Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
The Platform Group - Stay Hungry
A CEO's career book called “Stay Hungry”, a buy-and-build roll-up from €39 to 90 cents – and shareholders still waiting for their first dividend.
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Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Veganz - Every Flower Counts
A vegan IPO at €87, a bond pushed to 2030, printed oat milk and a new name – and a bee kit that outlived the share price.
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
HomeToGo - Knocked Out of Your Socks
A €10 SPAC, a pivot from search to stays, a Swiss chalet empire – and a share price that went on holiday for good.
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Chillmi - Wir sind so frei
A Maya recipe, a slim can and 200 million Frankfurt-listed shares: the relaxation drink that freed investors from their money in ten months.
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Playing Monopoly
Added in 2022 to the Portfolio: René Benko started, gloriously, in the attic. As a young Tyrolean he converted lofts into penthouses and discovered the eternal…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Arcandor: Committed to creating value... sure
Added in 2023 to the portfolio How to sell your own department stores and then go bust paying the rent. Arcandor began life as KarstadtQuelle , a sturdy German…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Centrotec Sustainable AG
LED Lenser: Part of the Portfolio since 2014... (Some say the only valuable thing Guido ever gave to shareholders) Most exhibits here are about money that…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Bilfinger Berger - Politics and still under construction...
Beer opener: part of the portfolio since 2014… (Yes, Roland Koch was CEO at the time!) Some companies hire a politician for his network. Bilfinger hired one to…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Deutsche Familienversicherung
The Amazon-of-insurance that Alexa forgot Not every exhibit is a corpse. Some are simply de-rated dreams, and DFV Deutsche Familienversicherung is the genre’s…
Jesse Livermore· 2 min read
Naming done really bad: "Aberdeen Asset Management" gone to "Abrdn"
Part of the portfolio since 2021… Naming agencies often get a HUGE amount of money for finding new names and making sure that brand identity and the legal…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Banking done in Austria... 2 x 0 in one Item: Commerzialbank Mattersburg + Sportverein Mattersburg
When the sponsor is a fiction, so, eventually, is the season. Part of the Portfolio since 2023... (Hat tip to Diego!) Some of our finest pieces arrive as a…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Blue Chip Stamps - the Berkshire Hathaway Story
Part of the portfolio since 2015... Some exhibits in this museum mark the end of a great company. This one marks the beginning of one. On display: an orange…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
S.C.Prospectiuni S.A - Oil and Gas in Romania
Part of the Portfolio since 2015... Every collection needs one piece that visitors have never heard of, frown at, and quietly admire. Ours is Prospecțiuni S.A.…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Triumpf Adler -> Typewriters
Part of the Portfolio since 2021... Not every exhibit here was killed by a crook. Some were simply standing on the tracks when the future came through.…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Swiss Air (1931 - 2002)
Business Class porcelain bowl: Part of the Portfolio since 2018. Some companies are too solid to fail, and that is precisely how you know they will. Swissair ,…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Bitcoin made in Germany (Advanced Blockchain AG + Smart Equity AG)
Part of the Portfolio since ~2017... In late 2017 a sleepy Berlin-listed micro-cap called BrainCloud AG performed the single most lucrative act available to a…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Gerry Weber
Part of the Portfolio since 2015. Gerry Weber was, for decades, a comfortable German success: a women’s-fashion house from Halle in Westphalia, founded in 1973…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Foris AG - 20ys too early (Burford Capital & Co)
Part of the Portfolio since 2020... Here is a rarity for the museum: an exhibit that was destroyed not because the idea was bad, but because it was too good,…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Trivago: Squeezed by Google
Part of the Portfolio since 2018... Trivago was a real Düsseldorf success story, and you already know it, because you have seen the advert roughly four…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Beware of the vikings... and fast growing insurance
Part of the Portfolio since 01/2015... (lucky shot) (gone under 03/2015) Vardia was a Norwegian insurance start-up, founded in 2009 and sold as a fast-growing…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
BBBY: Stock Buybacks at 0 terminal value
Part of the Portfolio since 2023... (hat tip Walter!) Bed Bath & Beyond – founded in 1971 as “Bed ’n Bath” – was, for a generation of Americans, a genuinely…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Community Adjusted EBITDA...
