no_free_lunch
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Posts posted by no_free_lunch
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Atrion $ATRI
This is a mega compounder that is on sale. Niche medical device market. Good financial position with no real debt. In regards to the huge decline (it's down 60% from ATH) I would just say that this is how it rides, and it isn't always clean. We are currently at a down phase but the company is trading around 15x prior year earnings and has historically compounded at 15-20%. Not sure if they can continue at that rate but I feel it's way too cheap. There will probably be at least another quarter before sales turn around but most of the slow down has been due to oversupplying channels due to COVID demand. I have the impression that the business is not fundamentally impaired. I feel it could trade at 20-25x normalized earnings, which is 30-70% from here plus any growth they can pull off.
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4 hours ago, Stuart D said:
Yeah, I kept looking but couldn’t find it, so I guess it’s deleted.
It bothers me.
I don't think I can, with good conscience, be part of some unknown censor protocol. It would have been fine if we just weren't allowed to talk politics at all but to have people casually discuss the slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians and then randomly draw the line at Israel/Palestine.. It's too much for me. Admin are well within their rights to set limits but I am within my rights not to take part. I am sure no one cares but that's my go forward protest. I will lurk on the sidelines.
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Is anybody else a little upset that an entire thread just disappeared....
I am fine with no politics but then why are we discussing Ukraine...
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13 minutes ago, Dinar said:
Iran is already involved. Keep in mind, as Hamas figures have stated before, Israel is just the first domino. The rest of the world is next.
That domino seems to be doing OK. They have nuclear weapons and a huge advanced military. If it seems like they will get overrun maybe we should help but otherwise clearly not our fight.
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8 minutes ago, Dinar said:
Why? Ground invasion will cost a lot more in casualties than all the hostages. By the way, here is a take from a Russian paper:
https://www.gazeta.ru/army/2023/10/09/17706481.shtml
For those who do not read Russian, the military observer for the paper states that the only solution is to destroy Gaza and deport the entire population, otherwise this continue forever.
By the way, if you read interviews with people from Gaza and West Bank, they don't want just Gaza and West Bank. They want the entire state of Israel, including all the territory that UN assigned to the Jewish state during the partition. I don't know what the Israeli government is thinking, but how can peace be possible with people who consider themselves occupied as long as one inch of the Holy Land is in Jewish hands? There will always be war unless either all the Jews are kicked out of the Holy Land or all the Muslims are kicked out of Israel, including Gaza and the West Bank.
Look, Czechoslovakia deported all Sudeten Germans post WWII, King Hussein did the same during Black September (although he killed like 25K). It is not as if this is without precedent.
I don't disagree with much you said. I, Canadian perspective, just don't want to get involved. Risk of Iran involvement.
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1 minute ago, Xerxes said:
for some reason I cannot find Israel War thread. Maybe it got moved ?
where do I write my mumbo-jumbo ?
Did it get deleted?
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16 minutes ago, Dinar said:
@Spekulatius, why do you think defense stocks should go up on this? Heck, if the Israelies are smart, which I doubt, they would hardly need to replace any equipment. Ammunition yes, but no tanks, planes, artillery, et all. Just blockade Gaza, and watch it surrender, tactics used successfully for millennia.
They are now threatening to execute hostages. Throws a wrench in the plans. I guess Israel can just ignore the threats in which case Hamas is really screwed but I'm not sure that's palatable.
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Are you going to show your sources? You made a claim., back it up or withdraw it.
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1 hour ago, cubsfan said:
So basically, to net it out: no one knows how many killed. Which is what I am saying.What we do know is that everyone and their brother in the West (fueled by government spokesmen & media) claimed the spring offensive would destroy Russia, which clearly was bullsit.
Show me some reputable sources saying what you just said. Truth is Republicans are making up lies. You know there's an actual war going on, not the time for your political nonsense.
