You sound like a smart guy BenAsian. Most student of Graham and Dodd tend to be I guess. Should definitely check out my little free DangInvestor software. I practically stole Graham's lessons, add a bit of my own, a whole lot of automating the interpretation of financial statements and giving it away to the private investor.
Self promotion aside, I do follow Graham's advice very closely too. At least I think so anyway. I mean, built an entire software and valuation models completely stolen from him
There have been instances where adhering too much to his advise turned out to have cost me some handsome opportunities. But I'm quite thankful for it regardless because I didn't understand enough about those businesses to take a share in it in the first place.
It seem that following Ben's advise has also been great for your investing too. It's quite an incredible gain you've made over the past 18 months there. Keep up what you've been doing and people will start knocking on your doors asking for money in no time.
With regards to safety of principal and an adequate return... btw, isn't that a heck of a lot better than just "don't lose money". I mean, you can just leave money at the bank and not lose it. But to not lose and get a reasonable return... that's what investing ought to be. Anyway, applying that to MRM...
The way I approach it is to see whether MRM will go broke - i.e., will I be losing all my clothes and show people my awesome body or not.
When I first jumped in late last year [I think], at 40 cents, MRM was in a much stronger position... and as we've discussed, it's a lot weaker at FY16... but overall I still think it would not go broke.
So there's my safety of principal. I'm happy with its chances.
Then the adequate return...
Assuming the worst case scenario as I can imagine it - the great dilution - I'm willing to hold on for as long as it takes and believing that over the coming 2 to 3 years, the capital gains with or without dilution will provide a very reasonable return. So that's also a tick.
Hence the loading up.
But not completely all out since it'd be nice to buy things at its lowest price possible... and in this climate, who knows what that price is for MRM if it ever have a bad release or the oil guys thought to play a few more games of chicken.
So while you're right that MRM isn't what Graham/Buffett might mean by cigar-butt... to me, anything substantially below NTA, particularly when most of that assets, though long term and illiquid, have been written down drastically for tax purposes and current (short term) market-related factors... that doesn't bother me too much.
I did spent a couple of hours explaining to my brother and his gf why I recommend he bought at 40c just to have it goes to 30c in a week, then 20s soon after... so it wasn't fun. But the big purchase at 22c, from profitable sales of a holding to boot... that was quite something, especially when it hit 50c at one point a few months ago.
But yea, hope it will work out alright. I can always explain it away as being a long term investor
