in the department of global studies and geography Department at Hofstra University. [Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture]
The Copper Archipelago: InterCloud
It’s fair to say that a recent New York Observer article ably framed what every investor needs to know about a curious enterprise named InterCloud Systems Inc (NASDAQ:ICLD): its prospects are marginal and the management doubly so. [Roddy Boyd, SIRF-online]
Portfolio managers not traders
A few years ago under much more turbulent market conditions I noted that: 99% of people don’t want to trade. I don’t know whether the number is 99%, 99.5% or 90%. [Tadas Viskanta, Abnormal Returns]
Luck vs. skill: What Bill Gross and Bill Miller have in common
Pimco’s founder “The Bond King” Bill Gross once quipped that “anyone can theoretically roll 12 sevens in a row.” According to Barron’s in early 2003, he was talking in passing about the then-reigning ruler of stocks, Legg Mason Inc (NYSE:LM)’s Bill Miller, who at the time had beaten the S&P for the previous dozen years. [Lauren Silva Laughlin, Term Sheet]
Does Google Trends Predict Market Returns? A Second Look…
Using non-linear machine learning methods and a proper backtest procedure, we critically examine the claim that Google Trends can predict future price returns. [Wesley R. Gray, Turnkey Analyst]
Hottest Links: Not the Onion
Teenager expelled from school after organising mass-walkout over LACK of homework
‘We’ve had loads of different teachers and we weren’t getting enough homework so I decided to call the council and Ofsted to see if they would help me but they couldn’t.” [Yahoo! News]
