Final Term

I have now started my final term at b-school. I have been negligent in my blogging. I basically took the whole term off. There was a lot going on. There was a credit crisis and a market crash to watch. My wife is working now and I am now spending more Daddy time. The first term of my second year has been the best part of the MBA for me. We got to do some family holidays. Careerwise, I knew where I was going.

I finally got to go home at the end of the second term. A cousin had a kid. That's 4 great-grandkids for one of my grandma's. The other has 6. Family was asking me "how was the MBA?” I didn't even know where to start. So much has happened.

I thought that I had got a lot of done in clubs, job hunting and in academics but the thing that they were most impressed was a picture of me and CBS's distinguished alumni Warren Buffet. I got to go to Omaha last year and he was very kind about taking photos with MBA's he meets. Mr. Buffet is a serious contrast to the tycoons you see in Singapore and Malaysia. He's 10 times richer and far more humble. He's amazingly generous with his time and a testament to the character of Americans from the central regions.

Malaysia was a little bit down. Tensions between the Malay (Bumiputra) and non-Malay populations have got pretty bad. Non-Malays in Malaysia are genuinely wondering if they will have any role in 20 years time. Me and a friend who had reached a senior role in the Malaysia office of a multinational insurer were joking that there wasn't much of a story for the Malaysian economy. There are links to the Middle East (which wouldn't help non-Muslim Malaysians) and ASEAN. Unfortunately an ASEAN Free Trade Zone would take 10 years and talented Malaysians need to know what to do with themselves in the meantime.

If I were an educated young Malaysian, I would be taking a good hard look at Singapore, HK or Shanghai. It might require a 3-9 month investment to studying Mandarin in China for Shanghai but going regional seems to make a lot of sense. One of my MBA colleagues who is joining a bulge bracket bank in Equity Research in HK is using the June-August period between graduating and starting work to do an intensive Mandarin class in Shanghai.

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.

Self-assessment

I decided to put another assignment up on the web. Its my self-assessment for my leadership class and my action plan for working on my strengths and weaknesses. Part of leading is having a realistic sense of your own abilities and biases.

Just click the link:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9wrf5s_183nj3b2