LongHaul

MGIC put out a press release a while back claiming that they were lowering rates because of lower taxes. Thanks for posting this. Interesting because I would imagine that almost all of insurance is very, very price competitive and it sounds like MGIC competition also lowered rates to reflect the lower US corp tax rates.

Has anyone seen or heard of companies lowering prices/margins due to the lower tax? The only thing I heard was a utility lowering rates a bit. I think the competitive industries will largely have to lower prices with the lower tax rates. The less competitive industries and companies may keep them longer. Hard to say. I think there is a good chance that corp rates stay low in the US as much of the rest of the world has low corp rates. I would expect personal tax rates to go up with the huge deficit in boom times though.

Anyone have have any thoughts/opinions/experiences on whether US companies will keep any portion of the lower corporate tax rate vs how much will be passed on to consumers?

Thanks for posting, great article. They are Vampire Phones because they suck the life out of you. Everyone one of us a finite time on this earth and it passes quickly. Do you choose to interact in person with real people or your phone? Do you want to do deep work or stay in the shallows? This article is about young people but adults are massively addicted too. I have come to realize for myself that time spent away from phones, screens, etc and with real people is so much more meaningful. Here are my recommendations: 1. Turn off all notifications - text, email, facebook, etc. 2. Check your email 1x per day. 3. Turn off your phone for intervals during the day. 4. Go into nature without your phone or any distractions. 5. Put your phone out of sight when at work or even at home. Seeing it has a mental attention pull. 6. Read more documents in paper for better understanding. In essence, don't be a slave to your phone.

Great post writser. "Know thyself" was written on the Temple in Delphi in ancient Greece. It has a lot of depth.

Interesting. thx.

That is really interesting cameron. Is he known as a cowboy on the asset side or liability side or both?

I edited to try to make my point clearer. Berkshire has a very high credit rating and their companies generally try to do the right thing so great to buy insurance from them. On the opposite side of the spectrum I think a lot of PE firms are interested in maximizing short term value any way they can and 1. They may not be around for the long pull and 2. They may try to weasel out of paying you.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2018/02/01/apollo-and-blackstone-pick-insurance-as-their-next-bet-to-disrupt-wall-street/#1ae3de057689 This Apollo controlled insurance company sells annuities etc. I think of most private equity firms are at the opposite end of the character spectrum as Buffett (especially Apollo) so I personally would not entertain buying any insurance from PE firms. I edited for clarity

Chrylser: for when filings were available for part of the 90's. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/791269/0000950124-98-000347.txt You might run a search online for old annuals. Other options. 1 Ask the company. They can usually dig up old info for you. 2 Moodys manuals 3. Value line 4. Request old annuals/10-Ks from the SEC. Miller talks about Chrysler in his book Turnaround Kid. Was the CFO in the 80's when it almost went BK. Just keep something in mind. These highly unionized car companies can gush money fast in a downturn. I am not even fully sure why. I also think there is an auto finance bubble at least in the US and likely elsewhere. Auto finance and car sales are joined at the hip.

Haha thanks for the reply LongHaul, appreciate it. I do hope that my nose for BS is above average as well. Yea, one of the things that I would really want to figure out is whether the AUM of a fund is a function of good sales tactic or investing skills, because if it is the former, that would certainly explain the irrationality in the market. I think that value investing makes a lot of sense intuitively, but not so much for a lot of strategies out there which might sound cool but does nothing. But again, I made the mistake of channeling in too many emotions when I was writing the post. Speaking of which, do you know about the capital deployment process for institutional investors? How do they look for potential investment funds to allocate their capital and stuff like that? As far as skill and AUM I think it is a mix. Buffett, Klarman and Tepper and all incredible investors with big AUM but I have seen lot of big funds that were riding a wave. It is really case by case I think. The AUM can be an authority bias or headfake at times. I have no clue how institutions allocate - I am no expert there. I have heard of a study though that found that when institutions pulled out of funds that underperformed for 2-3 years the funds subsequently outperformed. My impression is that institutions and high net worth are no more rational than retail investors generally. They just mindlessly follow the herd with little independent research or thought.

