Jump to content

JRH

Member
  • Posts

    243
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by JRH

  1. I watched the webinar and am wondering what I'm missing. Probable answer: I don't know how to handicap late-stage O&G exploration. Their current valuation seems to imply a much lower chance of production success than I suspect they are actually facing.
  2. Well, he only referenced dividends for Focused Income, which has an “income” mandate. No such reference on FAIRX, which does not. I think this was just a proofreading/editing decision as a way to reference current yield for that fund (notice a similar reference for the Allocation Fund in a later paragraph).
  3. Have you considered the possibility that literally everything he writes is unfalsifiable hyperbole?
  4. My worst year relative to the benchmark was the year after my kid was born. I was stupid enough not to realize EITHER: 1) how much less time I was giving to important decisions, and 2) how poor my mental state and focus were when making decisions. I was like a drunk who doesn't know he can't drive. That one year negated several years of outperformance and just about capitulated me onto the indexing path.
  5. He actually sold ~3/4 of his MBI position prior to the BAC settlement. You can't really tell from the filings themselves, but if you look at the price of FAAFX around that time, it only jumped about 1/4 what you would've expected from the last reported holdings (MBI was something crazy, like 35% of the fund according to the last filing before the settlement occurred). Bruce has really had just terrible timing selling holdings the last few years (not throwing stones as I'm no expert myself).
  6. https://www.ibtimes.com/omaha-nebraska-most-dangerous-place-america-be-black-1548466 The more nuanced statistical truth is obscured by the headline (as usual), but... I think it's worthwhile for visitors to avoid North Omaha, unless they know what it's like and are making an informed decision to stay there. Just my $0.02.
  7. Depends on what you're looking for. Benson is trendy (e.g., nightlife). Blackstone (~3 blocks west of Kiewit Plaza) is also trendy, but more "young professional" than Benson. Downtown is expensive and convenient to the convention center (FWIW, I live here and never go Downtown). Geographically, the east/west corridor within a couple miles north/south of Dodge will be the safer part of town - though admittedly that's a big generalization (north of Cuming / south of Pacific between downtown and 480 are somewhat sketchy). Other factors?
  8. Berkowitz has said previously (and I paraphrase), "It's pretty simple. Either HERA doesn't grant them the power to do whatever they want unchecked, or HERA is unconstitutional." So, I'd have to assume the next step is to challenge the constitutionality of HERA.
  9. I have a small position, and am sitting here going back and forth, trying to decide which of the following is true (assuming Mnuchin wants the enterprises privately owned): 1) The lawsuits were leverage for Preferred/Common stockholders to get X+Y amount of the re-privatized enterprises, instead of X amount. Therefore, this meaningfully reduced their value. 2) The lawsuits don't really matter because of the mechanisms of re-privatization: maximizing gov't warrant price still entails maximizing common stock price, and re-starting common dividends still entails preferred dividends. REALLY simplified, obviously, but I need some means by which to model a decision.
  10. I feel like I had to do some serious "de-programming" of myself in my 20s, but now I am 100% of this mold, as well. I didn't increase my willpower to resist buying things I want, so much as I came to realize just how few things are ultimately worth the money - the value is either illusory to begin with, or it is offset by less direct and more insidious things that you don't notice at the time of purchase. Realizing that has reduced the number of things I want so significantly that I don't need much willpower at all. (sorry for being off-topic... I'm about 25% owned real estate but would like that to be closer to 50% - balance is mostly esoteric global value plays)
  11. I have these references (starting on page 9) printed out and pinned up all around where I work... I read a few at a time, and the repetition eventually catches me at the right time that I can relate it to something "real world", which seems to make it stick in my memory better: https://www.scribd.com/doc/30548590/Cognitive-Biases-A-Visual-Study-Guide
  12. Has anyone linked to Scott Adams' (creator of Dilbert) blog yet in this thread? http://blog.dilbert.com/post/126589300371/clown-genius Note that post is from last August - he has been blogging consistently about Trump ever since. His big-picture predictions have been really good, and his 'model' (if you want to call it that) sure seems right to me. I mean, I've been convinced it's the right model. I think Merkhet alluded to 'emotional manipulation' earlier. Scott Adams calls Trump a 'master persuader'.
  13. I don't think it's the "tight game plan". He has given a couple of answers again, and again, and again, when people ask: 1) The real estate is worth a ton of money. More recently, he has stated that this is a) confirmed by the Seritage spin-off, and b) the remaining, non-spun real estate is substantially similar to what went to Seritage. 2) The guarantor/non-guarantor structure matters (I must be an idiot for mentioning this, essentially encouraging the same debate to occur for the 73rd time...)
  14. Huh, interesting. I didn't know that. I can second that they were remarkably reassuring and candid at the time. Fairholme's worst prior year was about -2% in 2002 and suddenly the fund was down >25% on the year. I was not an experienced investor at the time (even now is debatable), but those calls made me comfortable to significantly increase my position at what turned out to be the right time. I still remember in late 2010 when he said he couldn't remember if Fairholme even had a month of net redemptions during the crisis. Of course, he was cursing himself for 2011 by saying that. ;)
  15. Cross-reference to parallel topic: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/strategies/buy-gval-cambria-global-value-etf/
