Insnurance companies According to some guy from Columbia… In my final article on this series of whether companies in certain sectors can be bought based on price to book ratio, I examine insurance companies. Recall that my original thesis is that, according to some well known financier whose name I forget, banks have assets that […]
As a followup to my previous article where we discovered that at least in 2024 the naive strategy of buying banks based solely on price to book ratio did not perform as advertised. However, the Value Line from which I drew my sample also treats Midwestern banks as a separate category of bank, for reasons […]
A wise financier whose name escapes me once wrote that the trouble with banks is that they have assets that are impossible to value, and the trouble with insurance companies is that they have assets and liabilities that are impossible to value. Given the current situation with insurance companies and natural disasters, this is a […]
BlueLinx is a construction supplier with massive cash reserves and it offers attractive prospects despite the weak housing construction market
The market has been going through some troubling times lately, and the financial sites are full of doomsday articles (although after a few quiet trading days in January, people seem to be in a much better mood). I can readily understand the desire to avoid making bold long moves in the market, as we may […]
Catchy title, no? Anyway, between the government shutdown and the debt crisis, I’ve found looking at investments rather dispiriting, as the ensuing chaos in the markets would override even the soundest of analysis. So, I’ve been keeping my head down by catching up on my reading at least until this all blows over. One of […]
In my last article discussing Black Box, part of my positive opinion of the company was its performance in 2009. This led me to consider how far back into a company’s earnings history we should go. Ben Graham in his Security Analysis recommends at least a decade, but that runs into the situation that a […]
As you may know, my favorite metric for evaluation a company is its ability to generate free cash flows. However, it is dangerous to focus entirely on that issue to the exclusion of other important aspects of a company. I will explore this issue by examining Lodgenet (LNET), a company with free cash flow through […]
Why fructivore? Fructivore means fruit-eater,and when investing the wisest approach is to pick the low-hanging fruit. In other words, go for the easy money, the instruments that are on sale, and leave the rest on the table. Of course, that is the goal of any risk-averse investor, but a goal does not equate to a […]