writser

I'll dump my garbage here as well. No sizings, no particular order and I removed most illiquid holdings. lon:argo lon:bxp epa:cdu 4624:tyo 7235:tyo 7292:tyo 7399:tyo 4295:tyo qfal:mil qfare:mil qfari:mil qfid:mil qfpol:mil qfsoc:mil hkg:3828 hkg:0635 hkg:6822 bda:ses epa:ffp cnrd lon:rma stly asfi pder pdrx rhdgf brk.b smci sigm weq radh:sto cori snmx call uwn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sell_in_May

Potentially controversial: I think the story is a bit overhyped. At least for Germany (where the damage is supposed to be tens of billions) I'm not actually sure the cum-ex trades were actually illegal. AFAIK the German tax code was really outdated (i.e. did not account for shortselling, settled positions vs. unsettled positions, etc). People were exploiting this and it wasn't exactly a secret. From the Cum-Ex website: I'll add to that: almost certainly the German tax department knew what was going on. You don't give away a few billion euros in tax refunds without noticing anything. I'm not condoning the practice but is it really unlawful? I don't know. As long as certain market participants pay other dividend tax rates than others there will be strip trades / cum-ex trades and third parties will facilitate them. In a world where you can send money anywhere with a few mouse clicks any inefficiency in any tax regime will be exploited as long as it's not strictly illegal. Everybody will be shouting "f**k the bankers" for a few months, maybe a few billion in fines will be doled out and somebody might even end up in jail. After that: business as usual.

I really hope they will at some point introduce the GdeShaverma coin. I would definitely participate in the initial kebab offering. If they can move the kebab industry onto the blockchain the upside would be unlimited. Quality control of the kebab supply chain is a big issue nowadays but that would be completely solved by putting all kebab on distributed immutable encrypted ledgers: the 'babchain. Who cares about the hedge fund industry. I want smart contracts to buy kebab when I'm hungry.

From the whitepaper: Tempted to buy into this. If you can help me find the best kebab in town, worldwide, I have the utmost respect for you.

You are a smart and very computer savvy judging by all your posts here and the fact that you have a blog, newsletter and banking website). Surely you are exaggerating. You can generate an annual statement in account management with a few mouse clicks / screen touches and find the trade in question within a few minutes. Maybe you don’t want to spend the time, but I’m 100% certain you can figure it out and 99.9% sure that you already know how to do that. The guy telling us that the IPMI module on Super Micro servers is junk doesn’t know how to find back a trade on a website? Come on. I graduated in computer science but I had to look up IPMI on Wikipedia :P . But this is getting off-topic. Apologies.

IB charges a fixed fee for option, yeah. So if you buy a few $0.01 options then IB is expensive ($0.25 per contract) but your story regarding $150 commission for $2k in stocks is total nonsense.

Because Buffett and Soros have been bankrolling the Illuminati who are controlling the fed behind the scenes.

You realize that what you wrote is self contradictory? Assume stock is rising. Then buying client positions first is better, but selling them first is worse. Assume stock is falling. Then buying client positions first is worse, but selling them first is better. You are assuming at least one of two things: 1. That your purchases/sales influence market price more than the overall trend does. Which might be true for microcaps, but it's not true in general. 2. That you will be buying on uptrend and selling on downtrend, which would be very lucky but not achievable in real life. I think you are wrong with your assumptions. Your implicit assumption is that you can predict tomorrow's prices based on today's move. What is a 'rising stock'? A stock that goes up next week? If so, why would you sell it at all? Same for buying a 'falling stock'. Better to think of stock prices as opportunities. If you think it's too cheap / too expensive it is an opportunity and it seems unethical to act on that opportunity for yourself before you act on it for your LP's. What happens afterwards is anyone's guess. And if you think an opportunity will be even better tomorrow than today (because of a perceived uptrend / downtrend) why would you act on it today for yourself or for your LP's?

Both good points. Ignore my stupid advice about index funds.

If you manage both accounts with IB you can specify that you want to split allocations according to the net liq of each account (or another predefined ratio - some info). That could solve the technical aspect of your question. Maybe such a solution also solves the 'trust' issue if you and your LP's agree upon a certain allocation method and if you can show your clients at the end of the year that you did all your trades that way (I'm not sure if that's supported in IB reporting). Alternatively if you want to manage a large amount of outside money just put your own savings in a Vanguard funds - easiest way to avoid any conflict of interest. I think you need a clear-cut solution, anything that is in the grey area where you 'promise to have the intent to do things as good as is reasonably possible' is asking for problems further down the road.

