So, for fun, I wrote a script that grabs manager holdings and compares the portfolio since the last time a 13F was filed. This is available at places like dataroma.com but I wanted to be able to check out my own institutions that may not be superinvestors. When I wanted to diff the 13F files, I…
Tag: Y
Alleghany Annual Report 2014
Alleghany (Y) also just published their annual report for 2014. As usual, it’s a really good read. A long time ago, Dorothy Boyd said to Jerry McGuire, “You had me at ‘hello’”. Well, Alleghany had me with this: BPS grew +12.7% in 2014 compared to +13.7% for the S&P 500 index. Y noted that the…
Y So Cheap?
Alleghany (Y) announced earnings earlier this week; BPS is up +9.4% in the first six months to $451.65/share. The stock is trading at $417.70/share so is trading at around 0.92x BPS. The stock market is down 1.5% since then, so maybe less of a discount now. But it does look cheap. Interestingly, book value was…
Alleghany Annual Report 2013
Alleghany (Y) just put out their annual report for 2013, but before that let’s take a quick look at something else. Not long after my post on Alleghany’s (Y) investor day, Weston Hicks presented at a Merrill Lynch conference. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him speak so it was pretty interesting…
Alleghany Corp Investor Day
Before I start, I came across this great quote in a totally unrelated book so let me start this post with that: “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” – Hannah More, British writer/novelist (1745 – 1833) With the market tanking and people obviously wondering what…
Natural Gas Prices
This comment by Tom Mara at the Leucadia annual meeting got me really curious about this guy, Arthur Berman, a petroleum geologist who has done extensive research on shale natural gas. I think the comment was that shale gas is uneconomical under $7.00/mcf over the longer term implying that when natural gas prices get back up there,…
Alleghany – Transatlantic Merger
On November 21, Alleghany (Y) and Transatlantic (TRH) announced a merger. Since I mentioned Y here, I feel obliged to make a comment. I haven’t really ever looked at TRH in detail so I don’t know, but assuming that the folks at Y know what they’re doing (which has been my contention) then this is probably a…
Alleghany Corp (Y)
To continue the boring pattern of featuring companies with great track records being offered by Mr. Market at a discount, here is Alleghany Corp (Y), an insurance company/conglomerate. This currently looks like an insurance company but acts more like a conglomerate. This is one of those companies where the annual reports are very well written…