The most important determinant of whether investors will incur opportunity cost is whether or not part of their portfolios is held in cash. Maintaining moderate cash balances or owning securities that periodically throw off appreciable cash is likely to reduce the number of forgone opportunities. —Seth Klarman, Margin of Safety I have a footnote scrawled in […]
I have another confession. I’m a bit of a bank voyeur. There was a point where I could list some odd tidbit of information on every bank on Montgomery St. in the financial district of San Francisco. Passing by the Beal Bank branch on my way to work was always a treat, knowing that it […]
I am tired of listening to managers and bloggers using the price growth of their securities as the measure of their portfolio performance. I think it feeds into even more price-centric noise we have to filter out daily. If you’re attempting to buy a company and not a stock, you should treat your investment portfolio […]
In our own little CAMELS analysis, we’ve hit a great deal of the quantitative, number crunching side of analyzing a bank like how to assess a banks earnings, assets, and liabilities and modeling how a bank would handle a difficult downturn. Now it’s time for the lighter, fuzzier side. Questions like: how can I assess […]
I wanted to take a short break from the bank analysis series because I woke up this morning ecstatic. My Morningstar Document Research trial run just started. It was like Christmas, and I was ten years old running to play with the toy I’d had my mind set on for weeks. Finding the right tool […]