On businesses, valuation, and the psychology of investing. Free.
Screening every non-financial company on HOSE, HNX and UPCOM by Graham's own definition of net-net returns 170 tickers whose market value sits below net current asset value. That number says there are 170 balance sheets which look like net-nets, not that Vietnam holds 170 Graham opportunities. The gap between those two statements lives in the notes to the accounts.
In July I wrote that I would buy PNJ at 16,000–20,000 dong. The price is there now, but so is less value per share. I redo the maths after dilution.
PNJ is down 73% from its high, guiding to a 6,271 billion dong loss, and asking to issue 550 million shares. Three questions I ask myself before I look at the price.
John Jacob Astor traded beaver pelts for Manhattan land, and three generations lived off the rent. Then the fortune was split and spent. Rothschild and Rockefeller had two things the Astors did not.
Bezos paid 35.6 billion dollars and kept control of Amazon. McCourt paid 131 million and lost the whole team. The two numbers refuse to line up — and the answer is somewhere other than where we keep looking.
Interbank rates went from 3.7% to 9.3%. The VN-Index trades at 12.46 times earnings while deposits pay 7.5%. What Buffett, Graham and Schloss did in this weather — applied to Vietnam in 2026.
Koos Bekker put 32 million dollars into Tencent at the point of maximum pessimism, then held for fourteen years without selling. On the discipline of holding, capital allocation, and building a career from nothing.
Duan Yongping made hundreds of millions of dollars on GE and still files it under mistakes. A portrait of the investor behind OPPO and vivo, and of the double filter that rules a company out before valuation begins.
4.4 times earnings, below book value, net cash worth 37% of the market cap. Why a cheap number is not yet a cheap stock — one specific case through Graham's margin of safety.
The market values all of Cholimex at 1,264 billion dong. Its stakes in two listed companies alone are worth 1,648 billion. Here is the arithmetic, and here is why it could be wrong.
An update on PNJ: the family tie at the top of P-Lab, the special oversight team, and a session that traded 20 million shares — read through a value investing lens.
The P-Lab affair and PNJ's limit-down sessions, read the way Buffett read American Express in 1963 — the cash register test, and how to read insider buying.
From 100,000 dollars and his father's instruction not to draw a salary, Fayez Sarofim built a 30 billion dollar empire on something rare: patience. A portrait of the Sphinx of Houston.