Part of the portfolio since 2017 or 2018 (still in those “go-go times”) A black coffee mug, a black T-shirt reading “Do What You Love”, and a book called…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Schlecker: King of Heilbronn
Part of the Portfolio since 2015 For decades Anton Schlecker ran the largest drugstore chain in Germany, and one of the largest in Europe. From his…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Steinhoff; South African IKEA?
Part of the Portfolio since 2015 (yes! long before the drop!) Steinhoff began in 1964 as an honest furniture business in Westerstede, Lower Saxony, founded by…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Polaroid - New Economy in the distant past...
Polaroid Land Camera Model 95 (from 1948) An absolute “must read”: A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein,…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Biglari Café - Sadars yellow Lambo...
Original menu from the Biglari Café in Saint-Tropez (2019) AND a Steak ’n Shake seasoning (2016). Part of the collection since… well, it is technically still…
Jesse Livermore· 2 min read
Put a name to the Bubble: ARK Invest
Part of the portfolio since 09/2020 Every bubble deserves a face. The 1630s had tulips, 1999 had the sock puppet, and the zero-interest-rate mania of 2020/21…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Air Berlin: grounded
Puke Bag ; Amenity Kit; Gifted in 2020/2021. Air Berlin was Germany’s would-be number two, run for two decades by Joachim Hunold – who, in a detail you…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Windeln.de; Amazon for diapers
Added in 2017 to the portfolio Windeln.de – literally “nappies dot de” – was a Munich online retailer of baby and toddler goods, founded in 2010 by Konstantin…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Cliq Digital: The German Netflix
Cliq Digital -> Covid Mask from 2020 Cliq Digital was, for a giddy stretch of 2022–2023, a German small-cap darling. The Düsseldorf company had started life in…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
WEST LB (Westdeutsche Landesbank)
WestLB -> Anti-Stress-Ball, gifted in 2021. WestLB was a Landesbank : a state-owned wholesale bank, owned by the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Tesla: Flamethrowers and Sexy Shorts
Tesla Object secured: bought at 69,420 USD in 2020... Fine, the decimal point may have wandered. The official price of Tesla's red satin “Short Shorts” was…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
LTU International Airways (LuftTransportUnternehmen)
Gifted to the Portfolio in 2021 Collecting the worthless, one charter airline at a time. Let us be clear up front: LTU was not a fraud. There were no…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Staramba - rise of the living dead
Part of the portfolio since 12/2018 Germany has its fair share of prominent stock market promoters and well-known but controversial businessmen. One of them is…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
The Chinese Starbucks
Part of the portfolio since 02/2020 (This is a “fake” fridge magnet.) Short and dirty… Since our experience with those Chinese companies listed in Germany…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Cybits Holding AG - The German "Mantelgesellschaft"
Part of the Portfolio since 2012 A peculiar speciality of the German market is the so-called Mantelgesellschaft – literally a “coat company”, in English a…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Wirecard - House of Cards
Part of the portfolio since June 2020 A lot has been written and said about Wirecard. The former German Wunderkind had always been suspicious, and the only…
Jesse Livermore· 6 min read
Von Floerke - Guerilla Radio
gifted to the portfolio in 03/2019 It all started with a pitch on “ Die Höhle der Löwen ”, Germany’s version of “Shark Tank”, in 2015. Unfortunately the full…
Jesse Livermore· 4 min read
Spagetti Cabonara... and una Coca Cola
part of the portfolio since 2017 Quick-service restaurants and fast food can be really good businesses – and really good investments. Just think McDonald’s……
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
The Great Financial Crisis 2008/2009
Part of the portfolio since 05/2013 This beautiful canvas tote was donated to the museum in 2013, well after the financial crisis of 2008/2009 – by which point…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
The other Louis Vuitton called "Powerland"
Part of the portfolio since 11/2011 Besides Asian Bamboo there were several other Chinese companies with a German listing. Who still remembers those fancy…
Jesse Livermore· 3 min read
Asian Bamboo - growing like a weed.
Part of the portfolio since 11/2011 2007 was a good time for the market. The sky was the limit and money was easy. At that time several Chinese companies…
Jesse Livermore· 5 min read
Aston Martin... full force against the wall
Part of the portfolio: 04/2019 (A 1:24 replica of the Aston Martin DB11; with a price tag of more than USD 200k, the original DB11 was a bit too expensive for…