Progress Toward a Publishing Deal

I am happy to announce that my first book The Intelligent Option Investor: Applying Value Investing to the World of Options will be represented by Mr. Sam Fleishman, Literary Agent and Vice President at Literary Artists Representatives.

Sam has a long and fruitful career as an agent and has successfully brought a respectable list of non-fiction titles to market, including quite a few regarding value investing. Here is a list of some of the titles he has agented that look especially interesting to me:

JFK In the Senate: Pathwy to the Presidency (Title to be released on October 15)
Taking Charge with Value Investing
Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffet
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them

Sam tells me that the fall buying season for publishers is just getting into full swing, so I have been busy preparing a formal Book Proposal and primping my draft to get it ready to show to publishers. As such, my IOI Tear Sheets and accompanying Valuation Notes may be a bit spotty for a few weeks.

Before I started full-swing into preparing the proposal, I was working on a covered call idea regarding ITC Holdings (ITC) an idea brought to me by long-time reader and friend, Ben L. I had gotten pretty far into research and valuation when I started in with the proposal, so I'm hoping I can prepare a Tear Sheet and publish it pretty soon.

Also, quite a few people have been asking me what I thought of Tesla (TSLA). I took a look at Professor Aswath Damodaran's valuation of the company on his blog, and while it seems it has gotten a good bit of play in the popular press, I think he underestimates the difficulty of valuing a company that is still in a rapid expansionary phase. At the very least, his (theoretically pristine, and I would argue excessively precise) lognormal valuation curve with a mean value in the upper $60 range does not, in my opinion, accurately reflect what I suspect to be the truly enormous valuation uncertainty of Tesla. If I can find some time to take a closer look at TSLA, I will do so, simply because so many people seem interested in it.

I have also had a suggestion to look at the valuation of a Canadian company in the throes of a special situation called Extendicare and will be looking at that as well.

Stay tuned regarding publication of The Intelligent Option Investor! I'm excited that I am so close to finally seeing this in print!