It was a significant week for EGP this week. After the 8^th strongest week in our nearly 5-year history, our total return after all costs/fees exceeds 100% for the first time.

Despite what I thought were some very impressive results from our announcing portfolio holdings, the EGP share price turned in an ordinary week.

I described the current market as a ‘Caspar Milquetoast Market’ last weekend, the market that ‘speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick’.

It was a very ordinary week for markets globally; the biggest weekly fall since five weeks ago…

Earning Seasons are the best time of year to be a fund manager. If you have done your job well, there will be a couple of nice surprises in your portfolio that the market hadn’t banked on and you’ll probably generate some outperformance, at least that’s the theory.

My Wife (Sue – for those who don’t know her) had her birthday this week. She is an amazing woman who is in very large part responsible for any success I have had in my life so far (in early 2018, we’ll have been together more than half of my life). I thought I might share with readers the trick to capturing such a valuable prize. Make no mistake; a quality partner is the most valuable prize you can win in life. Everything else is so much easier from there.

My time in Europe is nearly at an end. The history of Europe is always impressive to someone from a country such as Australia with relatively recent European settlement. North Americans I have spoken to one the trip seem to mostly share a similar feeling.

The passions of life are stronger than the disciplines of the institutions. So it was said in Naples, where I spent three days & nights this week.

The market has had what can best be described as a shaky start to 2016. As seems to happen when I travel and do not focus entirely on the markets, we turned in one of our best ever weeks of outperformance, despite a nearly 2% fall on the December 31^st closing figures.

Thus endeth (.pdf) a respectable, if unspectacular year for EGP – Tony Hansen 01/01/2016

I hope you all have a nice Christmas Day tomorrow. Would you like to know how a value investor holidays? Cheaply, first and foremost…

I communicated with one of our shareholder this week about some foreign listed businesses; I thought I might share some of this correspondence with blog readers.

This week was a relatively good week for the fund.

There are a variety of reasons why some people are successful in business and some are not. Some won’t put in the hard work to succeed, others pick a business they are unsuited to running, yet others a business that would not succeed not matter who ran it.

Solid week of performance for the fund leading to another new high mark. Better than this, is news giving the sense that the intrinsic valuation of a number of our larger holdings is running away from share price. Good things eventually follow when this is the case.