  16. This is the company through which I hold LLC partnership units in my ROTH IRA: http://www.advantaira.com/ My other ("normal"?) ROTH is through Scottrade and they wouldn't do it. I was referred by someone who had priced several options and found a company called The Entrust Group in Tampa (later bought by Advanta) that was cheapest (by a decent margin). The one small headache, in addition to costing $240/year is the annual information that has to be provided to Advanta ("custodian") which over the last three years has seemed to have something "wrong" with it every time - Advanta always comes back to me and asks for more information, but I am just the intermediary, in a sense, to the partnership. It is a little clunky playing back-and-forth.
  17. Early in the transcript he makes it sound like the cases against the 2008 bailout have a rocky path, while the 2012 third amendment should be more straightforward. Having said that, I had a hard time following which of the two (if not both) he was referring to at certain points throughout the rest of the transcript, including but not limited to his comments regarding the likelihood of them going to the Supreme Court.
  18. I tried everything I could to get it out of my browser cache, but the content was rendered in such a way that trying to save or print it gave me only the first four pages (probably less than 10% of the whole thing). Couldn't even figure out how to view the page source in Safari to figure out where/what form the content was really in. Bizarre that they took it back down. Maybe a little Christmas present. Hopefully it surfaces again before long.
  19. From Fairholme's website - transcript of a discussion with Richard Epstein regarding the Fannie/Freddie cases: http://fairholmefunds.com/pdf.js-master/web/viewer.php?file=http://fairholmefunds.com/sites/default/files/Richard%20Epstein%20-%20Transcript.pdf Highlights: - Not impressed with the Government's briefs for the Washington Federal or Fairholme cases: "And frankly, they’re very bad briefs... They’re sloppy. They don’t give you particular statutory language. They cherry-pick facts. They argue questions of fact that are highly refuted on a motion to dismiss where those things are not to be allowed. They are, in effect, briefs which communicate the following message: We don’t take this case very seriously because we’re not really trying to sit down and figure out strong and coherent theories." - Maybe not quite as confident as Berkowitz? ;) "When you get to the Supreme Court, frankly my dear, it is an open crapshoot." Tons more good stuff in there, too.
  20. Well, let's put some probabilities on it and throw it into the Kelley Criterion! ;)
  21. I would agree with this line of thinking. The preferreds have preference in any sort of liquidation/transformation event, but given that the company is probably worth either zero or bucketfuls to the stockholders (depending on the legal outcome), the fact that the preferreds have a bounded upper payout and the common does not may make the bet better, probabilistically. It sounds like this isn't a big holding for Ackman, and is probably best compared to his purchase of GGP in bankruptcy that had a chance for a very high potential payout (that just happened to occur, in that case), and probably a very real risk of being worthless.
  22. Between this comment and the go-live of CompleteBankData.com, OddballStocks is really hitting it out of the park today... :)
  23. Suspension of the dividends is only allowed when there isn't profit to pay them - it isn't optional (although I need to see how the terms enforce that exactly). To address a concern stated earlier, I would suggest that successful litigation, combined with run-off of the entities, yes, could result in less than full repayment on the preferreds (and nothing for common), although on that "branch" of the tree you then have to start asking questions like, what does the economy do, what is the nature and speed of the run off, etc...
  24. Read the last few pages for the answer. ;D Buy the cheapest ones regardless of yield. A theory of market price information on Fannie/Freddie preferreds - please correct if you disagree or interpret anything differently: This is a debate, really, over the probability that coupon matters or par value matters as the eventual "anchor" to relative price among preferred issues. You can imagine situations where either is possible: - Coupon: dividend reinstated - Par: restructuring (conversion to common?), liquidation/runoff with principal return relative to par Looking at the RELATIVE price of the various preferred issues, the market seems to be pricing on coupon. As in, essentially saying the probability is 100% coupon, 0% restructuring/liquidation. Maybe that's right, maybe not. There is also a liquidity discount in some preferreds but it appears to me to be rather small as the prices orbit around the relative coupons. Looking at the ABSOLUTE price of the various preferred issues tells you about the probability of value flowing to preferreds at all (let's say, success of the lawsuit, and whether the companies will make enough money to make the preferreds whole), and probably a bit about market interest rates, too. Just some thoughts. I've bought a position in the issues with the biggest % discount to par since, relative to the others, they appear to be a free call option on the market being wrong about that 0% probability of restructuring/liquidation.
  25. It has to be treated as a decision tree, in my opinion. Guessing which "branch" gets taken involves some speculation. The single biggest necessary assumption is that the 2012 "third amendment" gets reversed. Otherwise the value of the capital structure above the gov't stake would appear to be zero (gov't just sweeps all profits as a dividend on their stake indefinitely). It's also possible (but doesn't seem likely) that the lawsuits surrounding the 2008 bailout result in some return of value. Key remaining questions: - Are they wound down, scaled down to some degree, or go forward as-is? - What are the terms of repayment of the gov't stake if the 2012 amendment is reversed? (i.e. interest rate from 2008 bailout date until repayment)
×
×
  • Create New...