Charlie Munger’s ‘Fish Where The Fish Are’ Applied To Poland Equity Research

It’s been a couple rough trading days for US equities. But fear not, there’s other places to invest and other holes to fish. Yesterday we previewed one country that meets both our standards for cheapness AND quality. A country that’s pro-business, geopolitically stable and sports a cheap equities market (12x P/E).

The country is Poland.

Poland is the second-best place to do business in the world (as of Feb. 2019).

Poland’s GDP grew during the 2009 Economic Recession while the rest of Europe crumbled.

In fact, Poland experienced >4% GDP growth each of the last two years (4.8% and 5.1%).

So we’ve got this macro backdrop that looks really good. What does the equity picture look like? Pretty darn cheap.

According to StarCapital research, Poland trades at 12.5x earnings, 1.1x book and 0.7x sales. The country also sports a 3% average dividend yield. Not bad, and much cheaper than the United States equity markets.

Fish Where There’s No Fishermen

An important part of our deep value approach is fishing where others aren’t. Like Munger said, if we can fish where the fish are and fish where there’s no fishermen, we’re in a good spot. In Poland’s case, the fish are there, but the fishermen aren’t. Here’s what I mean …

Europe’s stock market ended 2019 up 23%. Meanwhile, Poland’s equity market lost 6.4% in 2019. Talk about not jumping on for the ride. But here’s the interesting part, Poland’s economy is growing and conditions for investment are better than most of Europe.

What’s with the divergence? According to a December 2019 Bloomberg article, it could be slowing expectations of GDP growth in Poland. The country’s expected to clock in 3.4% growth in 2020. This would mark the slowest growth in five years. In other words, investors expect the fish to dry up.

Kamil Stolarski, analyst at Santander Bank, said in the Bloomberg piece:

“Already low valuations of Polish stocks won’t be enough bait for investors in the coming months.”

It sounds like a challenge. It sounds like a perfect place to fish.

What Makes Poland A Fertile Value Space

Poland is a rich, fertile place to find deep value stocks. Turn over enough rocks and you’ll find P/Es of 2 and monopoly businesses trading like cigar-butts. I want to reiterate why this opportunity exists:

    1. Poland is the second-best place to do business
    2. Poland’s economy is growing >3% per-year
    3. Poland’s markets haven’t benefited from 2019’s major equity run up

I’m spending a lot of time in Poland trying to find great businesses at ridiculously cheap prices. I’ve found a few and I’m sharing two of them with Value Ventures subscribers next week.

These are great businesses at crazy cheap prices. Prices that could 2-3x in 3-5 years if we’re conservatively right.

Also, if you’re interested in our Value Ventures research service, then make sure you check out this page to learn more about it.

That’s all I got for today. Shoot me an email if you come across something interesting this week at brandon@macro-ops.com.


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Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.

He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

Alex Barrow

Macro Trader

Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.

You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.