boilermaker75
-
Posts
1,872 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by boilermaker75
-
-
I don't understand why you wouldn't get the digital version of Barrons/WSJ on your iPhone/iPad.
I subscribe to the WSJ digitally and it's constantly being updated with breaking news etc. And a lot of the articles are archived if you need to access later. If you're really worried you could always use Instapaper for another means of archiving articles.
I get both. Since I am an educator I get the print and digital as a package deal for $99 a year.
-
This is why my heart has checked out of engineering, though it still pays the bills. I want to put my heart more into VALUE investing because I feel the results are more inline with truth.
ROFL. ;D ::) :D ;D
OK, sorry man. You want the truth? Investing is way way way way way more away from truth than engineering is, was or will ever be.
Engineering is at least measurable and actually measured in good organizations. Investing? Well, 99% if not more investors don't add any value. Even on this forum, I'd guess more than 50% of already 1%'ers don't add any value. Discussions here? The truth? LOL. It's all agendas and biases and p3n15 size and all that. Even the best investors just push their agenda and run their book.
You see this is such a situation. I don't know if are to put it politely: just egging me on or if you truly don't get what I said.
Best investors push the agenda? to who do I push my agenda? Personal investing is a solitary job, it is convincing yourself. If you push some BS agenda to yourself then its called denial.
Maybe my explanation is just off, tell you what, save me the thought watch Big Short, and go to the part where the austic Michael Burry says in response to "are you being sarcastic", something to the effect "I don't know how to lie I don't know how to BS I don't know how to be sarcastic all I know is numbers....."
Or go to the part where the Frontpoint team is introduced and how they in effect think everyone else is a moron and they are right and make money off being right.
[edit] ok I fired off that response too soon, what I mean is:
in investing your own money: you get paid if your bet is right (truthful whatever adjective you want)
in engineering you make money convincing others you are right....... to a certain extent
Could you give an example where you can make money in engineering by convincing people you are right?
Let me show an example of my own experience why I don't think this could typically be possible in engineering, at least not for long.
My first job as an engineer was in 1976 working at Intel. I was designing microcomputers. In those days two engineers designed the whole chip. It would come back from fab and we would test it and not everything worked. If I tried to convince anyone else that it worked, it wouldn't be too long before the truth was known. Once we "claimed" it was working it had to go to reliability testing and my lie would soon be discovered. I would probably then be out of a job and no longer making money from engineering. Instead the two of us had to figure out what didn't work, fix the design and resubmit to fab. We usually had to go through this several times before we got it working, after which it would then go to reliability testing and eventually to production.
-
After years of no problems with morning delivery of the WSJ, it stopped being delivered. After complaining for weeks, WSJ is now delivered to me via US mail. It comes the same day, just not in the morning. I just recently received an email from WSJ that starting May 31 I would start getting it again by early morning delivery. I'll see how that goes.
Like someone else mentioned, my first job was delivering newspapers. Great learning experience, especially trying to collect from customers! Every customer had a ticket, which I had a duplicate of, and I would punch the weeks for which I collected on my ticket, and theirs. Amazing how many people would argue they had paid when their tickets weren't punched. I loved using that coin changer I wore around my waist when I went collecting.
-
None of the above.
-
Frozen Orange Juice Concentrate
Did Beeks get you a copy of the crop report?
-
From Ross Perot's Biography.
"I clearly remember the day that Margot and I shopped for her engagement ring. We bought it in Baltimore at Tyson's Jewelers. It cost eight hundred dollars. That almost cleaned out my bank account, but it was worth every penny."
Members of this board probably don't have the ability to find a wonderful woman and see that a wife is a great investment.
Who run the world, girls - Beyonce.
"She's so fine, there's no tellin' where the money went," Robert Palmer.
-
If my daughter ever gets engaged, I am going to offer them $20k to elope!
-
rk - what is your opinion of the quality of German made vehicles? I think they have the lowest quality of any manufacturer at the moment. I have heard from both BMW and Volkswagen owners. However, these brands are doing extremely well in the US - contributing to 75B trade deficit with Germany.
We have had several German made cars (VW and Mercedes) and have found them to be of low quality. More details in this post,
http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/tsla-tesla-motors/960/
-
Am I the only guy who doesn't have a picture with Buffett or Munger?
Mine is Ampere's right hand rule ;)
-
I have zero advice on getting an office type job, but I'd encourage a more blue collar summer job.
I painted houses one year and it was an excellent experience. We were paid a bonus by how fast we worked and how well the job was done. We could work as many hours as we wanted and to a college kid the cash was just rolling in. The job was great, it taught me discipline, how to work hard, and that hard work often results in monetary gain. I also learned a skill that's useful even now as an adult.
Another summer I worked in an auto parts factory. The money was decent, the work was boring, but it gave me a perspective I could have never received otherwise. I got to know fellow workers, I understood why they had careers in a factory, and learned the types of things I should avoid in life if I didn't want to find myself stamping out car doors the rest of my life.
College graduation in a decent field is practically a guaranteed coffee grabbing, cube sitting type job. Use the summers in college to gain experience you'd never get otherwise. Your kid seems like he might enjoy something off the beaten path.
I totally agree. For two summers when I was in college I worked for my city's street department, which meant riding on the back of a garbage truck. Talk about something that will motivate one to study!
-
I've read dozens of books on valuation and investing. One that I happen to be reading now is "F Wall Street" by Joe Ponzio. While the title and marketing for the book are not attractive to me, the content is actually quite good. Ponzio steps through how to arrive at Owner Earnings (Warren Buffett's view on earnings that is cash-based and so the results as you would see them were you the owner of the enterprise). He also steps through how to estimate the intrinsic value of a company (also a WEB reference to the discounted cash flow model), which is a rational alternative to just "going with your gut". He actually gets both of these approximately right (which is more than you can say for many such attempts at emulating Warren Buffett).
