Hielko

You only get a dollar back through dividends if you don't pay taxes. Supposing the dividend rate is 33% (like mine), the stock has to be 50% overvalued before the dividend is the better option on a relative basis. Some people pay 45% on their dividends (an Australian holding a foreign stock). That would be a situation where the buyback is always better unless the stock is overvalued by more than 81%. Just run the math. If you own stocks where you need to pay 45% dividend taxes you probably made a mistake buying the stock in the first place. You can't ignore your tax situation when you invest.

How relevant is CAPD when companies use more and more share buybacks as a way to return capital?

Yeah, it seems that education is a profitable business for someone in the US... I live in the Netherlands: tuition for me was ~$2.5K/year and a decent part of that amount was paid by the state using a loan that will be discharged when you graduate. If your parents have a low income you actually get more money than the tuition cost, but you also need money for books/housing/food to complete your study (and you can actually get a loan with a very low interest rate from the state when you study for this). There are some voices that want to change this system though as part of the austerity measures, but I'm personally doubtful if that's really a good idea: a move towards a more US-like education system would seem to be harmful for the education level of the population in the long run. Unlike the girl in the topic start there must also be people out there in the US that could have gotten a good education, but didn't because they were afraid of, or unable to pay the high costs.

Getting married wouldn't be a smart move if that would imply that the partner would also become liable for the student debt. But don't see why starting a family wouldn't be an option. I assume she can keep a part of her income, and you just have to keep assets and liabilities separated until her loans will be discharged. Do you think it would be smart to enter a relation when there is huge inequality?

I'm not sure how sensible it is to use Kelly when: 1. Outcomes are not binary (it's not like you can see it's either +50% or -10%, range of outcomes is bigger) 2. Not all bets have the same timeframe, and usually the timeframes are unknown as well 3. Some bets are more correlated than others. Kelly assumes independent bets.

Perhaps you should have checked what you exactly signed up for... I agree that the inactivity fees are a slight negative, but given the low fees per transaction most people would still come out ahead with IB, even if they trade infrequently.

Thanks for posting. Based on: I would expect that removing the owner operators from the S&P 500 isn't going to have a huge impact on the performance. Owner operators are - I think - just a small part of the S&P 500, and if they outperform on average 2.7% you have to figure that the average S&P performance is reduced by a percentage substantially less than 2.7%. Would love to see some to do the real math though, but not easy to get access to the right data.

Just tried it, and does turn up some stuff, for example: http://mmoore.ba.ttu.edu/ValuationReports/Spring2007/ColgatePalmolive-Spring2007.pdf or http://smartinvestor.business-standard.com/BSCMS/PDF/colgate_010612_01.pdf Doesn't look like high quality material though.

You can try if something is available online, you'd be surprised sometimes what Google has indexed. "Colgate-Palmolive analyst report filetype:pdf" might be a good search term.

I think you should take both statements with a grain of salt. No-one can guarantee 50% returns, not even if your name is Warren Buffett. Well.. actually he can probably make 50% in a day if he buys some nanocap company and announces the world that he sees 10x upside. But if he wouldn't have to sell-fulfilling fame it's just not going to happen. Being a good investors doesn't make you invulnerable to an 1929/1987/2008 type event, and if you want to deliver 50% returns in those years you really need a silly amount of alpha.

A couple percentage points. I think that unless you are managing a huge portfolio you aren't looking hard enough, and in enough places, to find something cheap. It's a big world with a lot of investable companies.

Can't you get access to the shareholder registry? I have no idea how that works, but I think you have that right as a shareholder? In theory yes, all shareholders are legally required to have access. Usually a request goes like this: Shareholder: "I'm a shareholder I want to see the registry" Company: "Hmmm, I don't see you on the shareholder register" Shareholder: "Oh I own the shares in my brokerage account" Company: "We don't count those, you need to either sue us or register them in your name" Shareholder registers them in their name Shareholder: "I'm a registered shareholder now" Company: "Yes, we see you on the books, you're welcome to view them while standing in the CFO's office, let us know when you'll be here..." That's for a very nice company, most will stonewall until you send them a strongly worded letter written by a lawyer, or actually file suit. Unfortunately not surprised that this is the practice.

Can't you get access to the shareholder registry? I have no idea how that works, but I think you have that right as a shareholder?

Why would you need to keep a share when you sell your position? For most companies you can get financials without being a shareholder. I simply keep every single stock I have owned on my watch list. About PDRX: anybody who knows something about how much stock insiders own?

Ugh, such a scummy business. Yes, not sure of the reputation for this in Holland, but in the US it's a gutter business. Someone who runs a local strip club is going to garner more respect than someone doing traded life interests. There's also some question as to the legality of this in the US. I don't think the business exists in The Netherlands, never heard about it anyway. Guess the market in the US might already be too institutionalized for the topic starter, but don't think it's very liquid anymore post 2008. I do own some traded life interests through a publicly traded fund (TLI.L) and they often have comments in this direction in the MD&A.

traded life interests?

Not very unique, but at the same time a nice illustration of how different investors are wired differently. Can't say it's a daily event that something drops 5%, but for me it would be too insignificant to even register. When I started investing in stocks I did so with the expectation that I would lose 50% of NAV at some point in time. Wonder if your wife has the risk tolerance to invest in stocks, and if she wouldn't be the classic retail sucks who exits the market after everything went down a lot. Did you have to stop her from selling stocks in 2008/9?

I think the author of the article mentioned in the first post has a bit of a narrow view of what value investing is and who value investors are. I don't know a lot of value investors who rely heavily on discounted cash flow analysis. Most use heuristics just like the author such as PE-ratio's and the presence of director purchases. Is value investing about deep research? It can be, but buying a basket of net-nets is absolutely the opposite. Isn't that the essence of value investing too? If you are buying stuff that all other investors think is a solid idea you are probably doing something wrong...

I'd say that this is the key element in the discussion. Yes, you can generate your own dividend by selling some percentage of your shares: but in that case you aren't talking about numbers on a per-share basis anymore since you are continually selling fractions of that share (in theory).

The question was how expensive the S&P500 is relative to the US stocks that are outside the index. That's not that easy... Could be interesting, but I doubt that ETF's have a huge impact because there are plenty of stocks outside the S&P500 that are also in some ETF. That said, with more money going to ETF's it almost must be that markets get less efficient.

Hard to disagree with the author imo.

They might not pay a lot of taxes, but a lot of money still goes to charities right?

I don't think the likelihood of this happening is low imo. What other military strategy is there besides retaliation against a nuke?

It might be me, but can't fidn a press release anywhere.

Things don't have to be perfect to be interesting. You can't make it perfect because you simply lack a lot of data that isn't available.