LC

Just got thru the series finale of Mr Robot. God damn, that is a highly recommended show.

I'll tell ya Scott (or Liz) is an interesting character, wish she stuck around here...and I disagree with her on about half of those points (particularly on the reflexivity and related topics) but one thing I will take a recommendation from her on is aspects of copy-writing, advertising, etc. And in general I'd say most of us are only really able to speak on one or two topics to the point we should be advising others, and it's usually what we do for our day jobs. ;D

https://thespoon.tech/uber-eats-is-doing-ghost-kitchens-heres-how-that-could-change-food-delivery/

WACC includes debt financing costs.

https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Rules-of-Thumb-Industry-Averages-Standards.cfm Grain of salt...my guess is NYC SF will most likely have a different rent structure than Kansas, but I am no expert.

Saying the same thing in another way: If you have a billion dollars, better to invest only $100MM and earn 10 percent, then take the other $900MM and go buy some islands. Rather than invest the entire for 1% and have zero islands :( I vote islands.

https://www.zillow.com/research/silver-tsunami-inventory-boomers-24933/ Some research on housing supply release over the coming years.

Thanks Greg. I am starting to do something similar but for vacation properties, not even looking for capital appreciation. Would be nice to have 3 places to live for 4 months of the year, then rent/airBNB for the remainder. Difficult is managing from afar if something goes wrong. I am willing to give up a % to a property manager so that will have to be the way to go, but I'm not sure how effective they really are for single family residences.

Greg, are these properties in the same area that you live? If not, how do you manage landlord-related duties (fixing or replacing something etc.)?

aside from an intrinsic "moat", characteristics would be: low capital requirements, addictive or necessary product, ability to scale. historically what has been good: the vices, gambling and drugs in particular although it's easy money so people will always want a cut. "expertise" services: particularly protected ones like doctor/nursing centers, dentists, specialists. look at places where a number of people get moderately rich. the uber-filthy rich are monopolists, in essence. difficult to disrupt, many factors outside of your control. the moderate rich provide services/businesses that are more achievable.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/investing/nyse-direct-listings-spotify-slack/index.html Perhaps another factor influencing high equity prices: less publicly traded companies

I didn't notice a Happy Thanksgiving thread, so here's my happy "post-Thanksgiving" wishes (no reason we can't be grateful on other days :) ). From below the Canada-US border, thanks to Sanjeev for managing this forum and everyone who contributes, both silently and loudly!

https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio This used S&P reported earnings Currently at 23x earnings which is relatively high but with low interest rates and low tax rates may be justified.

Why not just use P/E which does conform to GAAP?

Check out the Gates Foundation 13Fs. Thoughts on RSG vs WM? RSG seems like slight better operators but WM has more scale.

https://macro-ops.com/the-greatest-value-investor-youve-never-heard/ “We can have no finer role model. First and foremost, he was a value investor — a member of that eccentric tribe that believes it’s better to underpay than to overpay.” Those words by James Grant were in reference to one of the greatest value investors the world has ever seen. It’s not who you think it is. And no, you couldn’t guess him given fifty chances. This investor remains off the beaten path, absent from many investors’ Mt. Rushmore of allocators.

Aren't most of the S&P 500 going to be around? I bet that 50% of them will still be in the index. On average, there is a 4.4% change to the index each year according to this article https://www.businessinsider.com/sp-500-index-constituent-turnover-2015-6 Yes but that cuts your universe down 50%. And over 20 years it cuts it down almost 100%. You can simplify the question and ask, "what companies will be around in 20 years" and not even worry about growth - the rest simply won't exist.

You're asking a difficult question. Start by narrowing it down: What companies will be around in 10 years? Then figure out which markets have room to grow for 10 years. Forget the 15% number, if you can get those 2 points correct, the rest will take care of itself.

Or the updated version, Letterkenny

Also just my 2 cents - these read like pseudo-marketing materials where you throw a bunch of fancy words out there and hope it convinces someone to invest with you. Not saying that's the case here as I don't know these guys at all, they may have it right on the money for all I know. But when I hear phrases like "time dilation", "velocity of information"...my eyes roll backwards a bit :)

More from these guys https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca38f3216b6405d11e3d4b4/t/5cd77067c830251ea8301574/1557622902586/ComplexityInvesting_9.1.8_Aug19-1.pdf

Bought some ABS as a symbolic gesture, sold TAP a few weeks ago around 58. Breakeven sale price, made a few % from the dividends...and very happy to get it out of the portfolio.

Even more so I think the benefit of AI comes in medical diagnostics. Huge structured training sets, if people were allowed to anonymize their health records and sell them, en masse to developers, that is decades of medical history over millions of people. Perfect conditions to train models.

Exactly. Then the question becomes: what enables high interest rates. And the answer there is, scarcity of capital. Now, I would argue that human capital is cheap. Financial capital is cheap. Material capital is cheap. So, what will cause a contraction in capital availability? That is the question.

When looking at an overall economy, profit margins are important exactly for the reasons you mention: a signification change in profit margins indicate a structural change in the overall economy. Again if we are looking at an overall economy, is ROE a flawed metric because is ignores the cost of debt? There must be a cost paid by economies which deflate the value of debt capital. Therefore, I would think ROC would be more informative of the nature of an economy.