Dentistry, I give your credit for challenging these funds. And I think your nose for BS is probably above average. Investing is filled with BS and nonsense and garbage. The ability to sort thru it is critical. Investors who have high IQ's, are articulate, etc may be completely irrational. Probably at least 80% are. It still amazes me sometimes at the extent of the irrationality. 2 Quick stories. I looked at a hedgefund back ~2000 and for the life of me I could not understand this complicated options hedging strategy that got good returns and low volatility. I just didn't get it and if I don't understand something I pass. It turned out to be a fraud investors had sunk over $100m in. And btw the portfolio manager seemed like a mild mannered professor. Around 1999-2000 I looked at a high flying company's annuals multiple times. I could not figure out how they made money or what they were doing. Super complicated. The market cap went to ~$60 billion at one point and it kept going up and up. It turned out to be Enron. If something doesn't make sense to me I just pass. Never assume others have done the work because I lot of the time they haven't. Ge was recently similar. There are many ways to failure also. I think from a long run odds perspective value investing is the way to go inclusive of risk.

Really crazy. Thx for posting. There is some real evil out there that will lie, cheat and steal and prey on anyone to make a buck. I think I would immediately hire a lawyer to sort thru this. This has been a similar saga with Stan Lee. https://deadline.com/2018/08/restraining-order-protect-stan-lee-keya-morgan-1202447721/

Excellent blog post Adjusted Earnings. You have a wide grasp of history. Basically you are likely an expert on financial history and investing and you may or may not project that onto everyone and assume they know as much as you. They don't and likely wont listen to anything and will experience a ton of pain when it blows. Very high probability of a bubble in a lot of VC and tech IMO. The exception will be those companies that do extraordinary over the next 10 years and those may be fairly valued. Needle in a haystack type of thing. Every company is a case by case basis ultimately. When I look at individual tech companies and try my best to value them, I almost always today find that prices are well above any reasonable expectation. Often very high growth and margins are assumed in the out years. Basically they are priced to perfection and if anything goes wrong with the assumptions - a lot will - speculators will be toast.

He seemed like a great guy who had done a lot of good.

Where there is mystery, there is margin. Hard to fully understand for me also. I believe the exchange then sells the info to high frequency traders who front run the orders. Clearly the HFT must be making money off paying for the PFOR or they wouldn't buy it. Interactive brokers doesn't do this (or minimally). I would imagine that fees are quite a bit higher if one includes the losses from PFOF in the other discount brokers total fees.

Interesting article on PFOF which quantifies the fees. I hate PFOF. Super sleazy in my opinion. https://blog.wealthfront.com/silent-assassin-fees/

Thanks for posting this. I am not sure what his context in saying that was. However, Powell's line only completely ignores the history of booms and busts and human beings very irrational nature. In 1825 Benjamin Disraeli proclaimed an end to boom and bust given superior commercial knowledge. Sometimes when things seem the best they are the worst.

Not sure if formal teaching with an elaborate curriculum is the way to go or if only some kind of online simplified program could do the trick. Perhaps an even more targeted approach (cost effective) may help. Just for awareness of potential evidence, there seem to be green shoots. https://www.inceptia.org/PDF/Inceptia_LoanSummary_Whitepaper.pdf https://www.in.gov/che/files/150722_PressRelease_TruthInBorrowing.pdf https://www.in.gov/che/files/Loan_Disclosure_Template_for_Mail_Merge.pdf A simple annual "reminder" seems to "nudge" people in the right direction. A bit sad that we may need "programs" to help people helping themselves but the principle of secondary prevention is to minimize the impact of a disease once you have it. Obviously primary prevention is better but democracies are not perfect. I think a class and other nudges and good ideas probably would help a bit on the margin. BUT as I have gotten older and have seen how people make their financial decision there is a ton of stupidity, emotion and laziness involved and I think 95% of it doesn't have to do with knowledge but really emotional discipline to defer gratification. The internet has often 50x the amount of information you need all you have to do it look it up to make prudent decisions but people still don't use to to learn and save. Such is life... I'll bet it will never change and I just expect it. Sorry to sound defeatist but I think it is largely realistic.

