mcliu

What about euphoria in sneakers and streetwear? People are trading these like stocks.. https://stockx.com/ You can literally build a portfolio of shoes and track the prices.. :o

Also this guy: https://globalnews.ca/news/4798689/thrifty-social-worker-11-million-childrens-charities/

Has anyone done an analysis on the break-even point between rent vs buying? How high do prices have to get for an average family before it makes sense to rent instead of buy?

Been reading his stuff for a number of years now. Excellent stuff. It's nice that he's pushing for good governance in Asia. Most of those "public" companies are still run for the management or controlling families. Complete disregard for minority shareholders. Nonetheless, despite his efforts, it seems like a futile battle (in terms of improving governance), but at least he's making great returns doing it.

I think it actually cancels out because the newly issued currency is a liability on their balance sheet which is used to purchase assets like bonds. As bonds mature, the cash asset simply offsets the liabilities. I guess they'll earn a profit on the interest, but the excess profits will be paid back to the Treasury anyways, so they won't end up with infinite cash. I think the purpose of QE is not to provide infinite stimulus but liquidity. As liquidity improves and extreme risk-aversion subsides, the central bank can pull back and let the market take over these functions.

The other problem is if rates in Canada are much lower than the US, there'll probably be significant capital outflows.

Cyclical industry, commodity products, lots of pension obligations. What's not to like? ;D To be fair, they've done fairly well on some of these investments like Ridley and Resolute (maybe).

The communications update?

Page 21 of Q3 report. $500M worth of share-based payments? ::)

Overall returns, net of overhead runoff and investments gains/losses, have been weak. If you back out the non-cash gain from the Quess' accounting reclassification, book value barely grew. It'll be hard to achieve the 15% BV growth that FFH has been targeting. I think the market is waiting for better results on the investment side before it'll revalue shares.

Valuation still cheaper than crypto.

I wonder if there's a chart that shows the net $ amount that Ackman's made/lost because some of his big losses came when Pershing Square was much larger..

If you back-out the one-time Quess gain, equity returns are still quite weak..

Maybe I've misunderstood, but I thought Buffett's position was not "everyone should index" but that fund managers (on average) are charging way too much for their mediocre performance? Isn't it also true that for one manager to outperform, you need another manager to under-perform by the same amount? But if both managers take fees, the aggregate net worth of the investor is less.. So what's wrong with his stance here..?

I think he's got a point here, even if it's somewhat promotional for his fun; an LBO is really just financial engineering and low volatility is merely a mirage because assets aren't being marked-to-market every minute.. It seems pretty obvious, since the underlying asset, a business/corporation/company, is the same for a stock fund vs a PE fund, but many institutional investors think PE is somehow better. ::)

Are you suggesting that underwriting (ex. CAT) will be a lot weaker next year? or they'll make more investment losses?

I have a hobby selling physical gold & silver. I will sell bars & coins and stuff like that. I have established clients and am always getting new ones. I can tell you WITHOUT A DOUBT that more people are interested in precious metals when the price is going up and the price is HIGH. Most people WILL NOT buy when the price is low...they are too scared it is going lower. They want to buy when it is high & going higher. I also suspect that this is the same in most markets. Perhaps it is because Jane Blow heard about Joe Blow making a killing in XYZ market. That peaks her interest and she wants to be like "Joe Blow". At the bottom of markets, you aren't hearing about how people made a killing...you are hearing about how they LOST MONEY. Nobody wants to lose, so nobody is interested. At market tops (or near) you hear plenty of stories about people getting rich, paying off houses, how "it is different this time" and so on. Thus, more people get interested, get involved and the market(s) go higher. A self reinforcing loop? I'm buying more. I bought very little in 2017, most of my buying was in 2015-16. I started buying again when it first went bellow $12K this month and I am buying more today. If it drops from here I'll be buying more still. What % of your portfolio are you allocating to this?