No expert, but I'd say that if you are looking for work in a different sector (finance) that your biggest asset is that you are also an architect. So I'd guess that you would be a good fit for a financial position at an architecture firm / construction related company because you presumably some knowledge of how companies operate in this space? It's probably difficult to get straight into asset management or investment banking from where you're at.

I'd guess there was a bigger sense of community back then? If all neighboring counties have a nice courthouse then we want one too! Fascinating topic. Please continue posting.

Good point :) There has been a disturbing lack of great owner-operators with an entrepreneurial spirit on this board lately. I guess I am waiting for them to return.

Surprised nobody has mentioned http://clarkstreetvalue.blogspot.com/ so far. That blog has some solid analysis and original ideas. And he posts no nonsense. In general I'm a bit tired of all the 'value investing' blogs with thoughts on macro, portfolio management, book reviews, philosophical implications of stock buybacks, history lessons, analysis of WEB's shareholder letters, assessments of cryptocurrencies, links to articles in the New Yorker and life lessons from Socrates regurgitated by Shawn or whatever his name is. I just want some good stock pitches, thank you very much. AlphaVulture, OTCAdventures, Nonamestocks were mentioned before but are also nice no-nonsense blogs. I like Martin Shkreli for the book reviews 8) . https://reminiscencesofastockblogger.com/ posts some original content as well but for some reason I'm never attracted to his pitches. Different style I guess. Barel Karson posts some interesting ideas every once in a while. http://quinzedix.blogspot.com/ used to be great but has hardly been posting the past year.

Just my opinion, but that blog has been around for a while and has made some good calls (Hemacare amongst others). I'm inclined to give Dan some credit. In general I like what he is doing. The way I see it he brings up some interesting names that you can look into. If some clowns decide to buy a stock because of a blogpost then that's their problem. It is difficult to blog about / post about / discuss illiquid stocks. Even if your analysis is completely sound, you'd be crazy to share it before accumulating a full position. And if you think people will like your blogpost - why not buy a few extra shares before publishing your post? I'm pretty sure an outfit like Citron Research is doing that too. Personally I think that's fine, but what if it turns out afterwards your analysis was faulty? It's a gray area. Are you intentionally being sloppy or not? My personal opinion is: post whatever you want, if it's crap I stop reading it and if it's _really_ crap the government can investigate it. I personally don't really mind pump & dump's either - they can offer some good selling opportunities and apart from that you should never buy or sell something without doing your own due diligence. But on the other hand I think it's a bad thing to con an elderly couple out of their retirement savings with a horrible stock pitch. It's difficult to draw the line. To say it bluntly: up to what extent should (stupid?) people be protected from pissing away their money? An interesting question.

Yeah, David Webb is definitely an interesting guy to follow in Hong Kong.

I think in Hong Kong there is quite a big selection of ‘boring businesses’: often the founding family owns a large chunk, maybe not top notch management (but not horrible either) that are doing ok (not excellent). A few names of the top of my head: Ming Fai, Playmates, Oriental Watch, ALCO, Dickson concepts, King’s flair. Lots of these have quite conservative balance sheets and are actually returning quite a bit of cash to shareholders. I think they are cheapish. It’s my pet theory that a lot of Asian investors simply don’t care about boring mediocre businesses.

I bought a can of ginger beer. Brand via PM only.

Define “high quality investing”. I’d say his track record is excellent.

I kind of agree with what Matt Levine posted on Twitter: I’d say on average activism is a good check on management. However, there are some problems associated with it (short-termism, maybe too much focus on cost cutting?). Also, it looks like Elliott is “walking the line” in terms of what is acceptable behavior.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/27/paul-singer-doomsday-investor Long but good read.

Sure, but buying Amazon isn't really a way to get exposure to esports, right? A billion is chump change considering the market cap of Amazon. Even if Twitch is worth $50 billion now that would hardly be significant.

Good one :) cheers!

Also stop vaccinating your kids. I've read some interesting research. It causes autism.