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racemize

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Posts posted by racemize

  1. Is Hamblin-Watsa's annual historic investment record available anywhere?  I'm analyzing various famous value investor's records, and I think they would be a really nice addition.  I don't think I've seen it in the FFH annual letters, but sometimes the annual meeting slides show equity returns.  Any help would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks!

     

  2. I'm writing a new essay on evaluating manager's performance and was hoping for a little help on a couple of points:

     

    1) Looking for 5 or so long-term good funds to evaluate, so throw out some names; however

    2) I need at least all the yearly performance data and would like quarterly performance since inception. 

     

    I have this data on Pabrai, but not many others.  Was considering doing Fairholme, Chou, sequoia, but I don't think I have the data for those available.

     

    Thanks in advance!

  3. I believe it is much more restrictive than that.  Buy an hour of an experts time and be sure, the penalties are terrible

     

    If it is more than that, then it is basically impossible, and people are doing it.  I of course will talk to a lawyer if it gets to that point, but I have not read about any other issues than those.

  4. Please check out the "prohibited transactions".  You might be OK, but get a Pension expert's opinion as it might be "self dealing".

    It's way out of my pay grade.

     

    Yes, I believe I'm ok as long as I don't charge any fees (which I wouldn't) and that the fund was operating without those funds being added (which it is).

  5. Anyone have experience with this?  I'm looking to invest my IRA in my fund and am seeing what self-directed IRA service makes sense.  I just looked at this one, which costs a bit over $100 per year it seems like.

     

    https://www.iraservicestrust.com/why-ira-services#

     

    If you have a fund , why not open a solo 401K and move your IRA? I have one from Fidelity which is free and have complete control over my investments.

     

    Well, that was my initial plan and right now I just use my IRA as a sandbox to run investing experiments that might apply to the fund. 

     

    The issue is retirement from my day job and that we don't currently charge fees at the fund and won't until it is large enough and I think the record is good enough.  In particular, while I'm likely to have enough invested assets between the fund (has all of my taxable, liquid net worth) and my retirement accounts, it will set up a situation where I'm pulling money out of the fund while setting up a roth ladder in the retirement accounts, which will last about five years.  Thus, unless the fund balance is large enough for me to live off of, it starts becoming less of my invested assets than my retirement account over time potentially, and I don't want to set up that dynamic.  I was thinking an elegant way to address this was just to move the retirement account(s) into the fund when I retire, which would stop the incentive misalignment over time. 

  6. We still use 6%...so does Mohnish.  We've never adjusted the hurdle and it's carried over year to year from the high watermark.  It's the most equitable way to be compensated and in the best interest of the partners.  They don't make money, we don't get paid for anything...the better we do, the better we get paid.  Cheers!

     

    Ok but, why 6%? Why not 5% or 7%?

     

    In Buffett's time, 6% was the 30 year coupon.The idea (as I understood it) was that managers are paid in excess of the risk-free rate. Clients moving outside of t-bills are assuming risk. They can either pay themselves for that risk, or pay someone else, presumably a professional.

     

    The real question is, why are value fund managers stuck on 6%, versus payment for the intelligent assumption of risk above the risk-free rate?

     

    Note: I think his actual fee structure for the multiple partnerships varied:

    33% above 6%

    25% above 4%

    16.6% above 3%

     

    But (1) he provided liquidity back to his clients from the fund at 6% (again, the risk-free rate),

    and (2) I think when he combined all the various partnerships, he adopted 6% as the rate.

     

    I think a better hurdle would be the index itself. The manager could keep, say 50% of the performance beyond that level.

     

    I agree, it is just a little hard because it moves around a bit.  E.g., at least with 6% when the market goes down, but you go down less, you aren't taking money from partners.  You could try to do a rolling period, but that gets complicated due to partners moving in and out.

  7. Simple. If you’re working from the assumption that you own all of the GSE (or at least all of the profit already), then it’s a left pocket/right pocket argument. Rather than moving some from your right pocket to the left today, you decide to not do that so that tomorrow you don’t have to move it from left to right because you found the right pocket (GSEs) are empty.

     

    Of course, if you don’t believe in the premise, then you can see what’s going on.

    C.

    http://mba.informz.net/MBA/data/images/GSE%20Reform%20Joint%20letter%20921.pdf

     

    "As noted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2016, allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create a capital cushion simply converts a potential future draw on federal funds into an immediate draw and such an action would effectively increase the size of taxpayer exposure to future losses."

     

    anyone want to explain that line? I've read it over 10 times and can't understand it.

