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LongHaul

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Everything posted by LongHaul

  1. Charlie Munger was a bottomless well of wisdom. What a great man in thought, words and action. I was reading Charlie's Almanack again ~10 years after I first read it and it was so deep and relevant and I was able to make more connections with more life experience. I will be eternally grateful for the wisdom he shared as I think it made many of us better human beings. “Always take the high road, it's far less crowded.” ― Charlie Munger
  2. I have also heard a lot of positive things about Ray Dalio from someone who worked there. I respect him and enjoy learning from him. I think he is genuinely trying to teach people. He doesn't exactly come across as a super slick salesman. Anyone can criticize anyone else. Easiest thing in the world. Sometimes articles tell you more about the critic than anything he has written. I wonder how much envy and liberal bias affect some of the reporting.
  3. Thanks Ulti. I really admire you for giveing your practice to a younger honest dentist vs selling out. (I have had a lot of problems with dentists over the years and appreciate an honest one). Maybe you can tell the younger dentist to step on the marketing pedal and take a lot of market share.
  4. The opportunity is competing against the PE firms. They are easy marks with high prices, bad service, gutted operations, burning employees out and pissing off customers. Can anyone think of a public company that is long term oriented that has its primary competition as PE firms? One of the secrets to business - weak competition.
  5. Private Equity operators are very short term oriented. Their funds usually expire in 7-10 years and they are required to sell all their businesses in that time frame. How would you run a business you were going to sell in 7 - 10 years? The obvious answer is that they are incentived to maximize short term profits and even cut muscle in the short run. If you are buying an IPO of a private equity controlled company, buyer beware. They want to sell for as much as they can in the short run and want to leave the public holding the bag. They have likely already cut all the fat and much muscle out of the business, raised prices too high, underinvested in capex, and all types of necessary long term initiatives, etc. Then a schmuck comes along and belives their bullshit and buys it. Then watch as competitors take share and eventually profits erode and the business falls apart. (OK that doesn't always happen but I often see it) Great to compete against the P/E buttheads though. I was recently trying to have a tooth removed by an Oral Surgeon and The P/E backed office would not give me a price until I really pushed them (it was like pulling teeth) It rubbed me the wrong way and I found a competitor who would do it for half the price without the BS runaround. I have frequently found these BS games when dealing the the PE guys who don't know business.
  6. Anyone know which is the "very recent podcast" with Charlie Munger that Buffett's mentioned in his annual letter?
  7. I did not read the paper but Totally agree with the premise. The Chinese government has likely been lying about China's GDP growth for 10+ years. Apparently GDP doesn't even add up from the regional to national level. Compound out 10+ years of inflated GDP and it is probably a very big number. I think I read that China is lying about the size of their population also. That would make the real estate problem much, much worse in China. There was an analysis of lights and GDP and dictators generally claim their GDP is higher than reality for various reasons.
  8. I have a friend who is an experienced Hedge Fund CFO and Controller. He has spent 7 years at funds and 15 years finance/accounting experience overall. He is seeking a finance/accounting position at a Hedge Fund/PE/Venture/Family Office. Preference for Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area or remote roles. High character individual and very capable. PM me and I can put you in touch. Thank You, Longhaul *Sorry for the general post as the jobs area seems to be gone and wasn't sure where to post.
  9. Hi Dealraker, I would really love to read your writeup of "The 12 Ways GE Misleads Investors." That is awesome that you could see that very early. I have a big fascination with frauds.
  10. I would echo the information about health and exercise. I started becoming a bit of a health nut around 17 years ago and our brains and bodies are extremely interconnected with what we eat and exercise and even stress. There are at least 20+ parts of our body that benefit from healthy eating including the heart, minimizing cancer, kidneys, immune system, inflamation, skin, liver and probably the brain. I have been surprised how many of our body systems are connected to healthy eating. And health is a form of wealth. https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/foods-linked-to-better-brainpower
  11. I have heard that the NYC public library has old OID issues. Would be a great learning experience to read those.
  12. The New UI looks worse in my opinion. I am not sure why - maybe it is the lines that I like.
  13. I like this one a lot too. Thanks BG.
  14. You have ~102% of cash (daily) in place of the shares as collateral . If there is a loss beyond that Schwab should be the counterparty. Generally safe.
  15. That is super funny photo Cigarbutt I agree- I would like to see some bigger studies. Here is an article on a prior study. Bottom line: ~1.9 day reduction in length of illness. https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/edinburgh-scientists-make-breakthrough-finding-cure-common-cold-143824
  16. 1991 and 1992 OID Berkshire Meeting notes https://theoraclesclassroom.com/resources/ The Wesco OID notes would be great too. Here is the 1991 Wesco Annual meeting from OID https://theoraclesclassroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/OID-Wesco-1991-Meeting.pdf Please PM if you can share other archives
  17. Does anyone know how to get archived OID (Outstanding Investor Digest) issues? I would really like to read the old transcripts of Berkshire annual meeting in the 1980's.