I think that you could do much worse than this book as a starting place for thinking about how to value a company. He gives a few examples also, which is always necessary for me to truly internalize a concept.
Happy reading!
alpha23
Another engineer, electrical, here.
I stumbled on Joe Ponzios's blog when he first started it, which was before his book. Unfortunately he hasn't posted since mid-2011,
-
I always file tax early, in late Feb or early March.
Possibly OT: IB amended their 1099 on Feb 22. I was lucky that I did not file last week. Amendments suck. Hopefully they are done. I'll probably wait couple more weeks though.
I did my taxes this weekend, but I am waiting till April to file in case my brokers amend anything and because Turbotax continually has software updates.
-
What's the advantage of using the desktop version instead of online version other than the ability to import IB 1099?
The online version is able to remember last year's loss carry-forward, though I know I can just manually do that myself.
I don't know. I have never looked at the on-line version.
I started using MacInTax at least 15 years ago, so I am just used to going with the desktop version.
-
Although I don't know what the problem was, I was able to get my IB data imported into Turbotax. I was downloading the IB 1099 using Safari, which would not import to TurboTax. When I switched to Firefox the downloaded IB 1099 would import to TurboTax.
For you Mac users, the exact same issue, and fix, this year when trying to download, and then import into TurboTax, the IB TXF file. Actually I had to search for this post of mine from last year to remember how I got it to work.
-
In the US? No. I suspect this selling is being fuelled by SWFs liquidating some of their holdings which is creating volatility and selling pressure, which is making people nervous and fearful, which ends up fuelling more selling (margin calls, MF redemptions, HF liquidations, fear based selling etc). All I'm reading is people trying to find reasons for why we're headed for a crisis but coming up with nothing substantial, but the market is worried, so anything negative will get more legs than it should. This episode does seem to point out how fragile market liquidity is in the post QE, post Dodd-Frank world, there's been a lot of sharp, bizarre selloffs. Anyways, this is just a best guess. Glad I'm not a macro guy, so difficult to know if you're making the right connections.
So this market drop is all because of single white females liquidating their portfolios?
Seriously, what are SWFs?
Sovereign Wealth Funds
Of course, thanks!
-
In the US? No. I suspect this selling is being fuelled by SWFs liquidating some of their holdings which is creating volatility and selling pressure, which is making people nervous and fearful, which ends up fuelling more selling (margin calls, MF redemptions, HF liquidations, fear based selling etc). All I'm reading is people trying to find reasons for why we're headed for a crisis but coming up with nothing substantial, but the market is worried, so anything negative will get more legs than it should. This episode does seem to point out how fragile market liquidity is in the post QE, post Dodd-Frank world, there's been a lot of sharp, bizarre selloffs. Anyways, this is just a best guess. Glad I'm not a macro guy, so difficult to know if you're making the right connections.
So this market drop is all because of single white females liquidating their portfolios?
Seriously, what are SWFs?
-
I don't know if this signals a bottom . But it's kind of funny.
Thanks
Mark
Their clients are going to start referring to them as Goldman Sucks.
-
I'd forgot Stewart. Funny.
Our bottom line result is that perfect foresight has great returns, but gut-wrenching drawdowns. In other words, an active manager who was clairvoyant, and knew ahead of time exactly which stocks were going to be long-term winners and long-term losers, would likely get fired many times over if they were managing other people’s money.
http://blog.alphaarchitect.com/2016/02/02/even-god-would-get-fired-as-an-active-investor/
Do you remember this one? I find it just as funny,
-
...anyone who underperforms for 5 years+, should just close the shop and stop selling themselves as great investor.
I was a great investor for the 5 years 1995-2000.
Stewart is that you?
-
I think the president has a lot less influence on the economy and markets than we like to give him/her credit for.
At least that is what I hope with the set of candidates we have!
-
Just finished The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge.
I liked it, but it matched the model I already have of how things work. Most great innovations, events, discoveries, etc. actually result from an evolutionary process and not the result of some great plan. No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy.
-
Benjamin Graham, The Father of Financial Analysis Kindle Edition
Short read but was great.
Thanks for bringing the book to attention.I'll check it out
Yes, thank you.
-
I've used H&R Block every year since 1996 (It was called Taxcut back then). I've never tried anything else, before that I did my taxes by hand on paper forms.
I was a long-time user of Turbo Tax Deluxe until last year when they moved the stock gain/loss functionality to the Premiere version which cost about $80. I switched to H&R Block software for about $30 and was able to import my Turbo Tax data from the prior year. Turbo Tax and HR Block software are almost the same in ease of use, but the price difference was huge.
I was not happy when TurboTax moved the stock gain/loss to Premier but I continued to use TurboTax because of importing data from previous years. I did not know you could import data from TurboTax into H&R Block. I already bought Turbotax for 2015 but next year I'll take a serious look at H&R Block.
-
I have always used TurboTax. I do a lot of option trading, so it is very nice, essential, to be able to import all my trades directly from my brokers.
This woman is really amazing!
in General Discussion
Posted
OK, i understand where you are coming from. It is a question of how long before the deception is discovered. In the situation at Intel back in the seventies it would not have been long, a few months maybe. As an aside, even though Intel was only 8 years old when I joined there were already 6000 employees. It is possible that only 200 were over 30 years old! It sure seemed that way.
I guess an example is Theranos, which took a long time to discover. This whole company had to be a part of the deception. I wonder how much was intentional and how much was self-deception? I guess the courts will try to decide that.