The Special Situation Cast

I interview Tim Bergin of On Beyond Investing which is an investment idea company. He takes a deep, fundamental, research-driven approach, to investing. Tim has 12 years of experience as a trader on a proprietary credit trading desks and a hedge fund in New York and Toronto. He left the industry desiring more freedom and now manages his own portfolio and investments.

I invited Tim to do a deep-dive into the strongest mortgage REIT. He explains in-depth why he likes the space and why AGNC specifically. He gets into its strong suits but also into key risks he perceives, as well as how to handle those.

After that deep dive, we briefly talk about the SPAC craze that's going. The many SPACs coming to market offer plenty of opportunities to do well for investors willing to put in the work. Tim shares ideas like Pershing Square Holdings 

If you want to check out what Tim does or his service you can find it At On Beyond Investing. As you'll see when you read his work or watch my interview with him, he's very thoughtful with a sense of humility while he comes up with very interesting and creative ideas. He very much ventures beyond basic investing.

Want to reach out or engage with Tim, you'll find him on Twitter here.

I just interviewed Maleeha Bengali. She runs an active trading and investment recommendation newsletter focusing on commodities and commodity-related equities. She uses a top-down macro perspective and combines that with bottom-up fundamental relative value analysis.

Maleeha is extremely well informed about what's going on in the commodity space. But she also gained the experience and built the systems that let her turn all that information into actionable insights. I found it super interesting to learn what she's thinking about the current state of affairs but also to find out more about how she developed her investment/trading philosophy.

You can find MBB Corner here

http://t.co/88GmSw4IQF?amp=1

and follow Maleeha on Twitter here.

https://twitter.com/MaleehaMBCC?ref_s...

In this episode of the special situations cast I’m interviewing Michael Wilkerson. Michael is the CEO of Fairfax Africa Holdings (FFXXF). Fairfax Financial (FRFHF), lead by the value investing legend Prem Watsa holds a controlling stake.  Fairfax Africa Holdings just did a transformative transaction which turned the company into, what is essentially, the major African private equity firm. Michael just wrote and released a book called Stormwall: America in Peril.

Find out more here:
https://stormwallbook.com/

I’m interviewing Javier López-Bernardo. Portfolio manager at the Brightgate Capital Focus Fund. I’ve split up the interview in two thematic parts. This is part II and it will primarily concern the memory giant Micron (MU) but we also touch on a few other memory giants and industry dynamics.

Company website:

https://brightgatecapital.com/en/brig...

I’m interviewing Javier López-Bernardo. Portfolio manager at the Brightgate Capital Focus Fund. I’ve split up the interview in two thematic parts. This is part I, and it will primarily concerns the Russian oil giant Lukoil (LUKOY) (LUKOF), but first we go into Javier’s overarching investment philosophy, Stephen Penman of Columbia University is a major inspiration for Javier’s valuation model

Company website:

https://brightgatecapital.com/en/brig...

Perth Tolle is the founder of the Life + Liberty indexes which launched one product so far the Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF (FRDM). Perth was born in Beijing and moved to the United States at age 9. Her career started at Fidelity, she became VP at Amplify ETF’s before starting the Life + Liberty indexes.

When I first heard about the Freedom 100 ETF I was immediately drawn to this elegant concept. It is a version of an Emerging Markets passive exposure product but with one crucial twist. Instead of weighing positions on a market cap base, this ETF weighs country exposure based on measures of freedom.

It results in a higher-quality portfolio that potentially still benefits from the GDP tailwinds that emerging markets tend to experience.

https://freedometfs.com/frdm/
https://www.lifeandlibertyindexes.com/
https://twitter.com/Perth_Tolle

Cate Long has a background in finance with ING Barings, ABN Amro, and others. She's been a long-time columnist for Reuters and predicted the future insolvency of Puerto Rico in 2012 when that wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Now she runs Puerto Rico Clearinghouse an advisory for PR bondholders. 
The PR bankruptcy is a tragic case but also an interesting special situation. Cate helps me to understand the basics. 

Cate's Twitter
https://twitter.com/cate_long

Puerto Rico Clearinghouse
http://www.pr-clearing.com/

Jan Svenda, of Svenda's Manual of Stocks talks to me about the launch of his new database for OTC and dark companies. There are almost 500 companies in the database. He talks about two new OTC ideas, that are in his database, one of which likely yields 19.8% for next year.

You can find Jan on Twitter https://twitter.com/JanSvenda

You can find his manual here; https://svendamanual.com/

After the interview, he very kindly gave me a discount code for viewers/listeners. Put in the coupon: BRAM and you get 15% off.

James Royal is the author of a new book called The Zen Of Thrift Investing. If the concept is new to you, it is very cool so take note. If you're familiar with the concept (like I was) but didn't really have success with it this interview is a must-watch. 

Or actually, the book is a must-read. 

ZOTI is essentially a guidebook for thrift investing, a relatively low-risk/decent reward investment strategy.

 Royal goes through the multiyear process step-by-step. After reading his book and this conversation, I'm definitely going to try this tactic again. James also included a list of thrift activists and talks about their tenacity and what they go through to get management to do the right thing. At the end, we also go over several thrifts he currently finds highly attractive.

You can find James book on Amazon
https://amzn.to/2IK8ITc

You can find him on Twitter here
https://twitter.com/jimroyalphd?

J. Mintzmyer is a true shipping specialist who built a top 5 multi-analyst service on Seeking Alpha. He is extremely knowledgeable about all the major companies and most of the minor companies in the industry and adjacent industries. Shipping is a sector that's very boom and bust and can be a great indicator of how the larger economy is doing. J shares his outlook as well as several interesting investments across the shipping space from tankers to LPG.

Value Investors Edge 
https://seekingalpha.com/checkout?service_id=mp_316

Twitter
https://twitter.com/mintzmyer