an interesting observation...

...the frequency of thread posts seems to me to be inversely proportional to the shareholder value creating ability of the enterprise.

Take SLM as a case in point:

Despite it being a listed entity for many years, as well as being a substantial company (~$800m in market value), and despite it having grown revenues, earnings, free cash flow and dividends right through the GFC (almost as if that event never even occured...why, it even paid a special dividend!), the HC posts on it are so scant one would think it was some tinpot biotech or rare earth explorer!

The only posts on it over the past two years are some guy two years vainly enquiring on where to obtain some research and little old me last year waxing lyrical about the quality of the 2010 full-year result.

Having created significant value for shareholders for may years, and especially since the acquistion of HPAL in 2006, SLM has just gone and completed another material purchase of businesses out of the ashes of PGA, which I think will supplement the core SLM businesses in driving further wealth creation over the years to come.

I am at a loss why someone would make the active decision to plough their hard-earned savings into mining punts in exotic places like South Africa or the Congo where sovereign risk is indeterminently acute, and where forecasting investment outcomes is impossible.

Why would you actively choose to worry and stress about their capital, when you can buy shares in companies like SLM and sleep easy in the knowledge that while you are lying on the beach, an astute, aligned executive team is presiding on your behalf over high-quality, durable, cash-generative businesses, which is certain to create wealth for you?

I simply don't understand.

Cameron