Valuation

I recently sharpened my valuation skills with these excellent programs provided by the school.

Wall Street Program
Training The Street

As of now, I feel most comfortable with using public comps, historical comps, and DCF. Some of the other valuation methods seemed a bit too speculative (especially LBO). These models can be highly sensitive to the inputs, so there is an art of choosing which model to use as well as using that model correctly. But it is important to have an investment thesis be so compelling that you are less sensitive to any biases. I hope to post up within a day or two writeups of some of my investments.

"Based on my own personal experience - both as an investor in recent years and an expert witness in years past - rarely do more than three or four variables really count. Everything else is noise."

-- Marty Whitman

"Usually, the success of an investment is highly dependent on only a few key variables ... and I can’t think of a single case in which one of those variables was the discount rate we used - whether 8, 9 or 10 per cent."

-- Whitney Tilson