    Yes. Your explanation is simpler. It's the basic premise that confuses us. Stegman believes these companies have been nationalized, have no need to protect taxpayers because of the incoming dividends and starts his analysis from there. We believe they are still private companies in need of capital for taxpayers' protection.

     

    Yeah, they are just skipping the part where they can transfer a ton of risk to the private market and make a ton of money. Which is really odd.

  8. Nothing Mnuchin has said is inconsistent with the Forbes article.  The Forbes article is also consistent with a theory leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to his/her ability and need.

     

    I'd say turning it into a government entity is not in the spirit of "getting it out of government control".  It also does not allow for monetization of the warrants.

  9. man yahoo finance has really imploded.  I used to check there like at least a few times per week and now I haven't been to the site probably since the Berkshire stream.  I really appreciate all your efforts on the TARP warrants. 

     

    I am toying with the idea of selling my last slug of BAC-WTA and rolling into common.  Just because the timeframe is getting shorter and trump or Kim Jong or something could knock things off kilter for a year or two.  Of course, I'm not holding in a taxable account.

     

    Yeah, I'm down to just AIG warrants at this point.  The expiries are getting close.

  10. Color me skeptic. Likely nothing will be done, nothing will be changed, Equifax settles class action for pennies and that's pretty much it. Do you guys really think that govt can push through a reform? Or that credit bureaus + financial companies will try to change the credit check solution voluntarily?

     

    Yeah, I don't think it is going to happen.  On the other hand, this really sucks and it sure seems to make sense to make a change.

  11. Didn't see your other thread. I agree with your suggestions & possible investment implications.  I signed up today for the monitoring. My wife's signup date is tomorrow & she will signup then. At least Equifax has taken the arbitration condition off.

     

    Unfortunately, this seems like a really big deal that will hang like a dark cloud over our finances for many years to come.

     

    Yes, this is huge.  We can be compromised for the rest of our lives with this one.  Maybe this will be a catalyst to come up with a different solution than the way SSN and credit checks work (e.g., freezing that is easy to do and not cost anything and requiring that the freeze be honored, at the liability of the issuer)...

  12. I started a thread about this in personal finance.

     

    Anyway, I think freezing and signing up for the free service makes the most sense. 

     

    From an investment point of view, it may make sense to look at the other two--I think a lot of people, myself included, just started freezing these things, and they get to make $10 per person per freeze/unfreeze every time, which is ridiculous.  So, if they get all these fees, they could have an increase in earnings without the settlement issues of equifax.

  13. I believe you almost can't get flood insurance on the coast outside of FEMA. I actually find that confusing, as you should be able to get insurance on anything at a high enough price, no?  In any event, that leaves a lot of claims for cars, but housing shouldn't be too much (this is me speculating).

    Buffett talks about it a bit here:

    . Basically the people who want the insurance are likely to be flooded so it doesn't really work as a financial product. At some point I guess you're just just paying the same amount of the house. If you had a $500k house I'd insure it for $500k, but that doesn't help you much.

     

    Yeah, I would think you could still amortize the cost over all the people who want it (i.e., it doesn't happen to every person every year), but the price would probably still be very high.

  14. Working in a P&C insurer, albeit in Scandinavia. Limited experience with US cat events but I've been reading up a bit. From what I've been able to gather it looks like this is less of an insurance event than one might think. Or people estimating are way off.

     

    One estimate that claims total claims as low as $6 billion of which most will be paid by primary insurers:

    http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/08/29/462672.htm. One reason being less than 1 in 5 homes have flood insurance, and many of them are under the federal program.

     

    Also, there is a lot of capital chasing yield which is still pushing reinsurance prices lower:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-reinsurance-pricing/ratings-agencies-see-falling-reinsurance-rates-despite-harvey-idUSKCN1BG1LF

     

    I believe you almost can't get flood insurance on the coast outside of FEMA. I actually find that confusing, as you should be able to get insurance on anything at a high enough price, no?  In any event, that leaves a lot of claims for cars, but housing shouldn't be too much (this is me speculating).

     

    Lancashire just said their wind insurance won't pay out either, since it is mostly flood as another data point.

  15. I don't have a strong view whether S&P is fair valued or not against other indices out there.  I am curious though, since the lead in question was posed to a fictional pension trustee presumably in the US, how does the principal of asset / liability matching fit in this analysis.  i.e. If your future liability will all be in USD, primarily directed towards a group of people who will retire in the US, how much of your assets should be directed towards an emerging market index?

     

    For the average investor, Buffett would say none - put 95% in S&P index and 5% in cash. I would think that the reason to go elsewhere is if one has a desire to get extra gain - i.e.: most people on this webpage are interested in doing a little better than "average".

     

    Where has he said 95/5?  I just thought he said all investing assets in equities.

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