Interesting question.. I would like to know if someone's done the math here as well.. The total out-performance vs S&P since 1970 is 2.65% so if you backed out the 21% annual from BRK, did the rest of the portfolio really add value?

There is some truth to some of the above, but I want to focus on this: "It sits on a computer in a database that can be shut or compromised by anyone at any time.Gold doesn't suffer the same fragility and I consoder it a useless investment as well." It isn't on "a computer", but on thousands of them or more. No one can shut off bitcoin as long as there is a network of some kind in operation. A large scale nuclear war which permanently shuts down the internet never for it to be rebuilt would permanently shut down bitcoin, this is the case where gold wins and why gold will always retain some value. It is the preppers store of value and always will be. But short of armageddon bitcoin is preferable to gold. As long as the internet is operating anywhere in the world the blockchain will live, but even if the internet goes down world wide temporarily the blockchain mining will continue right where it left off when it comes back up. It may take a few minutes or hours to reach consensus if that were to happen, but there will be enough people with enough invested to be motivated to make sure that it does happen. The blockchain could be compromised in theory utilizing massive amounts of computing resources, but the more value Bitcoin has the more expensive an attack would have to be. Even now it would almost have to be a state actor to pull it off, and once you get Bitcoin valued into the $trillions even states would most likely not be able to do it. There are many good arguments against bitcoin, but "it isn't physical so someone could turn it off or compromise it" isn't one of them. The best 2 arguments against investing in Bitcoin right now are 1) It has gotten way ahead of itself in value and there will be a giant crash before it someday goes higher when the technology is ready to go mainstream. 2) There is really only a need for one gold replacing store of value and some other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin will be it. And 2.5) The governments of the world will find someway to destroy it while they still can. I'm thinking maybe passing massive regulations and laws against it, to drive the price down, then use a massive amount of computing resources to attack it. I'm thinking #1 is most likely and is not an argument for never investing in Bitcoin, just not investing now. I called the last one 2.5, because that would just cause #2 to happen. A state-actor resistant coin would need to be invented which somehow limits 51% attacks, I'm not sure how that would work. But I don't think the government (any government capable of doing this anyway) will try it. I think it is more likely that CB will eventually start buying it to diversify their reserves. This is quite interesting. I haven't looked at bitcoins or crypto-currency in any detail, but I was wondering, what's the reason behind choosing bitcoin vs another crypto-currency? Gold exhibits certain properties that other elements do not which makes it suitable as a store of value. With digital currencies, can't anyone come up with an alternative say, bitcoin-2, bitcoin-3.. bitcoin-n, that exhibit the same characteristics as bitcoin? So, why bitcoin and not an alternative crypto? I guess the corollary to that is, would gold be as valuable if we could somehow produce an alternative gold that exhibits the same characteristics as gold.. gold v2, goldv3... goldvn?

Slightly off-topic, but is there a reason why Bitcoin is preferred over other cryptocurrencies?

https://www.barrons.com/articles/q-a-why-a-value-investor-decided-to-buy-bitcoin-1511810246

It's interesting how sentiment has shifted so quickly. When the company was hedged and expected return was pretty low (<6%), shares traded at 1.5x adj. BV. Now that the hedges have lifted, expected returns should be much higher (>10%), shares are trading at 1.0x adj. BV. :o

That's true, but MySpace had a large user base too. Plus, WhatsApp and Instagram were bought not built. It's feasible someone comes up with the next big thing.. I think Apple's ecosystem (esp on the consumer side) is stickier than what most people believe because everything is integrated.

1) FB (There will be other social platforms) 2) MSFT (Lower switching costs than in the past?) 3) AMZN (Great leader and business model but retail is tough) 4) AAPL (Higher switching costs than MSFT?) 5) GOOG (Natural monopoly)

The other question is, how do you distinguish real demand, as in families living in houses, from speculative demand, buying to flip? Supply elasticity is probably low given high transaction costs, long time to build, difficulty finding a new place, etc. etc.