Happy Marijuana Day

Today is a great day in Canada for everyone except drug dealers and marijuana investors. 

Smoke if you got 'em.

Smell test

Arguably one of the most important considerations in any investment is the smell test. This is something that the numbers can't tell you. No matter how tantalizing a company may appear, no matter how covered its dividend is, no matter its earnings, buybacks, insider buying or cash position, if a company isn't going to remain a going concern you just can't buy it.

Torstar continually comes up in my scans as a company that should be worth consideration. No debt. Big dividend. Prem Watsa bought 10 million shares last year. Its traditional media business actually makes money. It appears better positioned than any other media company in Canada to survive. But will it?

It has a history of terrible digital investments. Its recent acquisition of the iPolitics site doesn't inspire confidence. Have you ever heard of this site? Me neither. It looks like any other media site from 2006 except that it's got social sharing buttons. If the comments sections are any indication, there doesn't seem to be much of that going on.  

Despite the survival of print channels until now, I don't see how they last much longer. I don't know anybody who buys newspapers, nor do I know anybody who knows anybody. Do you? Are they under 80 years of age? 

Pristine balance sheet and all, I can't picture a happy ending for Torstar. I hope that changes because the death of newspapers isn't good for anyone except the 45th POTUS. 

New feature in 2019: live portfolio

Many of my favourite investors talk about their stock picks publicly but don't share their actual portfolios. There are a lot of good reasons for this, including a lack of tools to do so.

I read Stockchase for ideas. One recent series of posts that particularly annoyed me was a big-time manager pumping a smaller stock. He was the only one talking about it. First at $20, then at $15, then $10. Finally the stock is at less than $5, and his comments are something like, "It's not a good time to be in this name. I used to be in it but got out."

Just like that, eh. This thing is all roses and now suddenly you don't have time for it. At what point did you exit exactly? $16? $7.50? We're talking a potentially massive loss here and now the guy is waving it off like it's air.

Which makes a person wonder: maybe it was air. Maybe it was just something he talked about, for years, without ever taking a position.

Starting in 2019 I'm going to share my Canadian equity portfolio. I don't know how I'm going to do this yet, so if you know of a method please share it.

My plan, for now, is to liquidate my current Canadian holdings and start with just cash. The universe of stocks will include anything traded in Canada.

Rules:

• New positions not to exceed 12.5% of NAV
• No shorts
• No miners

The goal will be a book of 8-12 long positions with as little trading as possible.