This is not a fundamental look at any of these stocks, but just a quick update on my personal portfolio.
Like you, I have many priorities in my life… and some of those priorities changed a bit over the last week or two, so we’re considering some real estate transactions that make it important for me to set aside a larger cash balance. As a result, I’m moving a bunch of things around in my different accounts and eliminating some positions, mostly relatively small ones that I don’t consider to be core long-term positions.
And I’ve promised to keep the Irregulars notified of my personal buy and sell decisions, so I’m letting you know about these. Don’t consider this to necessarily be a rejection of these investments, and nothing of substance has changed with any of these companies over the past couple days to my knowledge… though I have intended to take some profits from some of the gold investments I own over the past couple months, and prices were moving in the right direction as I sold them today, so that’s not an unwelcome outcome of this adjustment. Most of these shares I would prefer not to sell, all else being equal — and some I am particularly reluctant to part with at these prices — like Coral Gold, for example, which is clearly undervalued… but that’s how the positions came out in the wash this time.
Here are the changes in my equity positions this week, FYI:
Reduced Positions:
First Mining Finance (FF.V, FFMGF)
Small net adjustments as holdings are moved around to different accounts, but reduced:
Sandstorm Gold (SAND)
Facebook (FB)
Markel (MKL)
Medical Properties Trust (MPW)
Eliminated Positions:
GSV Capital (GSVC)
Crius Energy Trust (KWH-UN.TO, CRIUF)
Brazil Resources Warrants (BRI.WT, BZRSF)
Coral Gold (CLH.V, CLHRF)
Input Capital (INP.V, INPCF)
JetBlue (JBLU)
Leucadia (LUK)
Lancashire Holdings (LCSHF)
Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM)
Douglas Dynamics (PLOW)
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Are you expecting any moves on WATT in the next few days/weeks?
Yes, I expect a large move down starting tomorrow afternoon. Still holding a short position.
Hi Travis,
I am owning GSVC for some time now. It looks like they are having a bit of a rough time. I was wondering about their dividend. Originally I bought them because they had a dividend payout of over 50% in January 2016. I expected that there would be another dividend payout 2017 and would have gladly waited for that. However, as you are aware, there dividend policy somehow changed this summer, and in August, I believe, they payed out a very small dividend payment if i remember correctly.
I just was wondering If I missed something or why there dividend policy changed so completely. Perhaps this January dividend was a special dividend not necessarily to be expected every year.
Do you know anything about that?
Thanks for your great service to all of Us and good luck with your new and old investments.
That January dividend was to cover the income from the previous year, since they converted to a pass-through investment vehicle structure. They will have to pay out the majority of their income in each year as dividends, but there’s no certainty about what the dividend will be. I would expect it to be relatively small except in years when there’s some big buyout or IPO that creates a massive profit for them (assuming that such things happen, of course).
I would not have sold if I didn’t have personal changes to make, I would have held through next year either until it hit a stop-loss trigger in the low $4s or until they get bid up on animal spirits and reach NAV or a premium if people are excited about one of their portfolio companies and bid the shares up (as happened with Facebook and Twitter in previous years — the best bet on that front is probably Palantir, but you never really know what will get people excited).
Hi Travis, may I ask which insurers you hold besides Markel, and do you think any of them are at reasonable entry points ?
Down to just Markel, Berkshire and AIG warrants right now. I’m not enthusiastic about valuations at any of those, though am happy to hold. Most insurers are really dependent on either a hardening market, or on rising rates so they can earn more income from their float without much risk. The ones that have been consistently good at both underwriting and investing are the most appealing long term holds, like Markel and Berkshire and a few others, but they’re also all at pretty lofty valuations in every example I’ve researched. If I run into other ideas that are appealing and seem value priced to me, I’ll probably write about them — I’m generally fond of the p&c insurance business.
I was surprised that WATT didn’t drop more after the lack of an AAPL announcement. Oddly there are people out there who seem sure that something else major is due out soon. Normally I’d just cover here and be done with it but do you think there is more downside? Are you holding the short or have you covered too?