Exactly. That is why I said after WWI
But sorry, it is just to heal a bit of my pain.
I am still able to deduct interest in my tax bill, but in about two years I wonāt be. So I reduced my interest payments in moving my debt from USD to CHF. OK, I own some land that covers it, but the debt rises in value compared to the USD. However, the land rised moreā¦
I have some Japanese companies in my portfolio but they did not do so great during the last weeks (where skyrocketing before) overall in CHF Iām still in green territory (well red in Japan) but most of my gains are gone. I like also the Singapore banks and was positive surprised when I saw your U11 choice in your list. I own them and even more D05 and some O39, since some time. I have to admit I chose them last year after falling in love with the Singapore skyline by night where these 3 are prominently present 
(again a very great fundamental analysis 
)
But for me some companies are more than just an investment and feel right for the future. I guess this is just me saying that I was not able yet to define the right filters and criteria to scan for companies to buy and when to sell.
Therefore, I really like to read from the more experienced guys here.
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I believe @cubanpete already responded aptly (or maybe I misread?), but one unit of something worth something is still worth one unit of something (plus some additionial value that people might accredit to an appreciation of future cash flows discounted to current value).
Currency does not matter. It is just a means of how cash flows are transferred for that unit of something/value. Plus some cash flow mechanics for book keepers.
Do you believe that real values measured in Swiss Franks are not tethered to this mechanism?
If you believe in gold ā I donāt ā think of valuing assets in gold and trading them in gold. Does the exchange course of currency XYZ versus gold change your view of how much the business is worth that you just traded?
Same same. Once I initiate trades, I intend to share them here. But Iāll opt with siding with the inexperienced crowd once I share trades. 
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Sure, it doesnāt matter which currency you chose to express the price at any given time.
But that ignores time. The change in the exchange rate disproves your initial assertion, 100 yen are no longer worth what they used to be in the other currency, much less if expressed in CHF in this case.
Thereās a misunderstanding: I believe youāre talking about spending/purchasing power, while Goofy is talking about the value of owning (edit: and owned) productive assets (the bolded bit is the āproductiveā aspect of it):
So in my opinion youāre both right, just talking about different things, because:
- If you quote a value in gold then indeedā¦gold is gold, so it doesnāt matterā¦but you canāt spend gold, and it is a non-productive asset, but also and because:
- we all need to spend fiat to live, if your USD, yen, whichever currency depreciates vs the CHF by 10%, and you spend CHF, youāre 10% poorer
That said I am not sophisticated, the above is my understanding, and currency conversations are always challenging for me!
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I noticed. I just donāt see how thatās relevant to the point I made, when you buy or sell the only thing you have is the price. Conquestador put it nicely, the counterparties to his trades wonāt care about the sentimental value of the shares (I realise value usually means something else but this example still applies because both types are subjective).
In theory, currency fluctuations cancel out over time. We donāt know what the SNB is cooking, but Switzerland has a very big margin for some currency devaluation, should we become too expensive for our neighbors. Itās also a fallacy to look at past performance and extrapolate future performance from that - maybe thee will be an event that forces us to a new era of fiscal policies, just like negative interest rates did.
The SNB seems to be the only bank who does make a sensible monetary policy here, itās well timed and not overly eager on each side. Low CHF interest is also vital for our local debt/mortgage market, so please keep it low, I like my quarterly rates cheap 
āPrice is what you pay, value is what you get.ā
ā Warren Buffett
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Do not know exactly (what some Kanton members say).
- Every company is itās own currency.
- Against the USD there was only one currency that gained (like 300%) since WWI
- And fuck, yes, we live in that country. I even have my debt in CHF since this year thanks to the side effects of removing imputed rent value from tax.
- Over time calculating CAGR the lower interest rate wins. But short time (like last year) it hurts.
Sorry, I donāt want to enter some troll conversation here. If you have to say something do it in as little words as possible. If you donāt have to say anythingā¦ just donāt!
And another one of the greats is gone: Alan Greenspan died at age 100.
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And how many trades have you executed where the price was based on value rather than current price?
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Interesting question, I answer for myself: All my trades were executed when the price was based on the current market price and when I thought the market is wrong. And often the market was wrong and I made tons of money. But sometimes the market is right and then I lose (a bit of) money.
Losing money is more important than winning some, because everybody knows how to win. And nobody in the stock market does not lose from time to time. And those losses are part, or even the cost, of doing business in the stock market. Cut the losses and let the winners run is that easy but almost all the big losers did not do that.
I think thatās pretty much the point.
Nobody knows what the true value is, the best we have are guesstimates based on a number of assumptions many of which will turn out to be false. The further out that time is, the more the value is vague, and of course those assumptions go out of the window once the next disruption hits (tariffs anyone?). Some might know what they subjectively think it is at that point in time but even that is kinda moot because all we can get is the current price, thatās why the market is always right. If the price is higher weāre glad (and maybe a little smug), otherwise we accept the seemingly bad deal (or not) and move on.
guesstimates is a nice word. 
