Can anyone from Ireland please tell me what's going on with my blog?
I've had about one trillion visitors from Ireland in the last few days and usually, nobody from this country comes here. So, I'm assuming that U2 or Sinead O'Connor have wrote a song about my blog.
If you're Irish, I'll tell you about a guy you've never heard of. His name his Jason Donville. And the last years have been tragic for his legacy even if he's not dead.
Let's forget medium Donville's mistakes and let's remember only major ones where there was a fraud or something really shitty like Valeant, Concordia, Patient Home Monitoring and Home Capital Group.
Now, let's take a look at Badger Daylighting. Another top pick of Donville in the past that's being attacked by Marc Cohodes recently.
Badger is going down (-23% over the last 5 days) because Cohodes said he's short and he didn't trust management.
I don't know if the attack towards Badger is right or wrong, but let's remember that Cohodes seemed to be fucking right about Concordia and Home Capital.
It hurts me because I've loved Jason and I drank his words like they were the lyrics of "Imagine". I'm really sorry to feel now like I've listened to "Ob la di Ob la da".
Blaming Donville for a pick he had years ago, since things have materially chanced is more than a stretch. It's not a company he recommended for quite some time while he was on BNN. Partly because I assume he saw that BAD's competitive advantage: their vehicles, had evaporated. Now I'm assuming he sold the position which might be giving undue credit, but that's what I noticed and I hope he's able to see that. Now Donville has picked a few companies with very questionable accounting practices which is a valid criticism of him. It's hard to see this stuff unless it's blatant but with a skeptical mindset towards what a company presents you, common sense, looking at case studies where these similar accounting tricks come up and the scuttlebutt method (finding everything about a company's operations, i.e. meet old/current employees, vendors, customers etc. Most people can't do this, but every single long/short institutional investor has the obligation imo. Phil Fisher coined it in Common Stock and Uncommon Profits). I share your sentiment regarding Donville. I liked the guy a lot, I want him to win but he really needs to do better due diligence. Buying a company with bad accounting practices once maybe twice could be bad luck or an anomaly, but multiple times is completely unforgivable (5I Research, cough cough).
RépondreSupprimerHere's Cohodes's Analysis:
http://turnoutthebadgerdaylight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/turnoutthebadgerdaylight.pdf
Donville was very successful for a long time and then seemed to fall to earth. I will always be grateful to him for empowering the DIY investor. Frankly I miss him on BNN’s Market Call. Maybe he was too successful for too long a time and got careless, maybe even sloppy in his thinking. He is only human after all. I think it’s a mistake to deify anyone and put them up on an investing pedestal. Sometimes the market can rotate away from a fund manager’s style of investing leaving him to underperform for long stretches of time.
RépondreSupprimerI did notice near the end of his run he made some veiled but disparaging remarks about some of the other investors that appear on Market Call. Maybe he got too full of himself, I don’t know. I do know that the Gods of Investing have to be soothed and appeased and it pays to remain balanced and humble no matter how well things are going for you at the time.
Correction from my last response...should read...
RépondreSupprimerI did notice near the end of his run he made some veiled but disparaging remarks about some of the picks other investors had made on Market Call.
Donville's track record as of end of April was still 2nd in Canada behind Turtle Creek (so maybe now first). I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about Jason but I've become friends with him over the past few years and he's human like the rest of us. I mirror a lot of my investment style and processes off him and he's been very generous with his time in helping me in my career. Sorry Penetrator... but he ain't the bane of your existence... he might be part of the title of your blog but the guy is still a very effective money manager. How about them markets today?...
RépondreSupprimerI don't hate Donville. I've written a lot about his good picks in the past and I still think he's a good guy.
SupprimerRecently, his past picks have turned badly.
I paint what I see just like I painted what I saw.
"Smithers, I'm beginning to think that Homer Simpson is not the brilliant tactician I thought he was."
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