  18. Nasal Irrigaiton (Neti Pot) I thought this study and at least 1 other on nasal irrigation were fascinating. This makes a lot of sense to me because: 1. Nasal irrigation is agitating inside the sinus and flushes out microbes from your body. 2. There seems to be clear data from this study and others. Another study found ~ 2 days fewer symptoms and less transmission. 3. Anecdotally, I had a sinus infection off an on for a couple of months and it was largely gone withn 1 week after I started the Neti pot. Feel free to comment Cigarbutt as I believe you are a doctor and do great research. ~88% reduction of hospitalization with Nasal irrigation (Salt - Bakingsoda/Iodine) see Figure 2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.16.21262044v3.full-text Download figure Open in new tab Figure 2: Percent Severe Outcomes in Nasal Irrigation Group Compared to CDC Dataset Percent of patients ≥55 in the prospective nasal irrigation group who were hospitalized compared to the number of patients age ≥50 in the CDC National Dataset reported hospitalized, or with death reported if hospitalization information was not reported or missing.
  19. I thought this was really interesting. Click on 2Q 2021 for Housing Price Data. RHPI is the Real Housing Price Index which I think is most relevant because it strips out inflation. https://www.dallasfed.org/institute/houseprice#tab2 US housing is now above the peak in 2006 in real terms. Japan is still down significantly from 1991. But hey - no bubbles now and nothing to worry about....
  20. Thanks for posting everyone. Really enjoyed your story Dinar. Totally agree - Communism denies human nature. And there was still greed in the Communist countries - for power and money and materialism - however it is often corruptly taken vs earned. As I get older I realize more and more that underpinning human behaviour is human nature - and it seems to be like hard coded into us. National Geographic. Agreed - deceit through not disclosing the truth. I think the reason we haven't seen or heard more on the evils of Communism is that the left sympathizes or agrees with it (to an extent) so 100 million dead from Communism and the extreme repression is not taught or known more. The young idealist Communists scare me actually. The consequences are so severe. I don't think anyone deserves to hold their Communist opinion if they have a not read a few books on the evils of Communism - North Korea, USSR, etc.
  21. Financial Shenanigans by Howard Schilit was a really great book on balance sheet/ cash flow analysis. Same stuff still happening today all over the world at some companies. The auditors can't seem to catch anything - I view them as worthless for fraud detection.
  22. This description of Communism by National Geographic is for middle schoolers. Any thoughts? https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/communism/
  23. I (and many others) would be curious what your childhood was like and if you or your parents felt like you were in a prison?
  24. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Abridged) (excuse the bolded words as I could not easily unbold when I pasted it) Time: “Best Nonfiction book of the 20th century.” It is about the Soviet Union’s Gulag Camps and everything from the initial arrest, to the torture To obtain confessions, transportation, life in the camps and even the revolts. It does a wonderful job of chronicling the extreme evil of Communism under Lenin and then Stalin. Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the Gulag Camps. He was a Captain during WW2 and wrote some criticism of Stalin in a letter to a friend and they threw him in the Gulag for I think 10 years. Millions were thrown in for really no reason at all. Accusations were fabricated and people were thrown in. People were put in the Gulag because: They had a religion, They said something bad about Stalin Said something bad about Communism. Looked at someone the wrong way Were falsely accused by a neighbor, etc. Property owners Not considered poor peasants (highly subjective definition) Intellectuals Dissidents Purged party members Endless lists of nonsense reasons. One of the great books that really expanded my views of the extremes of human nature. I found it to be a hard read because of the almost unimaginable evil that humans are capable of that he vividly lays out. (I have not had that experience with holocaust books or other books). So it took me extra time to read it and go thru it. Stuff in the book “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.” “ Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.” You almost have to consider your life and the life of everyone you knew to be over when entering. Time to think and one has patience in the Gulag and realize your own weakness and can therefore you can understand the weakness of others.. Some people were tortured by putting them in small dark boxes with thousand of bed bugs. One would kill them off for hours then tire and they would suck a lot of blood from you and you would weaken. The creativity of the torture was sickening. “But instead a world where some weep disconsolate tears and others dance to a lighthearted musical.” “The price of cowardice will only be evil.” Great stories of revolts where informers were killed and the camp members actually got freedom of speech. Revolts and strikes showed the good of human groups against evil even when faced with extreme hardship. Perhaps a reason for irrationality of man is to act as a group which lends them more power. After the Gulag people didn’t get depressed because their life afterwards was always better than the Gulag. A.S could somehow sense in his gut the informers and luckily never got caught this way. The way it was described was essentially HELL. It was just surreal at times. I don’t think anyone who is a Full Communist today deserves their opinion if they have not read this book and it is pretty amazing that anyone can be so delusional and stupid and promote the most evil force of the last century that killed ~100 million people. Of course psychopathic rulers end up at the top often because they are total wolves, bold, devoid of empathy and end up consolidated power. I have to wonder if brutal revolutionary leaders “sell” Communisms ideals to idealistic suckers just to gain even more absolute power, it seems that way.
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