Now time in the stock market runs different than in the rest of the world. We may know exactly what happens the next moment but have no idea what will happen in a year, 5 years or even decades. Not so in the stock market: a diversified basket of stocks will gain value over time, ever has, ever will. But we have no idea what it will make the next moments.
There are always surprises. A big surprise would be if there were no surprises. Just stay in your queue because changing queues will always make it worse. Or, as I do, let a mechanical system make all the decisions.
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Is this a trick question?
In my stock picked portfolio: all of them? That is the whole point of stock picking.
Obviously, I was not always right in paying the right price for the value that I got.
Also obviously, only time will tell. Pick your cut (in time) and you will see different results for each pick.
I am honestly not quite sure if you are trolling or if I am just too dumb to understand what you are arguing for ā¦
Hm, your further update clarifies this somewhat (only somewhat, I might add). And clearly, the further out you go on the timeline, the fuzzier it gets. Dāuh.
You would perhaps agree, though, that maybe looking at a portfolio over a sufficiently long enough period ā I would argue at least a decade ā will perhaps indicate whether you paid the right price for the value you were expecting for what you bought at the time you though the price was right for the value you got?
I believe the entire point of this topic is that some people feel they are better at guessing the true value of some particular companies than the market is. Nobody has to play this game, of course, but thatās kind of what we are discussing in this topic. 
Maybe finally: youāve offered plenty of criticism, which is welcome, of course. Do you have to offer any alternive? Please do not suggest index investing, create a separate topic instead. 
You can see my track record for my stock picks live on Google Sheets linked by @Phil_MCR (here).
You can interpret this any which way you want, obviously, but I view it as follows:
- Cash flow generated by my portfolio keeps growing
- Out of the 95 companies in this portfolio, about 80% seem to have increased in value.
For the remaining 20% seemingly under water I continue to believe that the value is better than the price. This opinion of course changes as facts change.
Not relevant for your question, but this is probably my most important metric.
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Does it gain value over time or is that just the price, mostly because itās based on a fiat currency?
When the currency is based on some mostly unchangeable thing, be that gold/silver or whatever, then the money supply canāt expand ad infinitum. Quite the contrary, an increase āhereā requires a decrease āthereā, on the global scale itās by definition a zero sum game. I think that makes price increases like the ones weāre used to impossible because the base (amount of gold) canāt be expanded at will.
I further think that the value increase of stocks, as you call it, wouldnāt have been possible under the gold standard either. It seems to me that the two realms of finance (the financial markets on the one and the pricing of physical goods on the other hand) have moved from a tight coupling to a much more loose coupling. The creation of multiple trillion-dollar companies in a few short years with just a few billions in investment doesnāt seem possible otherwise, thereās no sufficient representation of that in the physical world.
This is about stock picking, which is (interestingly) not that important. More important is how much you invest in each trade (money management) and how you add/remove/liquidate your positions (position management).
I am probably worse than anybody else in guessing the true value of a company. I use fix rules to exclude or include companies, a dummy computer could trade for me with exactly the same result. The point is being humble, cutting losses soon and letting the winners run for as long as possible (but not longer).
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As to the discussion, I think the term value is moot in the financial markets because value is a purely subjective thing (the one thing two market participants agree, and need to agree on, is the price). In a way, basing your willingness to sell on what you think is its value is like basing your willingness to sell on your purchase price, or the sentimental value of a position (perhaps itās inherited from your dear parents), or your emotional state - nobody cares about any of that other than you, the potential seller.
No, Iām definitely not going to suggest indexing, see my #521.
However used to use a mix of just that together with single stocks up until now due to a lack of a better alternative. That changed when you mentioned Fastgraphs, thanks a lot, itās a very fine tool and just what I needed. Iām working on switching my strategy to something you might call growth at a discount, but with the intent to sell when the discount has disappeared. Carnevale never mentions selling but itāll be part of what I plan for. Though I also hold other stocks, like AI.
But to be honest, I think you could just as well call it timing individual stocks(*). Thatās why steady and āpredictableā stocks are useful if not outright necessary: The price of boring stocks reliably and predictably meanders/zigzags around some middle, and as long as they keep doing that all you have to do is wait and collect the divi until they become popular again, develop momentum and move from low-priced to high-priced.
(*) Buffet says itās impossible to time the market yet part of what heās famous for is timing individual stocks, BRK trades a rather fair amount. Itās not immediately clear to me how one should be possible but not the other. But of course there are many more stocks and thus the chance to find a timeable stock in its low pricing range is far far higher.
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I see.
We disagree. Oh well.
Thatās what makes a market.
I agree, but ā¦
Sure, though what you are arguing is (IMO) risk management for the portfolio, position sizing (āposition managementā as you call it), etc.
Not that I disagree, but it is a different axis (at least for me) on how to risk capital. One is on the axis of the company / currency per se, the other is about the mix of companies / currencies you want hold for yourself.
Anyway, weāre probably in violent agreement, just picking on words and phrases, but perhaps I misunderstood all along.
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