Martha's Vineyard

Used the pre-internship break to visit Martha's vinyard. Fun points include cycling with the kid,
the ferry ride over (with a car) and a farm visit.

Securities Analysis: Outcome

What do you know? A good call. I called a buy at $46 with a target of $52. And I picked the earnings call as a potential catalyst which is probably proof of a genuine learning experience.
Getting the direction right is no big deal. A stopped clock is always right twice a day....
Thanks to my cluster's Geezie Master of Financial Statements (cluster award!) for suggesting the name for further research way back when.

Securities Analysis

This is a stock pitch I did for an elective called securities analysis. I called a buy on a stock in the same industry as USG, a recent Bershire Hathaway investment. I gave this presentation and made a price target on April 17th. There's a 2nd May earnings call that I expect to be a potential catalyst so I am likely to be proven wrong or right shortly. I don't have page for my full valuation report but it was a 20 pager! As usual, the formatting is compromised by the technology used to publish it. It looks better on powerpoint.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9wrf5s_40d77fkt

This was a great course and apparently a direct descendent of Securities Analysis as taught by Graham and Dodd. We hit Securities Analysis by Graham & Dodd quite a bit and also the idea of Expectations investing (reverse engineering what the market thinks on some assumptions with a DCF model). The course is though by adjunct professors who are real world stock-pickers. The best aspect is a stock pitch as a group and a second pitch as an individual in place of an exam.

The academic aspect doesn't give you a lot more than you could pick up yourself with access to the books cited in the course and some time on the job as a sell-side analyst during an internship . You can learn a lot from the harsh marking, from the rest of your group (especially if you make sure a guy with pre-MBA buy-side experience is in your team) and watching people's pitches. If you are willing to spend significant numbers of bid points you can take the course with Michael Maubossin at Legg Mason.