http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summaryWed, 12 Jul 2006 21:01:33 +0000http://www.brickfinancial.com/brickblog.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)15http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114798178716732215Thu, 18 May 2006 19:49:00 +00002006-05-20T08:22:45.556-04:00Ebay’s current price has sparked me to consider a few things. First, am I “correct” on eBay? My general thesis on the company is that it is an undervalued market leader. The other question that comes to mind stems from the first one. If I am correct, why am I correct and the market wrong? It certainly isn’t that I possess some supernatural intellect or clairvoyance. (Trust me.) All I know is thathttp://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/05/ebay-dollar-for-50.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114722253730254298Wed, 10 May 2006 00:40:00 +00002006-05-09T20:55:37.310-04:00I had a thought. If I had a (figurative) gun to my head and needed to answer this question... Whose business moat is larger and more treacherous to cross? Google's paid search and Ebay's online auctions? ...what would my answer be? I won't tell you what my answer would be (hint: I and my clients own shares of Ebay) but, I think the knee-jerk answer is probably the correct answer in this case.http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/05/quick-google-or-ebay.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114669793123863827Wed, 03 May 2006 23:08:00 +00002006-05-03T19:12:11.246-04:00I came across a nice synopsis of PACCAR (PCAR) on the Seeking Alpha blog. PCAR is one of our holdings but hasn't done much lately. The article is worth a read.http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/05/paccar-yawn-just-another-boring.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114666925675949399Wed, 03 May 2006 15:14:00 +00002006-05-03T17:49:49.203-04:00I saw a great movie this past weekend. Akeelah and the Bee, is about an gifted 11 year-old whom finds her way to the National Spelling Bee Championship. Along the way she finds that she has people in her corner who help her conquer her demons and want to see her succeed. I liked the movie because it addressed a little known phenomenon in the African-American community in which academic http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/05/please-dont-see-akeelah-and-bee.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114661822011460512Wed, 03 May 2006 01:00:00 +00002006-05-02T21:03:40.126-04:00A sound selling discipline is an oft-neglected part of a sound investing approach. A sell discipline will get the investor out of situations that show little promise and allow him to be available for situations that do. One of the sell criteria we employ at Brick Financial imparts us to sell a stock if “we have made a mistake in calculation or judgment.” Last August the clients of Brick Financialhttp://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/05/right-about-being-wrong-on-jetblue.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114607540433941419Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:16:00 +00002006-04-26T22:52:31.626-04:00Last week I wrote that I would be running a few companies through Phil Town’s criteria for Rule #1 investing. To recap, Town suggests that the way to adhere to Buffett’s first rule is to look at five different things about a company. They are: return on invested capital (ROIC), revenue (sales) growth, earnings per share (EPS) growth, equity (or book value) growth, and free-cash-flow (FCF) http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/wal-mart-vs-target-rule-1.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114580564355469245Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:12:00 +00002006-04-26T19:40:50.140-04:00Did you know that for every 100 millionaires who don't "budget", there are about 120 that do. More than half of the nonbudgeters invest first and spend the balance of their income. Many call this the "pay yourself first" strategy. These people invest a minimum of 15 percent of their annual realized income before they pay the sellers of their food, clothers, homes, credit and the like. When http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/inside-budget-of-millionaire.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114566406154898261Fri, 21 Apr 2006 23:22:00 +00002006-04-26T10:30:48.413-04:00The following commmentary is an excerpt from Brick Financial Management's February 2006 client letter: "...The Zealot answer to the problem would be to create a portfolio set with some fixed percentage in stocks, some in bonds and some in cash without regard for valuation. This would be executed through some investment combination in index and actively managed mutual funds. The practice commonlyhttp://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/zealots-have-it-wrong.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114606023951858719Wed, 26 Apr 2006 14:03:00 +00002006-04-26T10:23:23.000-04:00I cannot see how the unequal representation which is given to masses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. -- Edmund Burke, "Reflections on The Revolution In France" http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/wealth-and-commonwealth.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114538656591268840Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:54:00 +00002006-04-18T16:51:31.386-04:00A friend passed a book on to me this past weekend. Phil Town’s Rule #1. For the uninitiated, “Rule #1” is a reference to Warren Buffett’s first rule of investing which is “Don’t lose money”. Using Buffett’s rule (and investment process) Town transformed himself from a beef jerky eating, river canoeing, rattle snake wrestling adventure tour guide to a book writing, public speaking, millionaire http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/rule-1.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/114537628770721045Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:47:00 +00002006-04-18T12:09:53.876-04:00The following commentary is taken directly from Brick Financial Management's November 2005 letter to clients. The Little Book Instead of getting into the details of our portfolios this month, we thought we’d change things up a bit with this letter. Recently, a neat little book hit bookstores. Written by hedge fund manager, Joel Greenblatt, The Little Book That Beats the Market explains value http://www.brickfinancial.com/2006/04/little-book-that-makes-you-rich.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/113029183186962670Mon, 24 Oct 2005 21:53:00 +00002005-12-20T15:37:56.643-05:00Those of you who have read our Client Letters and are familiar with our services know that we are proponents of concentrated portfolios. Of course this belief runs contrary to most of the discourse that exists in the investing public today. Most investors and investment professionals are devout followers of modern-portfolio-theory (MPT) and the efficient-market-hypothesis (EMH). MPT holds that http://www.brickfinancial.com/2005/10/concentrate-your-bets.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/113044257208483647Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:49:00 +00002005-10-28T08:03:15.773-04:00A friend of mine was shopping at a local garage sale and came across a book for 25¢. She picked up the book and after reading the title, “The Money Masters”, quickly determined that she wouldn’t have much interest in it. A gift-giver by nature, she thought that at 25¢ she didn’t have much to loose by purchasing it and further thought that she might offer it as a grab-bag gift for the upcoming http://www.brickfinancial.com/2005/10/qualities-of-successful-investors.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/113004014996085038Sun, 23 Oct 2005 03:55:00 +00002005-10-23T00:02:29.966-04:00Seems I'm not alone in the my feeling on bottled water. An article in the New York Times points out that: "Ounce for ounce, it costs more than gasoline...depending on the brand, it costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water. Globally, bottled water is now a $46 billion industry. Why has it become so popular? It cannot be the taste, since most people cannot tell the difference in a blind http://www.brickfinancial.com/2005/10/bottled-water-redux.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14495537/posts/summary/112908555661823847Sat, 20 Aug 2005 02:51:00 +00002005-10-11T22:52:36.626-04:00So many of us drink bottled water. It's clean, it's refreshing, it tastes good. It's healthy for us. Right? Well, if we believe the bottled water companies then yes, all these things are true. But on some level, we drink bottled water because we are avoiding drinking tap water. Tap water is cruddy, nasty, vile. We loathe it. Some of us won't even cook with it. And we do this to keep ourselves http://www.brickfinancial.com/2005/08/great-bottled-water-hoax.htmlbtaylor@brickfinancial.com (Benjamin Taylor)