Looks like Volt Information Sciences again for $7.8

Take a look at the following company, another Net-Net (historically profiting company now losing some bucks). CEO(Hughes (Joseph F) owns 1,839,267 shares about 41% of outstanding)

TSR Inc (TRSI) – market cap – 8 million – is primarily engaged in the business of providing contract computer programming services to its clients.

Cash and Short Term Investments 8.58 m

Total Receivables, Net 6.47 m

Accounts Receivable – Trade, Net 6.35 m

Accounts Receivable – Trade, Gross 6.65 m

Provision for Doubtful Accounts -0.3 m

Receivables 0.12 m

Total Inventory 0.0 m

Prepaid Expenses 0.07 m

Other Current Assets, Total 0.13 m

Total Current Assets 15.26 m

Property/Plant/Equipment,Total-Net 0.02 m

Other Long Term Assets, Total 0.11 m

Total Liabilities 2.99 m

Total Equity 12.4 m

Disclosure: I took a small position on this.

I totally missed your response to my question & missed that opportunity as well. Great work on the net net!

Gopinath

Pat Dorsey (Morningstar’s director of stock analysis) listed 4 elements Morningstar uses to find solid moats. I’ve found that these taken together with another element that Buffett likes to use (i.e. Depreciation / Gross Profit) makes a pretty good “Moat Filter.” It can cut the number of companies you have to evaluate down significantly.

Further details are over at my web site. Plus there’s a free online tool that can automate some of this –> http://www.valuestocksele…

That’s why people need to readjust their understanding of risk. Most people see falling prices and extreme volatility as risk when they should see them as opportunity.

I guess the stock you had 92% gain is WFC. If so, not only did you get it at the lowest but it is up by over 250%.

Anyway, nice article. It reinforces in me that one must maintain his discipline by curbing the human urge to dance in and out of the market because of temptations. I read somewhere that if an investor stay invested in an index (say S&P500) from 1980 to 2000, he would have gotten a return of about 18 times his capital. However, if he had missed the 15 best trading days during that period, he would have gotten a return of about 4 times. Imagine over 20 years, there’re about 5000 trading days, and to be able to pick out which are the 15 best trading days is like picking a winning lottery number.

I had my fair share of such experience fairly recently and how true it could be.

I’ve been a big fan of value investing. I bought many stocks undervalued earlier this year in 2009. Is the reason why people want to day trading and flip stocks quickly is because of the seductive nature of quick profits and easy money ? I’ll be the first to admit that it is appealing, but is very, very, very difficult to remotely make any money day trading.

I have been seeing a lot of people talking about it lately and trying to capture market volatility and wondering if it is really just a losing game long term.

Ziv: F…orget the markets. Seriously. Let time and the ordinary course of business and economics be your friend. If the markets are grossly overvalued, you may notice because you won’t be able to find many bargains. In that case, look to bonds or workouts. I’ll keep using it as an example – Walmart is up 20% versus the US markets down 35% or so.

The only time you need to worry about the markets is if you are in the wrong investments based on your sphere of competence or psychological makeup, in my opinion.

Gopinath: I’ll try to talk about it this weekend. VOL – Volt Information Sciences. It was a Graham net/net.

Jason: Check out this link from Investopedia. They’re one in the same. The “average” was the average values throughout the year as opposed to using the year-end figures, which may or may not have been representative of the business’ financial state throughout the entire year.

I had the question about calculating investment capital. Reading The Clorox Company 10-k, I learned they calculated invested capital by taking total assets and subtracting all non-interest bearing liabilities (accounts payable, accrued liabilities, tax payable, etc.) and takes an average.

I bring this up because CLX has very little net worth and calculating invested capital according to Mr. Ponzio’s Book, Fwallstreet, (equity LTD) would give a very different number.

Question to Joe or anyone else:

Can the way CLX calculate invested capital being applied to companies in general?

What was the the stock(business) that you bought for $7.80??

Gopi