Author: Saj Karsan

One of the most important determinants of whether a company makes for a good long-term investment is the industry within which it operates. We’ve discussed the boom and bust nature of the housing industry, the generous...

Belzberg Technologies (BLZ) provides technology-based brokerage services to institutions and hedge funds in Canada and the United States. This is a highly cyclical business, as seen from the chart below depicting...

Charlie Munger says the most important rule in management is “Get the incentives right”. Munger argues that the power of incentives is constantly underestimated. In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt shows us how pervasive...

Charlie Munger says the most important rule in management is “Get the incentives right”. Munger argues that the power of incentives is constantly underestimated. In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt shows us how pervasive...

Value investors believe that Mr. Market’s mood swings offer them excellent opportunities to buy low and sell high. But how does an investor avoid becoming Mr. Market rather than taking advantage of him? Influence, by...

In a previous post, we saw how humans have an overconfidence bias, and how that can play havoc on financial forecast estimations. What is not immediately clear, however, is the increasing role overconfidence plays the more...

ML Macadamia Orchards (NNUT) grows and farms macadamia nuts in Hawaii. Like most producers of commodity products, its revenues are subject to wild price swings as droughts, infestations and other natural occurrences can play...

As the stock market crashed in late 2008 and early 2009, many stock options held by managements of both large and small caps were made worthless. Even today, after most stocks have rallied strongly from their lows, many stocks...

When a stock has strong earnings growth, it can result in excellent stock returns, particularly if the investor paid a conservative price for the company’s shares. What is often overlooked, however, is that earnings growth...

Value investors believe that Mr. Market’s mood swings offer them excellent opportunities to buy low and sell high. But how does an investor avoid becoming Mr. Market rather than taking advantage of him? Influence, by...