The good news is that these funds have really been performing quite well. In fact, they finally reached enough assets to get their own ticker symbols (TILFX – Tilson Focus Fund and TILDX – Tilson Dividend Fund).

And then, to top it all off, the Wall Street Journal’s Quarterly Mutual Fund supplement rated the Focus Fund #1 out of 883 entries in the Multicap Core Funds category with a one -year return of 19.98%! Yowzah!

I strongly recommend <a href=http://tilsonmutualfunds.com>both of the funds</a> for long-term buy and hold investors who want their money managed professionally and ethically. Here’s to hoping that staying in for the long haul someday helps me acheive “accredited investor” status.

I think I’m going to hold it a bit longer and watch another quarter or two of earnings. Opinions?

The basic idea at SocialPicks is to form a community which debates stock picks and posts research on stocks. You can post your "pick list," "sell list," and "watch list." You accumulate "friends," "favorite experts," and "followers" (which sounds a touch cultish but if I find anyone that can me 6 bazillion dollars on this site, I'll be happy to count myself one of their "followers"). There are also ways of responding to other people's research and cheering them on. It's a place to learn from the community and hopefully improve your own stock-picking. Right now, it's a touch too soon to see if the community will really pan out. I am a little disheartened at the level of research I have seen on some of the picks so far (i.e. Yahoo and eBay signed a deal today, therefore I am recommending Yahoo and eBay…). One line comments do not really constitute research people. Do something useful.

There are early tools in the system intended to help you identify the most successful pickers at any given time. Sooo, if you think you're a savvy stock-picker, now might be the time to jump on board and put yourself in a position to benefit from new users as they sign-up (I've found that being early in these things can put you in a nice reinforcing cycle).

The site is not currently open for public sign-up, but you can put in your name on the homepage and, if you're as lucky as I apparently am, the people running the site will send you an invite token within a day or two.

If you do make it on to the site, feel free to befriend me under my "mrefranklin" moniker. I'll be happy to share whatever investing expertise I decide to put there. Of course, this blog will still be my primary vehicle for sharing that information…

Technorati Tags:
SocialPicks, investing, community, web2.0

The idea came about because I've realized that there is no site which lets you publicly manage a portfolio and explain to people why you are making certain moves within it. 

Some ideas on whatthis product could include:

- Users configure their initial portfolio and then publicly update their portfolio over time.

- Users could sign up for a pay service which audits their performance and enters them into competition against others. 

- Any portfolio should be public by default but can also be made to just be invitation only (this way investment clubs can monitor their club performance on any given day).

- Popular public portfolios would receive some level of editorial oversite and be featured on receive editorial placement when the portfolio managers are doing something right, publishing good lessons, etc.

The closest thing to this out there right now is marketocracy.com. That site, however, is all about competition between you and other "virtual mutual fund" managers. You have to run your portfolio within the guidelines of a standard mutual fund and this means holding a wide variety of positions, re-balancing frequently, etc. 

I realize I'm a bit of a data wonk but I could see this being a really valuable service. What do you guys think?

Something else that changes over time – the teachers get cuter. I dated a teacher recently and it was pretty strange to think about. Lecherous old man-dom here I come.

OK, back to the task at hand.

Let's use the example of needing to calculate the percentage increase of 11 to 21.

1. The first step is to find the difference between the two numbers: 21 – 11 = 10
2. Take the result of that and divide it by the original number: 10 / 11 = .90909091
3. Multiply this last number by 100. Voila! Your increase from 11 to 21 is 91%!

This stock was the only stock left in my portfolio that I could sell and get long term capital gains treatment. Paychex was a good run for me, however, as my shares were purchased at $31.06 on February 25, 2005. This means I had a percentage increase of 29% in 14 months or so. Booyakasha.

If you click the heading on this post, however, you'll be able to look at a section of this month's edition of "Value Investor Insight" which is a great recap of some of the best sayings of Warren Buffett.

One of my favorites is the following:

"A friend of mine spent twenty years looking for the perfect woman; unfortunately, when he found her he discovered that she was looking for the perfect man." – meeting with Dartmouth Students

The following are the notes for the April 2006 meeting of The Green Lantern Investment Club:

Attendance:

All who were supposed to attend, did attend.

Headlines:

- We lost Marc Maurer. I repeat, we lost Marc Maurer! Sad but true. Marc has been with the club since the beginning, literally – since before it even existed and we were both coming off of our failed reading group (how come nobody likes to read monster books anymore?). Marc is being forced by "the man" (Ameriprise) to give up all of his life's loves and primary interests so that he can focus on being a financial advisor with them. Something about "conflicts of interest, blah blah blah…".

The good news? As one of Marc's newest clients, I support his total subjugation to my needs. OK, that's a joke. Obviously, Marc will be missed. We'll cash him out of petty cash as soon as I see him next using his valuation this month.

- We gained a new treasurer. When Marc's departure was announced to the group, the obvious next question was who would fulfill the treasurer position. No vote was required. When I looked around the table, everyone had their eyes directed straight to the floor (for shame, all of you!) except for one brave soul – Heather. Heather will be meeting with Marc this month (and I may accompany) so that we can handoff the treasury duties. We will also have occasional access to Maurer's brain should any questions arise. He still lives down the street after all.

- We voted Noah Kanter into the group. Congratulations Noah! If you are inclined to join us, we're inclined to have you.

- We bought a position in NVS. You can find the research attached to a prior post in this blog.

The investment portion of the meeting:

- Heather gave a great and spirited update about Home Depot, one of our holdings. We discussed the large increases in CEO pay and decided that it is probably a good idea for us to try and get to a place as a club where we are reviewing one of our existing holdings every month. We'll take a look at our holding next month, reallocate coverage, and come up with a timeline for reviewing them.

- I presented Novartis to the group. We voted to purchase it after a healthy debate.

Next month's meeting:

- Partnership agreement review: We have several new members who have not signed partnership agreements. I will send out the agreements to these folks (and everyone else for that matter) in advance of the meeting. Please come to the table with any of your questions, suggested updates, etc. We should probably make a quick revision of these and get everyone to re-sign.

- NAIC form review: We discussed that it might be good to show the newer members some of the past types of evaluation work we have done using these forms and how they have benefited the group. We will ake a few minutes to walk through filling one of these out.

- Bob Gross is interested in presenting GM to the group. Yeah, that's right, "General Motors."

- Mark Albonizio is interested in presenting CLRK, Color Kinetics.

- I am still interested in presenting EMC to the group but it is looking like a really full month. I will try to have a presentation ready, time permitting, but am willing to wait until the following month of June to present it if that's what it comes down too…

The pharmaceutical business is really driven by the following demands:

1) aging of the world's population

2) increased pace of technological discovery and development

3) quickly industrializing countries like India, China and Russia which are greatly increasing the availability of healthcare to their populations.

Novartis addresses all three very directly. I have posted a link to the research I presented to our group. It is available for download here.

My cost basis on the stock was $27.69 on 20050303. At a sell price of $27.82 a year later, I obviously did not make a ton of money on this one…

Since the time I sold, however, the stock has gone down a bit to a current price of $27.23. There just aren't many short-term catalysts on this one although I am still intrigued in how the digital strategy will play out.

Having Eisner out of the company and Iger getting much more chummy with Steve Jobs makes for an interesting mix and something which might be really fun to follow.