I can see some of you are hounding after NB and T. It led me to think about a few investors who have made millions of $ (it's a fact, trust me) in stocks over a few decades. I am fortunate to know them as friends and I can share with you that all of them have had a big gaping hole in their portfolio from S-chips & Singapore stocks. Could they have avoided all that? Perhaps. Could they still be just as successful in investing? That's debatable. The point is, they are savvy investors who made mistakes, yet on the whole, their portfolio is rosy. The same can't be said for those who never ever made mistakes and their portfolio is returning a small gain. I'm thinking it's like a soccer game: U can concede 2 goals but you can be winning it by scoring 8 goals!
You have a point Viva. Unfortunately for NB, as he has publicly stated in this forum before, he had an extremely large portion of his portfolio invested in Eratat, with much smaller stakes in 1 or 2 other companies. He's been averaging down on Eratat for a long time and essentially his entire investment hopes was based on Eratat, as he claimed he could hardly see value in any other stocks at the moment.
Actually I do feel sorry for the guy. But at the same time I, along with a few others here, were irritated by the consistent arrogance shown by both him and Tactician here, often chiding us for bringing up the red flags as negative and illogical. In fact when I first raised the fact that Eratat was essentially paying an effective interest rate of 32% on the bonds issued to SHK, NB dismissed me as failing to understand the financial document and to 'trust him as he was a CFA' and there was NO WAY the effective interest rate could be 32%. In the end when he realized he was wrong, his love for the stock meant that he would still continue rationalizing this obvious red flag as something positive.
Let this be a lesson to all. Never fall in love with a stock. Always look at things objectively. It is pretty obvious that poor NB had fallen in love with Eratat over time, such that the company could simply do no wrong in his eyes.
As small retailer could make such mistake as the FA look good for many consecutive qtrs but how about SIAS that giving the award to the company very recently why no one comment on that ? Do there don't play a part to 'instill' retailer's confident on this company thru the award given ? and why the company wanted to loan thru bond IF there can smell something wrong as what was pointed out by those so call 'red' flag. are there not so smart as well ? or perhaps all those party are ...
The episode has not end yet as it could be the major share holder war internally ... h/e as I said earlier AVIOD ALL privately run S-CHIP. (especially those solely run by the PRC Chinese.
Last edit: 10 years 8 months ago by elbert. Reason: spelling
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