LC

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!

Obviously not, Richard. Does property rights protection mean it's legal to steal? Does making murder a criminal act mean it's legal to murder my neighbor? Does A equal non A? Which brings me to my third observation about this thread. It's a frustrating waste of everyone's time. It's a bit disingenuous to first chastise members for not wanting to debate underlying philosophical issues, then stomp out the conversation and call it a "waste of time" when someone steps up to the plate. I personally agree with Richard on his shades of grey comment regarding your philosophy.

Hershey probably could.

Sold about 1/3 of my BAC position (all commons). Would like to repurchase at some point, but we'll see what the market does.

Haha! I had to google Gyp Rossetti. I'm too "vanilla" for that! I think it's because I was raised in an Irish-Italian neighborhood. Lots of redheads roaming around after Catholic school let out when I was younger. Don't tell the nuns! :D That's fine, but....can we still talk about attractive women, or men, or sex in general, without being accused of some misogynist crap or whatever you were alluding to earlier about "shit like this"? FWIW, women like talking about sex too!

My boy Bernie put out a statement on Trump: Seems about as reasonable as it can get. I wish this guy could have run instead ;D

What's the problem with talking about how a woman is sexy??? Damn Puritans, I swear. Or maybe a discussion of David Faber's impressive jawline is more up your alley? ;D For what it's worth I've got a thing for redheads...Stephanie Ruhle and Julia Boorstin are sultry as hell.

Trump has 4 years to justify himself. I for one, selfishly hope he does. Everyone seems to be jumping off a cliff but what else can one be except hopeful that he will do a good job?

it's easy to be divisive, it's hard to unite people.

I respect that. That's how I felt about Anthony Weiner actually when I first heard of the sexting, but then it just got worse and worse. The flip side is the "explicit" deceiver will continue to make the same mistakes over and over. The "refined" deceiver will at least stop doing so in order to hide their future deceit. To make it more clear: Trump will continue doing the same stupid shit he has done in the past. At least now that the world has shined a light on Hillary's fuck-ups, she'll probably stop doing so. I.e. won't be using a private email server, obviously selling out to foreign interests, etc. She'll still do shady shit, but it will have to be more calculated and therefore she'll have to compromise more.

Hm. I have Geico insurance. Check to see if other providers charge less. I bought a car a few months back, Geico quoted me $75/mo vs. $50/mo from Statefarm.

The biggest thing I've learned from Buffett is not to do ANY business with him.