I periodically write about special situations or workout investments, a type of value investing that I occasionally find worth partaking in. In the last year, I mostly focused on traditional net-net value investing since there have been relatively few opportunities for going-private transactions in the last year or so.

One that I did find was Boss Holdings (BSHI, now BSHID.PK), a pretty simple company that distributes gloves, boots, and pet supplies to retailers, and which someone listed at Fat Pitch Financials’ Contributors Corner (of which I’m a subscriber). Back in October 2009, they announced their intention to perform a reverse/forward split for all shareholders holding less than 100 shares in order to delist the company at $7.65 a share. After researching the company a bit more and noticing that it also met net-net value investing requirements a few times in previous months as well, adding to its appeal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly six months ago, I updated how my position in QLTI was faring. At the time, I was contemplating selling at least part of my holdings because the stock had nearly reached its NCAV value at $4.01.

I’m happy to say that I decided not to sell my holdings after concluding that I did not hold a large position. It closed today at $4.64, although that’s off its high of $5.10 around Christmas of last year. Around that time, the stock jumped after news was announced that it had settled its litigation with General Hospital Corporation over a license agreement and royalty payments. Under the agreement, QLTI paid $20M for all past and future royalty obligations instead of 0.5% of sales of Visudyne (a treatment for age-related macular degeneration) in the US and Canada, news which was widely received as a positive outcome for QLTI.

Read the rest of this entry »

I submitted my recent post on my investment in QLTI to this week’s Festival of Stocks, partly in an attempt to get back into investing (and particularly value investing) resources in the blogosphere.

I found a couple of interesting articles, one an analysis at Old School Value on Warren Buffett’s Stock picks (Berkshire recently released its Q2 holdings) that will take me some time to go through, and another on leveraged ETFs, an interesting area I didn’t know much about (though truthfully, I would probably shy away from investing in these given my style).

The latter article is a bit annoying in that it requires you to register for free before you can read the entire post, but if you’ve been looking into investing in leveraged ETFs, it’s probably worth a read first. There are also some other articles highlighting specific stocks, the Indian market, and other areas related to stocks and investing should these fit your interests.

Back in April, I wrote about my investment in QLTI, which was the first stock I ever found that met all of Benjamin Graham’s criteria. I bought 1200 shares at $2.13 in an IRA account despite a runup of nearly 30% between the day I found the stock and the day I bought it, thanks to not having had sufficient time to research it enough before getting comfortable enough to invest in it.

At the risk of jinxing myself, QLTI closed today at $4.01, or 88% higher than my purchase price, excluding transactions costs. Truth be told, I had largely ignored it until this week when I noticed its performance.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve decided to follow George’s footsteps over at Fat Pitch Financials and actively manage the investments in my son’s Coverdell account. Coverdell accounts are great because you can open one up and invest the money much more freely than in a 529 plan, they’re tax advantaged, and because their funds can be applied to secondary school rather than just college and graduate school. However, the maximum contribution that can be made to a beneficiary each year and across all sources is only $2K, and contributions can only be made until the beneficiary reaches 18 years of age.

This means I need to try to grow the money in the account as much as possible while limiting any downside. Enter special situations investing, which turns out to be a great way to invest smaller amounts of money with pretty big returns. Of course, no investment is risk-free, but I’m hoping that by choosing workouts wisely, I’ll be able to get a better return on the account than if I bought a few odd-lot shares of an ETF or mutual fund.
Read the rest of this entry »