We are pleased to bring you the 26th edition of Graham & Doddsville. This student-led in-vestment publication of Colum-bia Business School (CBS) is co-sponsored by the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing and the Columbia Stu-dent Investment Management Association (CSIMA).
In this issue, we were fortunate to speak with three investors and the founder of the popular blog Farnam Street.
Craig Effron of Scoggin Capital Management discusses the evo-lution of his firm and his invest-ment approach from commodi-ties to the stock market. Craig offers insights into his risk man-agement mentality, challenges facing the investment manage-ment community, and creative ways to express investment theses while managing against downside risk. He shares recent case studies in the event-driven space and opportunities he cur-rently see in distressed credits in Puerto Rico and energy.
Jeff Gramm ’03 of Bandera Partners discusses his book on activism “Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism” and walks through current ideas including Famous Dave’s (DAVE) and Star Gas Part-ners (SGU).
Shane Parrish discusses the origination of Farnam Street and his focus on becoming a better learner, as epitomized by Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) and Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio). Shane explains how these learnings apply to becom-ing a better investor and shares his hopes for Farnam Street and its readership.
Jonathan Salinas ’08 of Plym-outh Lane Capital discusses his experiences with varied invest-ment approaches and mentors and how his background lead-ing up to founding Plymouth Lane has contributed to the firm’s world view and how he seeks to invest. Jonathan also shares current ideas DHX Media (DHXM) and Sequential Brands Group (SQBG).
This issue also highlights pho-tos from the 25th Annual Gra-ham & Dodd Breakfast, held on October 9th, 2015 at the Pierre Hotel in New York. This event brings together alumni, students, scholars, and practi-tioners for a forum on current insights and approaches to investing. This year’s breakfast featured a conversation with Philippe Laffont of Coatue Man-agement moderated by Profes-sor Bruce Greenwald of Co-lumbia Business School.
Lastly, we are proud to bring you pitches from current stu-dents at CBS. We feature final-ists from the Darden at Virginia Investing Competition, Colum-bia Business School’s inaugural CSIMA Stock Pitch Challenge, and Alpha Challenge at UNC Kenan-Flagler.
The three finalist ideas from our classmates include: Marc Grow ’17, Benjamin Ostrow ’17, and Evan Zehnal ’17 — Dexcom Inc. (DXCM) Short; Nielsen Fields ’17, Joanna Vu ’17, and Adam Xiao ’17 — Quest Diagnostics (DGX)
Short; and Justin Hong ’17, Zachary Rieger ’17, and Cristó-bal Silva ’17 — XPO Logistics (XPO) Long.
As always, we thank our interviewees for contributing their time and insights not only to us, but to the investment community as a whole, and we thank you for reading.
- G&Dsville Editors
