{"id":131,"date":"2012-07-30T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valueinvestorasia.com\/?p=131"},"modified":"2015-08-29T22:31:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T22:31:01","slug":"july-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/july-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
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July 2012 Issue 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An Interview with Howard Marks on Bloomberg<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>Oaktree Capital, founded by Howard Marks, manages $77 billion, investing mainly in distressed debt, real estate, and corporate debt. In this interview, Marks sets out his belief that it is impossible to get macro calls consistently right, and equally impossible to time purchases so that they are at the bottom of the market. He discusses the long-term returns currently on offer from the US real estate market and comments on the investment management process, quoting Charlie Munger: \u201cNone of this is meant to be easy and anyone who thinks it is is stupid\u201d.<\/p>\n

Keynes: an outstanding investor<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>John Arthurs of the FT (you may need to register to view it) writes an interesting overview of some work undertaken by Elroy Dimson and David Chambers to look at the superb track record of Keynes whilst investing the Kings College Endowment Fund. The article compares his track record against other investors and discusses his contrarian investment approach and his conclusion that the \u201cright method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises one thinks one knows something about\u201d.<\/p>\n

Boring is good<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>This article written by Lucy Kellway for the FT (you may need to register to view it), addresses a similar point to one which was made in an article we included in a previous edition of the Value Investor Digest that \u201cboring managers\u201d make good business leaders. We strongly believe that managers who are very focused, detail oriented and low on ego are much more likely to look after our capital sensibly.<\/p>\n

Warren Buffett interviewed in Sun Valley<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>In this interview in early July, Buffett comments on the first green shoots he is seeing in the US housing market, on flatter growth in other US businesses over the last couple of months, and a more negative trajectory in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Oracle of Boston\u201d: Seth Klarman<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>An excellent overview in the Economist of one of the investors we respect most. What is perhaps most impressive about Klarman\u2019s 30 year history of delivering c20% annual returns is that he often holds a lot of cash \u2013 currently 30% \u2013 and his mantra is to focus first and foremost on avoiding loss, preferring to be in cash and wait until he finds very high probability returns. We follow a similar approach: unless we find a sufficient margin of safety in our potential investments, we prefer to hold cash. This is the natural result of our bottom-up investment approach rather than an attempt to time markets.<\/p>\n

A new book on Benjamin Graham<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>This brief book review in the Economist introduces a new book which has been added to our reading list: \u201cThe Einstein of Money: The Life and Timeless Financial Wisdom of Benjamin Graham\u201d by Joe Carlen. The article itself provides a brief overview of the impact of this great investor \u2013 the pioneer of value investing.<\/p>\n

Commodities, Windfalls and Capital Misallocation<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span><\/strong>This article is written by an Indian value investor we know and covers a current bubble in guar, a bean which is farmed in Rajasthan \u2013 the price has risen 6 fold in under a year. The article set outs the impact of the price rise on the community and draws parallels with another agricultural bubble. The article illustrates the difficulty we have always had with businesses that are entirely dependent on commodity pricing.<\/p>\n

The London Value Investor Conference \u2013 2013<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/strong>The organisers have started working on plans for next year\u2019s event and will be announcing the date soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 2012 Issue 10   An Interview with Howard Marks on Bloomberg Oaktree Capital, founded by Howard Marks, manages $77 billion, investing mainly in distressed debt, real estate, and corporate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valueinvest.com\/hongkong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}