matts

thank you for your excellent rebuttal.

I was referring to the blind faith in the government and the indirect condemnation of those exposed in the paradise papers (who are not criminals while those releasing the papers are). What are you talking about? A tax resident of the US or Spain for example, not declaring their income that they hid offshore is against the law in that country, hence by definition said person would be a criminal. I know that does not apply to ALL named in the Panama Papers, but would apply to some (many?). Based on your attitude towards the government and taxes, the IRS should be auditing you every single year :P something tells me they would find some interesting discrepancies.

finally

I think your idea is really interesting Cardboard. I don't think I have ever heard a proposal for China to annex NK, although I'm sure it's not entirely new. My view is that over the next decade or two, China will become a global power comparable to the old Soviet union. They will consider most of Asia under their purview. It's likely that 20 years from now, China controls NK anyway. So they might as well start acting like it now and prevent a potential nuclear incident.

Nah, you're on point. I would also add that this book was very dry. Not nearly as readable as his other stuff. It's like he didn't bother to make sure the stories were engaging before putting them in the book.

My vote would also be for a separate board.

Imagine if the ratings showed that almost no one watched the debates and imagine if on election day less than a million people showed up to vote. How could these idiots even pretend that they have some kind of mandate to rule? Do you really believe that? Politicians would love that scenario as they could better concentrate their resources on only that million. And then they would care even less about what is best for the majority of the country.

Yes, because we are all socialists on this board. Value investors are well know for their communist tendencies of course.

I mean no offence, but this just seems like a bitter rant from someone who has been wrong on oil and has lost a lot of money doing so (I could be wrong, but am I?). Central banks should come together to "prop up" oil? Really?

Well, in my opinion, if one really wants to learn to invest - one can't say I am going to pick some stocks and then forget about them for the next 10 years. He explicitly said the following: "Do you think these companies are worthy of holding for a decade or two? I don't want to switch/monitor them all the time." Unfortunately, buy and hold does not mean buy and forget. If you really want to buy and forget, then a low cost index fund is a reasonably good choice that is as good as (or better than) anything else. If I want to learn to invest, then that's a separate thread. I would not start by trying to pick winners I can hold for a decade and be unwilling to monitor them. Isn't it? +1

I strongly recommend you read Stahl's latest paper. http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Your%20Bond%20Index%20is%20Not%20Immune%20to%20the%20ETF%20Bubble_FINAL.pdf

I just wanted to add that I emailed Darren Gee a couple straight-forward questions about his capital allocation policies on August 20th and still have not heard back. I know he's busy and there are other factors that affect his ability to communicate, but I'm still disappointed he did not reply to a shareholder's simple question (nothing that would even come close to REG FD).

Interactive brokers has a prime broker platform.

I would look into Tricon Capital (TCN.TO). Traded in Canada but almost all of its business is US residential real estate. They bought single family houses for renting, master planned communities, empty lots, and they also have a management business, running 3rd party capital in the above strategies.

This is my favourite part...

Yeah, but you don't expect them to keep making the same mistake year after year. This is why I think it is bad capital allocation decision as opposed to an honest one off mistake made by management. Exactly. The dividend isn't a one time decision. It's ongoing sub-optimal capital allocation that has never been explained. We need to stop treating poor allocation as a single mistake in the way that me spilling coffee on you is a mistake. "Oh, my bad. Stuff happens. Besides, look at all the other nice things I do for you"

+1. I'm continuously surprised how biased this board is towards FFH despite the moves of the past few years. I wonder if it partially linked psychologically to some of you making a fortune thanks to FFH after the bear raid.

My general philosophy on this is similar to yours. The firm's feeling is that the traders have a "feel for the market" and can "find liquidity". I'm skeptical, but it's a small first and I'm fairly new so that's why I'm hoping to gather some data instead of just sounding like I'm paranoid or cynical. We are small but large and active enough that we get 1 cent/share execution from the brokers (this is in Canada) whether it goes electronic or worked by a trader. So it's not a cost issue, more of a question of which broker is doing a better job or if we could do a better job ourselves. If the trade is small relative to volume we'll just send an electronic vwap, but sometimes it can be 3 times average volume and the broker "works" it over a few days so we stay below 20% of volume. That's the general instruction, but we don't have much visibility into what the broker is doing. Just get an average fill price at the end.

I know most board members don't trade very large blocks of shares but for those that do, how do you evaluate the execution of your broker? I work for a very small asset manager and we typically give our broker discretionary instructions and he fills the trade within the timeframe we specify (usually by end of day). We also sometimes tell them to fill it electronically throughout the day using vwap. We have 2 brokers but the whole trade goes to one of them so it can't be directly compared. So how would one evaluate which one is better at execution? We sometimes compare our average price to the vwap price for the day, but of course that is pretty meaningless when our instructions are to fill at vwap. Thanks in advance. Matt

Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that phrase concerns primary offering of shares (new shares created by the custodian). As long as it's traded on NASDAQ you should have no problems buying it in the secondary market (off someone else).

I'm certainly not a lawyer, but it looks like you just engineered yourself a performance fee structure. I doubt the regulators would have trouble making a case against you if they decided to put any effort in.

I worked next to someone who was very into fantasy sports but wasn't that into investing. But I could tell by the amount of analytical thought he put into his hobby he would be a great investor. So I mentioned it to him, "Hey, if you are going to spend hours and hours each week outsmarting people, why not try stocks which could also make you financially independent?" He did try and he is very very good at it. Whenever you see someone enjoying a hobby with deep analysis that involves probabilities and handicapping, chances are they will be decent investors. If they have the right emotional temperament that is.

This is the kind of comment that panics people. Ebola is not airborne and is extremely difficult to transmit through the air.

My understanding is that most ETFs are legally funds. So yes, the fund will be taxed for all it's income (dividends, interest, realized gains ect), even if you don't get taxed until you sell the instrument.

Short Renaissance IPO ETF(NYSEARCA:IPO)?