I recently attended the memorial service for Jake Millar, the founder of Unfiltered, who took his own life in November 2021. 

I was not just an investor in Unfiltered, but someone who was also a friend of his. The day after his memorial service,  I shared a number of thoughts about Jake and his untimely passing on LinkedIn. (click through)

Rest In Peace Jake. 

I like Sharesies. If it encourages people to get involved in investing, it can only be a good thing. But lately, I've seen a few people on the Sharesies Facebook forum make comments like "Why have my shares gone down????? 😞😞😞", as if it was somehow wrong or inexplicable.

As a more seasoned investor, I thought I would help the forum with some thoughts.

I've had the pleasure of being an active share investor for a number of years now, and I thought I'd add some food for thought for some Sharesies investors here, as I've noticed a few have been worried whenever there is a "down day", asking questions like "why are my shares going down?".

Last Friday, I concluded the greatest journey of my life - my investment journey in Pushpay. Over the course of last week, I exited the last of my stake with the share price at record highs, on the back of a superb annual result. 

Our family invested in Pushpay in March 2014, not long after Peter and Chris Huljich made their first investment in late 2013. I recall meeting Chris Heaslip and Elliot Crowther at their Glenfield offices in February 2014 - threadbare carpets, lack of space and tired surrounds, and found myself instantly liking them and their pitch. They had clarity about the problem they solved, and size and scope of the opportunity ahead of them. 

Our family made our first investment shortly after that meeting, and followed up with heavy participation in subsequent raises, becoming Pushpay’s biggest non-insider investor.

This is a post I’ve been looking forward to for a few months now.

Auckland has been great to the Bhatnagar family since we arrived from Canada in 1980.

We’ve prospered in business over two generations, been heavily involved in both political and social circles, and now we are the happy position of giving back to great causes with philanthropy.

On December 11 1997, Mara and I had our first date at the Auckland Art Gallery.

We continued the tradition of art gallery visits, and on December 11 2004, Mara and I hosted our wedding reception in what is now the old wing of the Auckland Art Gallery.

As an Auckland City Councillor between 2007-2010, I was a strong supporter of the Auckland Art Gallery’s modernising and enlarging.
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Which brings us to today: December 11, 2019.

Today, Mara and I are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary by announcing our joining the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation as “Governors”. We have committed to a substantial philanthropic contribution to the Gallery, and have also joined our three boys up as “members”, perhaps in the hope that the Art Gallery might make a nice place for them to hang out with girlfriends in future years. Our names have gone up on the wall in great company with other generous Aucklanders.

While we love to give to Auckland related causes, the Auckland Art Gallery is an especially sentimental choice for us given its strong connection to the starting of our own family, and our own interests in collecting art.
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If you haven’t been to Te Toi O Tamaki lately, get there - you will love this jewel in Auckland’s crown. The current Colin McCahon exhibition "A Place to Paint" (curated by Ron Brownson) runs to the 20th of January next year, and is unmissable for Aucklanders.

Recently, I've been asked a number of times about what books I'm reading or podcasts I'm listening to. I have typed them up and published them online here, but thought it might be useful to also reference them as a blog post as well.

My favourite books are mostly about business, and most viewed through the prism of "value investing", or buying assets cheaper than their intrinsic worth. Value investing was "invented" by Dr Benjamin Graham, a noted investor but also famous for being the Professor of the University of Columbia's School of Business that taught Warren Buffett. Others on the list are about behaviour - optimising the size of the investment for risk, contrarian investing (also put as "zigging while others zag"), as well as more recent metrics focused books.

Here they are:

Books (all links go the book's page on Amazon.com)

• The Intelligent Investor - Ben Graham. Dr Benjamin Graham is known as the father of "Value Investing", and is also famous for being Warren Buffett's professor at the University of Columbia's School of Business
• The Dhandho Investor - Monish Pabrai. Pabrai is a Warren Buffett disciple who writes about the Kelly Criterion - how big the bet should be when investing.
• One up on Wall Street - Peter Lynch. I found this a very good common-sense approach to investing by the man who led the significant outperformance of the Fidelity Magellan funds in the 1970s and 1980s.
• The Zulu Principle - Jim Slater. This book is about becoming a specialist in a certain area, and homing in on that area of expertise.
• Tap Dancing to Work - Warren Buffett. There are many great books about Warren Buffett, but this one is one of the best, unsurprisingly, because it is written by a long time friend of Buffett, Carol Loomis.
• The Acquirer’s Multiple - Tobias Carlisle. A great book book that examines the methodology of famous value investors like David Einhorn, Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn.
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of crowds - Charles Mackay. Mackay examines various economic bubbles, such as the infamous Tulipmania, various gold rush bubbles and more.
• The Little Book that still beats the markets - Joel Greenblatt. This is an excellent book based on “The Magic Formula", a set of metrics which recommend buying above average companies at a cheap price).

​Podcasts (all links to Apple Podcasts)

• Masters in Business - Barry Ritholtz
• Animal Spirits - Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson
• A16Z - Andreesen Horowitz
• The Meb Faber show - Meb Faber

​First posted on Facebook, 18 October 2018

Given recent political news over “the Cathedral Club”, I’d like to note that it was an informal pay-your-own-way dinner club that started in 2001, comprised of a small group of Young Nats and old friends from university days. It met in the Cathedral Room of the old Auckland Club, which had pictures of NZ churches and cathedrals on the wall. I know this because I was a regular dinner attendee and one of the organisers. The last dinner was probably around 2008. 

I was one of the larger individual investors in Hellaby Holdings when the company received a takeover offer from Bapcor Holdings, an Australian autoparts company. The initial offer was met with a lukewarm response by most investors as well as the board of Hellaby. As an activist investor, I engaged publicly to put pressure on an increase by Bapcor for their buyout offer, which duly happened in January of 2017. Bapcor's second offer was met with support by myself and other shareholders, successfully buying Hellaby Holdings.

This is the post I made on LinkedIn at the time, which was duly picked up by NZ business reporters.
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