My kids started back in school yesterday and I’ve ‘celebrated’ by diving into phase two of our taxes. This is the one time of the year I seriously  think about simplifying our finances. Our discretionary trust and personal taxes are so frigging complicated my brain feels like its going to explode. After two days solid work I’ve finished the draft preparation of all three tax returns and the financial statements for our trust. It’s time for a Kristalweizen or two.

I’ve been accepted into The University of Melbourne Masters of Applied Finance at the Melbourne Graduate School of Management, hence back to school squared. I start in Semester 1 2010 and am really looking forward to going back to school.

Biota Holdings

I enjoyed reading this article on Biota by John Hempton. I commented on John’s post, but will repost it here for my own sake.

I found this comment in your quarterly very interesting “We need new ideas and the process for generating them is serendipitous rather than systematic.”

That describes my approach and I often consider it one of my weaknesses. Though whenever I try to implement a more systematic approach I enjoy investing less and so revert. It’s encouraging to know that a professional money manager can accidentally succeed.

I think you sell yourself short on the luck aspect, though you did cover that with a reference to skill in your quarterly. Coincidentally I spoke about Biota and luck early this week. [On TMF Value Hounds]

“Investing is about putting yourself in the most probable positions, it’s about being where others will consider you lucky. Take my Biota investment. I had no idea Swine Flu was about to hit or influenza would develop resistance to Tamiflu, but I did know; it was undervalued, that due to political interference from an ex-political power broker with large vested interest the world had too large a percentage stockpile of Tamiflu, that Biota had a second generation flu drug in late trials, that there was almost no chance of losing money, etc. So I invested heavily and while you may say I got lucky, I’d say I get lucky by investing in situations with lots of potential luck / catalysts.”

The next scheduled major event for Biota is the GSK Q3 2009 results and webcast on 28 October. Of most interest to me is how much GSK will have ramped up production by then, if you recall their target is 190M annual doses.

Biota’s AGM is on November 12. There has already been some complaints about their proxy statement from shareholders not happy with the adoption of remuneration report being advisory only.  Ian Gust, Richard Hill and Jim Fox are all standing for board election.

Articles of Interest

Hayman Advisors’ letter available on Scribd leads off with this great quote “You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.” The letter is absorbing reading, hat tip to MDC.

That’s a good starting point to follow your nose on Scribd. Another of my favourites from Scribd remains Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders Study Notes. I highly recommend the actual book, but these notes are an excellent summary.
Market Wizard

Related posts:

1. School Holidays – CU in Feb