I can try to empathize with the author because he was young and perhaps made a series of poor decisions while young. We were all stupid of something when young. And I think he realizes some of this mistakes. To go into journalism and keep the major when newspapers were being gutted by the internet is not a wise decision, especially when English majors were in oversupply and prospects likely poor even in a good economy. Here are the bad decisions he made: 1. Journalism - bad earning power and employment prospects. 2. NYU - ripoff, private school in ripoff city. 3. Took on a ton of debt (which he PROMISED TO PAY BACK, some with high interest rates loans). It's like he LBO's himself. 4. After graduation staying in a NYC in a likely low paying job. Low pay, high costs and high taxes. These poor decisions just compound on themselves. If his parents didn't warn their son of this they are also stupid. In that context he has the uncontrollable factor of the great recession. That is a tough situation but you make your bed and then you lie in it. Being angry, resentful, bitter and other negative emotions don't help the situation. Those are unproductive emotions and like a poison in one's body. I would tell him to try to negotiate his interest rates down, get a better paying job in a lower cost locale. I don't hear engineers complaining of this in lower cost areas. And you know what - the movie is not over yet. He is still alive, has likely learned from many of his mistakes and gained wisdom that is hard to learn. "Suffering reveals the way to greatness." I think people in the US are super lucky and should often quit their complaining. A huge number of people in squalid 3rd world countries would happily trade places with him and wash dishes in the US vs starving in their country.

I find certain tactics and actions very distasteful. Here is some more stunts. My understanding is retail bond investors claim they lost a lot of value in the Peabody bankruptcy case when the big funds Elliott, etc did not give retail holders the option of participating in a deal at a low valuation. Same thing was tried at Breitburn but the judge rejected it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-breitburn-energy-bankruptcy/breitburn-energy-bankruptcy-plan-denied-in-blow-to-elliott-wl-ross-idUSKCN1GL27X

Interesting perspectives from the doctors. Docs can be irrational too. Thanks Petec for the A+ article as it was loaded with insight. I liked this part: “There’s this cognitive dissonance, or almost professional depression,” Walker says. “You think, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a doctor, I’m going to give all these drugs because they help people.’ But I’ve almost become more fatalistic, especially in emergency medicine.” If we really wanted to make a big impact on a large number of people, Walker says, “we’d be doing a lot more diet and exercise and lifestyle stuff. That was by far the hardest thing for me to conceptually appreciate before I really started looking at studies critically.” I would recommend the book "Eat, Drink and be Healthy to everyone." Walter Willett from Harvard seems like a very rational guy.

Very interesting Boilermaker. Cigarbutt - for medical research I am looking for the obvious. If 5+ studies come to the same conclusion and none or 1 against, then seems like a high probability that the 5+ studies are the one to bet on. I am no experts in statistics, so lack there, but some data I can evaluate. It really depends. I am trusting the scientists - which does leave open the wrong conclusion. I look for conclusions that are generally clear in one direction though. For investing: This is a really involved question on the research. I usually try to disprove my thesis for the big drivers of value.

I would be very curious what "tells" people have noticed which usually correlate to certain character traits? One that I heard recently was when someone uses the word I to describe something that a group of people did it usually means the person has a big ego. Another is if someone treats waiters and others who can really do nothing for them like crap - they are probably not a very nice person to deal with.

Over the last 20 years, many times an expert has told me their opinion on what is effective or something else and then I research it and come to the opposite conclusion based on my research which is often studies that clearly show the opposite to be true. I am usually looking for multiple studies that have the same conclusion. This has happened with eyes, nutrition, heart disease risk factors, etc. I get the impression that many doctors stopped learning certain things after they exited medical school. My main point is that one must research serious issues themselves and keep their own council. It is you or your family members health. And if you are intimidated by the research - just try - I don't usually understand all the data but there is a conclusion paragraph that is a quick summary.