Episode 10: Australian property, selling Class and buying Webjet

The LaserBond (ASX:LBL) share price rose 11% on Tuesday following announcements of positive revenue and profit forecasts from the company. What does LaserBond do? Founded in 1992, Laserbond is a specialist surface engineering company that focuses on the development and application of materials, technologies and methodologies to increase operating performance and life of capital-intensive machinery components. LaserBond states that its […]

Most analysis starts with the financials. Earnings, margins, returns, and all that jazz. They’re important, sure, but they come after the fact. They’re downstream of what really matters. Before the numbers, before the model, you need to start with the business itself and the value it’s trying to create for its customers. If it can’t deliver real value, any financial […]

Are shares now good value, or a value trap?

They say that in investing, being too early is the same as being wrong. There’s a lot of truth to that — especially when it comes to things like shorting — but I’m not convinced it applies to growth investing. At least, that is, when the potential upside is large enough. If, after buying a stock, it goes sideways for […]

We love our small caps here at Strawman. And not without good reason. The trouble is, at least according to conventional wisdom, that things are far riskier in that space. Perhaps that’s true, to some extent, if by risk you mean volatility. And it’s not an unfair characterisation if you assume, as many do, that “small cap” must mean pre-revenue, […]

Is this a buying opportunity?

““We mostly just sit around reading, thinking and waiting.” — Stanley Druckenmiller Like all the best investing quotes, this one manages to cram a lot of wisdom into a single line. In some ways it feels obvious, but it’s also easy to overlook. Especially in an era where many seem to think success means having eight monitors hooked up to […]

Zoom out on any major developed-market index and you see a steady wealth-creation engine: a polite upward march fueled by human progress. It is a phenomenon hiding in plain sight, available to anyone with the vision and patience to seize it. Of course, such a panoramic view obscures the true nature of the journey. To the investor who has actually […]