LC

Be careful legally too. I would do some research first...

Wait, what? Build a wall, out of the blue, with no warning? Oh I'm not surprised, simply amused. Do we know if this Great Wall of Mexico will span the entire 2000 mile border, or as the article I posted suggests: After initially proposing to wall off all 2,000 miles, Trump said the wall could run along roughly half of the border, with mountains and other natural barriers blocking immigrants from crossing elsewhere Reminds me of this:

Build the wall! https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/executive-order-border-security-and-immigration-enforcement-improvements Apparently, Trump said in a TV interview that Mexico would "absolutely, 100%" reimburse the US for his wall. Suuuure they will. Oh I know, just throw some trade sanctions on Mexican imports and consider that "paying for the wall". Apparently it will be quite expensive. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602494/bad-math-props-up-trumps-border-wall/ And of course, I can't think of a better time to build such a wall, especially when arrests from border crossings has been trending downwards for a decade:

So far I see a net negative based on his executive actions: I'm ambivalent on the trade deal renegotiations and pipeline. The big negative is the censorship.

I think this is the problem all value guys are having these days.

it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive! One can appreciate both the fine dining of Thomas Keller and the delicious sloppiness of Ronald McDonald!

Nice tips! MCD's makes delicious drunk and/or road trip food. Although I will say Taco Bell is a contender for greatest road trip food of all time.

Here is a google cache version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N-DwIeLG9ucJ:https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/altisource-recap/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Coufounding how? They had a residual-like (high multiple) revenue model based on Ocwen's portfolio, which was growing like crazy at the time as they bought the MSRs from all the banks post-2009. I can see how it became valuable over time if you assumed (as most did) that Ocwen/Erby were just good, salt-of-the-earth, capitalists. Confounding in the way that any stock is that returns in excess of 1,000% in the year after its IPO. The company's market cap almost doubled in Q4 with no news or discernible change in the forecast. If you have a spreadsheet or valuation write-up that justified a price in excess of $500 per share, I'd love to see it. There used to be a write up here: https://glennchan.wordpress.com/ but i think the site is down. otherwise i would go back to the ocwen thread as i think it was discussed quite a bit back then, if my memory serves

Coufounding how? They had a residual-like (high multiple) revenue model based on Ocwen's portfolio, which was growing like crazy at the time as they bought the MSRs from all the banks post-2009. I can see how it became valuable over time if you assumed (as most did) that Ocwen/Erby were just good, salt-of-the-earth, capitalists.

7.38% last year! woo I'm rich! :D

I will have to catch up on calculating my monthly returns...I used to do it religiously but have gotten lazy :D

Merry Xmas to all...and thanks Sanjeev for the board!

Not sure I agree...the stock market is more efficient than not. Things are usually cheap for a reason. Nobody goes to the grocery store and buys spoiled food just because it's half price.

I would find some way to measure marketing presence ($s spent as % of AUM, or perhaps some other metric) and compare that to historical returns. My guess is heavy marketers underperform, so you could use it as a tool to disqualify asset managers (rather than select).

Someone with more computing skill than I could probably figure out a way to automatically pull all sold listings from ebay...all you would need is the sale price (maybe shipping cost)/date/product ID....chart that stuff, find the items with most variable sale price above a requisite level of volume, regress the price over time, pick a certain RoC you want (i.e. 25%), and go from there. Frankly, ebay should take this idea and sell it to their power sellers, if they don't already.

In a similar vein, here is the application to basketball drafts/trades: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/12/how_daryl_morey_used_behavioral_economics_to_revolutionize_the_art_of_nba.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru We should start a compilation of instances where you have these alternative markets which are priced "differently".

Hey congrats! I suggest a hockey stick in one hand and a copy of intelligent investor in the other.

Real good posts, SD

OMG! What an evil monster! The world will have access to more energy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all going to die!!!!! Oil is already very cheap You ignore potential environmental externalities This will delay investment into less-invasive energy production, especially solar energy

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-putin-and-exxonmobil-team-up-to-destroy-the-planet-fb88650acfa1#.9qiegtlq9 Might want to purchase some XOM stock

What multiple of earnings was MSFT in 99-00? There's a difference between paying 25-30x earnings vs. 80-100x edit: NVM, it was trading at about 30x earnings.

I look at it two ways: 1) A diversified portfolio is one which eliminates systematic risk. I read somewhere that ~30 positions remove something like 95% of systematic risk. From that perspective I would say that anything under 30 positions is "not-diversified" 2) What is the amount of stocks to own, that if equally weighted, a permanent loss of capital in one position would have a meaningful effect on the overall portfolio. For me that is about 10 positions.

Lot of interesting factors here. Availability of capital is a big one. Also I think more venture stage companies are highly scalable and require less capital to fund, hence less reliance on public $

in my 20s with <250K. So, young and poor!