Inelegant Investor is a collection of real-world investing observations, focused on the edge cases that don’t show up in textbooks — restructurings, CVRs, spinoffs, and the strange outcomes that accumulate in actual portfolios. And whatever else interests me about investing. Investing isn't always pretty, it's usually quite inelegant.
Recent Series: The Portfolio Graveyard
It’s July 23, 2000. The Bubble has burst, though bottoms haven’t been reached. The World Trade Center still stands tall. Enron is one of the world’s most respected companies. The New York Times declares Hank Greenberg a better investor than Warren Buffett. As the article points out, over the previous 5 and 10 year periods, AIG had substantially… Read More »
We are pleased to welcome you to the 175th Edition of the Festival Of Stocks. The Festival Of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to featuring posts on a variety of stock market topics. Though the Inelegant Investor has published only sporadically of late, we were a frequent participant in early Festivals Of Stocks, including the first edition.… Read More »
Image via Wikipedia Steak N Shake(SNS) has posted the annual letter from Chairman Sardar Biglari. Biglari has made great progress with the company since taking over, swinging from a loss of $23 million in 2008 to a profit of $6 million in 2009. The capital structure has been greatly strengthened. After beginning the year with just $6.9 million… Read More »
Image by Getty Images via Daylife For years, Warren Buffett has spoken of searching for an elephant of a transaction. Berkshire Hathaway’s(BRKA,BRKB) announcement today that it will be acquiring Burlington Northern Santa Fe(BNI) in a $44 Billion deal represents the final capture of an elephant that has been in Buffet’s sights for several years as Berkshire has consistently… Read More »
The Steak N Shake Company(SNS) filed an 8-k this afternoon disclosing that it has amended its credit agreement to “permit the Company to use up to $10.0 million of surplus cash to make investments of any lawful nature, so long as no event of default exists.” In addition, the Company has granted “Chief Executive Officer, Sardar Biglari, full… Read More »
Image via Wikipedia In February 2007(sadly one of our more recent posts), we wrote about Matrixx(MTXX) Initiatives. At the time, Jove Partners had filed a 13D urging a sale of the company. Jove noted at the time that the company’s single brand would benefit from the scale of being part of a larger company. At the time, we… Read More »
Image via Wikipedia What an inopportune time to be away! What more inelegant time has there been for investors than the last 16 months? In our absence, many icons of the American economy have been transformed from gleaming towers of prosperity to piles of twisted, rusting rubble. Yet amongst the ashes, there are diamonds aplenty. Now is the… Read More »
From the description of Disney-MGM Studios’ Twilight Zone Tower Of Terror: Board a phantom elevator, shoot up 13 stories and brace yourself for a thrilling plummet… but beware! The experience just got scarier. You rocket back up, only to plummet down yet again. You dare to ride once more, but wait! That’s not what happened before. That’s right,… Read More »
Last Friday, Geoff Gannon wrote briefly about his positive opinion on Hanes Brands(HBI). Gannon noted “I’ve yet to find someone who agrees with me on Hanes. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.” Well, I’m not sure if it’s a good sign or a bad sign either, but I’ll throw my hat in… Read More »
“Gluttony is good”, a modern Gordon Gekko might have said, in reference to the triumphant return of the coveted mustard belt to America. Joey Chestnut, paying no heed to rising beef prices, managed to consume, quite conspicuously, 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Like many former high-flyers, defending six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi suffered from a late ‘reversal’, and… Read More »