RichardGibbons

Weren't you the one calling MAGAism a cult? As often than not, cults seem to involve raping children. In that case, surely this is just on-brand, and you shouldn't be at all surprised that supporters are cool with it. For your own sanity's sake, it feels like you should just believe Trump when he says, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." At this point, it seems pretty clear that's where we are.

It's a strange question for a bunch of reasons: It's basically impossible to predict earnings accurately in 10 years, let alone 20, for any company. It's particularly impossible for companies that release consoles that could be a success or total flop. 10 years is at least one console cycle. 20 years could be 3. He actually touched on the information that was important--thoughts on the moat and capital allocation. Someone else's estimate of a company's revenue in 10 or 20 years likely has negative value--it's more likely to hurt you than help you (because of weird anchoring on something that's close to a random number.) Pretty well all the value one might get from the 10 or 20 years estimate exercise is derived from the process of thinking through the moats, opportunities, and risks, which he already touched on. Everyone's process is different, and it's strange assuming that calculating a 10 or 20 year revenue number should be what everyone does (and lightly implying they are incompetent if it isn't part of their process) If calculating that number isn't part of the process, it's asking a lot of someone to calculate the number because it would be a fair amount of work. (Particularly when it's clear, as in this case, that if they had a number, they would have already told you.) It wouldn't be strange for a novice to ask that question (because they don't know items 1-6), but I assume you aren't one because you don't write like one. Sure, everyone would like to know what a business would earn in 10 or 20 years, but nobody actually does. As Munger says, "Warren talks about these discounted cash flows. I've never seen him do one." To answer the "otherwise how do I value it" question, my strategy is to look at the price, the earnings, the potential growth, the moat, and the risks, and decide whether it's cheap. Then, as new information comes to light, I re-evaluate whether it still looks cheap.

Strange question. I'm not sure why anyone would waste their time trying to answer it.

Funny. I was just about to post the exact same thing, with the exact same phrasing.

Same with me, with a different broker.

The challenge is that their whole purpose of existence is to regulate. So, they're not exactly going to say, "everything's good. We have all the regulations we need. You can keep our paychecks, because we're no longer needed." I think this is generally why governments work for quite a while, and then grind to a halt under the weight of regulation. Everyone new person taking power adds their bit until it becomes impossibly onerous.

I mean, USA does this too, and anti-trust is a good thing, if you actually want your country to enjoy the full benefits of capitalism. (That said, I know nothing about the European case, so maybe it's different in some way. They do make lots of stupid decisions.)

Yeah, I was thinking that it would all shake out in both the borrow cost and the difficulty in borrowing. And that the lent shares might be taken back right at the worst time. But now, looking at IB's cost to borrow, the costs don't seem that unreasonable, assuming that the numbers given are annualized percentages. e.g. TQQQ had a cost of 0.48, and UPRO was something like 0.25. So I don't know what's going on there.

What makes you think that it it's different than any other short? I think should be free money, except that you need to be able to handle the volatility, always find shares to borrow, and pay for the borrow. I think the way that it shouldn't be "free money" is that the cost of borrowing should be greater than or equal to the expected loss in the shares as a result of volatility drag. Am I missing something?

He said he'd be short PLTU, which is the 2x Bull shares. So in this case, volatility drag will actually help him. (But obviously this would be factored into the cost of borrowing the shares.)

Wow, you must have views that diverge dramatically from analysts to be shorting Nvidia here. It has a forward PE of 24, on the fiscal year that is starting in February.

Yeah, this one stings right now. I have a friend who got cancer last year, but got incredibly lucky in that they happened to find it during another check, at stage 1 when it has 83% survival rate. She'll die in the next few months because by the time they got around to treating her, months later, it was stage 3.

Yeah, good one. She better meets the criteria than even Thunberg. Whenever I think of Malala, this standup comes to mind:

Yep. People might not like her, but Greta Thunberg is an obvious one that's more famous. Most people in my house said, "Who?" when the Kirk assassination news came out.

We've had this in British Columbia since 2019, again deliberately not inflation-adjusted so that it will eventually hit everyone. We had the same sort of inflation thing in 1987, where they added a property transfer tax on the insanely wealthy people who could afford to buy expensive, $200,000 houses. Today, as a result of inflation every transaction is charged that tax.

+1. Nice way to get to concisely express the core issue.

Hey, that's a Nobel Peace Prize winner you're talking about! Show some respect!

Fair points.

It seems odd to compare Carney to Martin when Carney is about to print the biggest deficit in history, outside the two pandemic years. I agree that I'd certainly prefer cuts to get the deficit lower. And the debt, too, considering that the interest on the debt is more than all the federal transfer payments for healthcare. Without the debt that Trudeau accumulated, we could probably fix our healthcare problems.

Bought back a third of the MGM I sold a few months ago. I'm still not excited about the short term, but a few years out this price could be quite cheap. My main concern related to the company itself is that they've said that they really don't want to buy back shares anymore, while I think at these prices there's a good chance buybacks are the best use of capital they have.

So strange--I remember it very differently. My impression was that Biden left because of mental degradation as a result of aging, and Obama was term limits. Odd that even something that seems so clear cut to me could be perceived so differently.

Trump may have his flaws, but without his efforts, I think this strategic partnership never would have happened. Credit where credit is due.

It's a proven strategy that works with written sales offers. With respect to short sales arguments, think there's two purposes. The first is that a significant number of people will read as far as necessary to become convinced. The second is that a significant number of people will say, "I don't have time to read that, but it's clear that there's a lot there. So I certainly won't buy that company."

I think it's that way because LBGTQ people recognize that the bigger the group, the more influence (and safety) that group has. In one of the more dangerous political areas, you're stronger as one group of 100 people than two groups of 50 people. So, it's largely self-categorization, not something forced upon these groups by the right or the left.

I love the accuracy of this observation and the way you expressed it so concisely.