Tired of platitudes from your moron broker? This is your chance to ask real questions and get real answers from a successful hedge fund manager.
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So how does it end in Africa? Eaten by Lions? Locked up abroad? Are you safe? I think you still owe us 5 countries... What gives? Free sites still have certain responsibilities to their readers.... VBG
You try writing more than once a week while running a company and following the markets... I'm safe and warm in Ulaanbaatar. I've learned enough to know that you only criticize a government when you're safely home. There will be more Africa to come. Apologies to those who are a bit antsy for their AIC fix.
Hi Kuppy - Thank you for posting those wonderful pictures. I wonder if going back to the tundra of Mongolia will be less appetizing because of your travels?
My real question is about Andean. I have avg down some on the simple (albeit potentially flawed rationale) that an asset such as it is cannot possible get much lower in price.
Are you doing anything with your position? At what point as an investor to you simply cut your losses and move on?
Thanks in advance for a great site.
Andean really is depressing. It seems that there are a lot more issues with the company than I had thought. They just paid off an extortionary claim-jumper to at least make one of these issues go away. At this point, I wouldn't average down because there's no way to know what else will pop up. I think the ultimate outcome is that the company is sold for somewhere between 30 and 75c. With that sort of upside, I don't think it's worth buying vs. all the other opportunities out there.
I sold some near year end mainly because I wanted to realize some tax losses to offset gains in other places. However, I still own millions of shares of this thing. I guess this is something to sell on strength and use the proceeds to buy something with more forward direction. I have to admit that at only a few pennies above the cash balance, there really shouldn't be much more downside from here in the near term...Then again, it's mining.... Repeat after me, "NO MORE MINING!!"
MERC has made a bid for FBK. I was wondering what you make of this in terms of synergies. Do you beleive it is a good move for MERC, and will MERC benefit anyways if it loses out on FBK due to industry rationalization or for some other reason?
This is an industry that is due for consolidation. Everyone will win from that process.
FBK is quite cheap, but I'm not a fan of their RBK assets. I sure wish that MERC would buy back their own shares instead of FBK. My hunch is that MERC collects an $8.5 million break fee because ABH will overpay for FBK. ABH has substantially better synergies from a merger than does MERC due to sharing a pulp facility.
Kuppy--From an investment perspective you seem to have a more favorable attitude toward Zimbabwe than Mozambique. Why is that?
I'd say that I'm much more favorable towards Mozambique actually. I just cannot find a way to 'play' it from overseas. Zim has a stock exchange that's liquid enough for my purposes.
Hello Ive been reading about your travels in Africa and find them fascinating. I also have a strong interest in Africa and am thinking about visiting some countries. When you visit a country in Africa or even a place like Mongolia whom do you usually talk with. How do you contact them. Do you just show up in a country and start calling people or do you contact them beforehand.
Trying to contact people a week or 2 before usually means that you'll end up with meetings.... When you call around the day you land, nothing ever works. Start with the guys trying to sell you stuff. Stock brokers, lawyers, bankers, real estate agents. Then see if they can make some introductions. That's usually the best way that I've found to meet people.
I recently read an interesting article on permanent backwardation in gold, see attached: http://keithweiner.posterous.com/61392399. I would be interested to know if you agree with his thesis.
I can see something like this happening in an extreme scenario. Right now at least, gold isn't 'tight' I doubt we will ever see a real backwardation in gold. It's just unlikely. In a scenario like he describes, I'd guess that the futures markets just evaporate and have no term structure at all.
i have seen a massive change in data size being used since smartphones, Iphonce, etc. i came accross this company which looks like it has a technolgy ahead of the curve and sales to Big Telco's but not on anyone's rader.www.egdewaterwireless.com, can you give me your opinion of the space this company.
You're asking a tech question to the guy who couldn't set up his own email on his cell phone...?? This is too far outside my circle of competence to have any opinion. Sorry.
Kuppy, Greatly enjoy your posts. In Africa, you might also want to check Zambia. I am from there and I think Africa is becoming a great place to invest. I think many countries in Africa are going through 3 Phases - 1. Confiscate & Redistribute (with G-men taking their cut in Swiss Bank Accts). 2. Old leaders die/leave and new continue some of the same policies while the youth is educated abroad. 3) Re-birth and realization with new leaders and opportunities.
That's essentially my thesis as well. In most cases, I'm pretty bullish on Africa, though the weakness of the concept of 'rule of law' makes it a bit problematic at times. It seems that each of these countries has had to be pushed to the edge of complete collapse for steps 2 and 3 to germinate. I would point out that quite a few intelligent businesspeople we spoke with thought that South Africa was approaching its purge during this decade. I'm not saying it will happen, but I'm always highly attuned to smart people telling me things that I don't read about in the mainstream papers....
Dear Harris, I read your first article on Zim. You got it really really wrong in that article. You found an excuse for Mugabe in every way you could - if you havent lived in this region you dont have a clue how evil he is. As a person living in Southern Africa and with a lot of experience of Zim, I felt you were way way out of your depth with the stuff you wrote. Its simply wrong. I do enjoy your blog but this one was a real stinker.
I got a few other emails like this.... I agree. He’s just awful.
I tried to give as ‘balanced’ of a view as I could and not sound like just another reporter from the AP. I met with a lot of black Zimbabweans who weren’t in any way fans of his, but they also didn’t feel that he was covered correctly in the foreign press and just wasn’t as bad as portrayed. I may have been a bit more influenced by those guys than I should have been as I always tend to find non-expected views intriguing. I’ve read 3 books on the man, and had many friends in college who were from Zim. I know he’s a thug. I was also surprised by just how many guys lost everything in the inflation but still like him—and these are educated guys.
There’s a middle ground somewhere, but I probably went way too far from the complete thug side…
Kuppy Note: I should point out that I created this site so that people who are more knowlegable about a topic can correct me when I'm wrong and also offer their advice. I appreciate all the great emails I recieved about Africa in the past month. Even when people have told me I'm 100% wrong and Mugabe is pure evil (sometimes in less than nice language...).
