Gabriel Grego's presentation on Unmasking Deception; God bless ultra-low-cost airlines; Sailing off the coast of Finland
1) This week I'll continue to share the best presentations from last week's Value Investing Seminar Italy.
Today's is from my friend and former student, Gabriel Grego of Quintessential Capital Management, who is one of the best-known and most successful activist short sellers. He didn't pitch a specific idea, but instead presented 29 slides on: "Unmasking Deception: A Comprehensive Guide for Long-Term Investors to Detect Fraud."
You can see the entire presentation right here, and below are the highlights:
Gabriel correctly points out that companies that attack short sellers are usually guilty:
In contrast, when Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings responded politely and invited me to meet with him after I published a bearish report on his stock, it was a sign that I was wrong about this short (boy, was I ever!), as I discussed in my April 5 e-mail, My back and forth with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Excerpt:
Jim Chanos is exactly right: Hastings' response was perfect and every company under attack (at least, those with nothing to hide) should emulate it.
Of course, none do. When was the last time you heard a CEO call his company's biggest critic "a great investor and a wonderful human being" and "my friend," and sign off, "Respectfully, your ally and admirer"? The answer is: never!
Fortunately, I listened to Hastings, took him up on his offer to meet, and after doing so covered my short – and eventually went long NFLX, making 7 times my money in two years.
Here's a picture from last Wednesday of me with (from left to right) Glenn Tongue, Paco Carrillo, and Gabriel:
2) On Friday night, Glenn and I flew to from Italy back to London on Ryanair. Here we are about to board the flight:
You know, it's easy to hate on ultra-low-cost carriers, but I say God bless 'em!
Airfares are through the roof this summer, but I "only" paid $550 on Norse Atlantic to get to London (the next-lowest nonstop fare was more than $1,000) and it was only $110 each way from London to Italy and back on easyJet and back on Ryanair.
So yes, it's a cattle car... but pack light, bring your own food, and deal with no Wi-Fi on the plane!
3) On Tuesday, I got rained out after only an hour of tennis at Wimbledon, so we went back on Saturday to see if we could stand in the queue and get in.
But when we arrived at 11 a.m., the line was four or five hours long... so we bailed, took the tube back into London, saw a show at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, and then met up with our friend and host, Rupert, for dinner.
Then, yesterday morning I flew to Helsinki, Finland to meet up with a friend who just bought a beautiful new sailboat, a Swan 55, that was just made at a Finnish boatyard. It looks like this:
We're going to cruise along the coast and maybe visit Estonia as well. I've never been to these two countries, so that'll bring my lifetime total to 79 (but who's counting?!)...
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.