Overview: Last Monday, we wrote a report stating that we had gone net short in our portfolio. This was a result of the specific way the corona virus was spreading combined with concerns about the associated economic disruption. A lot has happened in the last week, and we thought it was a good time to … Read more
Overview: During the first few weeks in February, we had an interesting debate with a friend on the topic of Anthem, Inc. (ticker: ANTM), the giant health insurance company. Our friend does high-quality research, and is a great stock-picker. We’ve debated stocks for years, and while we usually come to a resolution, we were unable … Read more
Overview: Two weeks ago, we revisited our Royal Caribbean thesis in relation to our initial corona virus projections. In that piece, we acknowledged that the virus outbreak has been worse than we had expected and that we were too quick to dismiss the “breathless conspiracy theory” that the virus had been engineered in a Wuhan … Read more
Overview: This is a follow-up piece for a full report we published in November on Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (ticker: RCL). Benjamin Graham wrote about investing with a margin of safety explaining that you want to invest where the market price of a stock is trading at a substantial discount to the intrinsic value of … Read more
Overview: Last week, we updated you about the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). We considered the possibility that China was under-reporting cases, and that travel-related companies were “going to offer abysmal guidance for the first quarter”. While we continue to believe that the virus will burn itself out, because we didn’t believe that all the bad … Read more
Overview: A new virus called 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has been identified, and is spreading. The virus is similar to the SARS and bird flu viruses we’ve seen come out of Asia in the past two decades. Initial transmission was likely animal to human, and new cases of the illness in people who weren’t at … Read more
Last week Deep Knowledge Investing Food, Restaurant, and Spirits Advisor, Howard Freedland, was asked to speak to The Society of the Four Arts, in Palm Beach, Florida, about the impact of current and projected tariffs on old-world wines. While we normally focus on actionable stock ideas and timely market commentary, Howard is a 20-year veteran … Read more
Overview: Last week we wrote about the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The disease is spreading and may have changed, and we thought it was time for an update. There is speculation that the virus has mutated into a more transmittable form, but it’s unclear right now whether the virus has, or whether doctors are getting … Read more
Decision making in the financial markets is one of the few places where we can definitively assess the quality of a decision. We know to the penny how good or bad a particular idea is. Portfolio managers work very hard and often employ a large staff of analysts in order to get an edge in … Read more
Last month, we posted a detailed writeup on Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (Ticker: RCL) on SumZero. That writeup was then published in Barron’s under the title:Royal Caribbean Stock Can Gain Nearly 40%: Portfolio Manager. In both cases, readers chimed in with concerns about the free cash flow at the company. One pointed to the increase … Read more
