לאחרונה הופצו בקהילת משקיעי הערך מכתבים של קרנות למשקיעים, עם מאפיין משותף - הם מכתבים גרועים. באחד הפוסטים הבאים אדבר על אחד מהם. משקיע ערך בשם סקוט, קיבל השראה וניסח מכתב פיקטיבי ברוח המכתבים הגרועים שהיו בסירקולציה. ברשותו אני שם כאן את המכתב הפיקטיבי שלו. בתחילה חשבתי לתרגם אותו אבל הרבה מההומור ילך לאיבוד בתרגום:
Annual Letter - Permanent Losov Capital - Ivan Losov
Dear investors,
You may have noticed that the value of your investment has fallen by roughly 50% this year (49.5% to be precise).
In this letter, I will explore my successes over the past year and give investors an insight into the Permament Losov Capital forumula. I do not ask for praise, nor do I reject it.
2017 was a tough year. We expect 2018 to be on the same level of toughness, possibly tougher - but not that tough. Lets take a look.
Theme One - Surge In Global Manufacturing
We were disappointed by the performance of our US manufacturing theme. US manufacturing has experienced a century long decline. According to our research, the industry was gradually declined 122 years YoY and it has been in recession since 1972.
For this reason, we believe the industry is positioned for a turnaround and we are going to capitalise on it. We are shorting almost every stock that isn’t US manfucturing and we are willing to suffer significant drawdowns until we are proven corrent.
We accept drawdowns are a core element to our strategy and are perfectly willing to accept the loss of your capital.
Theme Two - Incinerated Funds
Our second theme is a little obscure, however we believe the returns could be promising in the long-term
During an investment conference this year, we heard a hedge fund manager speak about the rise of cryptocurrency. To quote him directly, he said:
“I will never invest in Bitcoin. I would much prefer to set my money on fire”.
I must admit that our firm has never considered the incineration of funds to be an appropriate use of client capital, neverthless we are always on the lookout for avenues of growth in this space.
This may prove to be a growth opportunity in this space – of growth.
Theme Three - Global Shorts
We believe the most exciting investment theme is our global shorts theme. We live in an increasingly unpredictable world, however there are a few things we can accept as universal truths:
- The planet is getting warmer
- Climate change is generating hotter days
- People wear shorts on hot days.
Using a 500 year quantification of global heat-measured interfaces, we have estimated that this summer will be 2 degrees colder as a result of lots of things happening in the climate. We plan to capitalise on this opportunity and our idea is very simple. We are going to short shorts. Before we analyse our position, lets turn to our current shorts macro model.
What do we know about shorts? Shorts are a garment worn over the pelvic area, circling the waist and splitting to cover the upper part of the legs, sometimes extending down to the knees but not covering the entire length of the leg.
They do not cover the leg entirely and that is key to remember for this trade – they do not cover the leg entirely.
If global temperatures are on track to decrease by 2 degrees this year, we have every reason to believe that the purchase of shorts will be in decline this year. In this event, shorts companies will default on their loans triggering a shorts crisis. We list below the companies which we intend to shortsell:
• Shorts International
• UR Shorts
• Shorts N’ UR Phat G-Strings
We believe there are opportunities in this space – we don’t intend to waist them (pun).
Theme Four - Snapchat
Investors may remember an incident when the board placed a veto on my decision to invest almost 90% of the fund in a snapchat investment product.
I remember joking with the executive team that I would fire them as a result of this incident!
And I did - they leave tomorrow.
Investors were concerned that I was investing in a business that was earning no money and I knew nothing about. Investors also pointed to snapchat’s continuous decline in value since their IPO, telling me that snapchat would almost certainly lose money in every quarter ahead until the business was physically shutdown.
This insight proved to be absolutely correct - our fund lost a third of its value in the last three days.
Our overall performance in Q1 was -30%. This was a 15% increase from Q1 the previous year (-45%). This means we have recorded 15% growth year-on-year.
But we won’t be patting ourselves on the back just yet. Our fund prides itself on long term performance. As Mr Buffett said himself:
“Be greedy when others are thankful and thankful when others are greedy”.
Housekeeping
Investors have raised their concerns about the lack of female representation at board level. The dominance of males may be explained by the fact that I am now the only person on the board and I do not plan on hiring anyone else. Still, these figures are not good enough – there is still work to be done.
I thank you all for taking the time.
Yours in growth,
Ivan Losov
לסקוט, שניסח את המכתב יש גם פורום של השקעות ערך. אתם מוזמנים להתרשם כאן.
ענק!
השבמחק