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15 minutes ago, cubsfan said:
Thanks - and I hope you’re correct. But I trust the US gov about as much as Ukraine’s - not much. So far, Tucker and other sources have been much more honest on any issue that impacts our government and their foreign interests.A perfect example is the US/Iran fiasco
I think it's probably closer to 100k. If you assume 3 wounded for every dead that's still around 400k or 1 percent of the entire pre war population. They would have collapsed with the larger number.
Anyways the number doesn't matter, what matters is Ukraine still would rather fight than be enslaved.
I know this has gotten old and repetitive but that is part of it. This is an endurance event.
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36 minutes ago, cubsfan said:
I don’t know. I do know that we’ve been lied to a lot. Certainly the narrative this winter that Russian forces will collapse with the spring offensive was total bullshit. So I tend to believe the Ukrainian estimates as bogus and more propaganda.
The 100k is closer to Ukraine sources. It's mostly civilians.
500k is tucker Carlson interviewing some US General. Sorry don't have the quote handy.
The 500k is propaganda and I think total bs.Ukraine entire army was 400k at peak hence why that number can't be trusted. Usually 3 wounded per killed so would be 1.6m casualties. You know I'm actually Republican supporter generally but they do say some low iq things.
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19 minutes ago, Castanza said:
Who said I view those individuals differently?
Who said I don’t support Ukraine? I just think US involvement should be limited because of the issues we have here.
And fwiw, Hamas and Russia are two completely different scales of attack and warfare…
Israel has mandatory service for all citizens. Ukraine does not. Israel is constantly dealing with attacks, Ukraine does not. These aren’t even comparable situations imo.
Ukraine has over 100k dead, many civilians. If you believe tucker its 500k dead. They have been fighting a full scale war. I totally sympathize with Israel but it's not the same.
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On 10/5/2023 at 5:52 AM, Castanza said:
Ukrainian Men Abroad Avoid War, and Are Racked by Guilt
It’s one thing to do this in silence…or to avoid a war you don’t think there is any business being fought. But going to the press and having a sympathy piece written about you and your “guilt” for not joining up while your country is getting invaded is a whole new level of Fortunate Son. I can look back and understand to a degree those who fled to Canada during Vietnam, or those who chose not to join the military during the GWOT due to no real objective post 2011…after all GWOT was a voluntary war….but your literal home is being invaded, your friends went off to fight for it and you flee to Canada for “school”.
There are a lot of stories of Israelis fleeing, 35% find ways to skip the military, so why do you seemingly favor one and not the other. I think both situations are similar. Both are fighting to hold the western world order together.
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I agree. This isn't just accounting that can be waved off. Either you mark to market and take a huge hit or you accept a bond portfolio that returns significantly less than competitors. I just wonder how to profit from it. Ffh got priced up which makes sense given short term bonds but it's still undervalued. I think it just no longer has the taint, there is no premium and yet its probably deserved. Other insurers with long bond books didn't really get hit so maybe some are shorts. Are there other insurers with short bond portfolios who are advantaged but not pricing it in? I'm already maxed on ffh allocation. Sorry if that's too off topic.
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5 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
MLAB does look interesting on a quick look. They do seem to grow massively with acquisitions and have put some debt on. I will have a closer look. Thanks for sharing.
One I like is $CRL which has the largest market share in contract pre-clinical and safety research for Pharma. They are sort of the shovel makers for Biotech and Pharma. Even big Pharma who used to do this internally, more and more outsources this part of their work. Aran up with COVID he the bio funding boom , but the business is quite resilient and valuation is back to earth. I have been buying some shares as a LT hold. Trades at less than 19x earnings, but there is some leverage as well.
Thanks for $CRL, was not on my radar. It's exactly what I am looking for though. Bit of a moat, margins expanding with scale, larger player, track record, reasonable valuation. Probably will end up buying it if it stays in this price range but need to some DD. I wonder what FCF is at, there is quite a bit of amortization so could it be higher even than earnings?
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I think it's worth hanging a line in medical devices / services. A lot of stuff is blowing up. Admittedly a lot of stuff was over priced but still I think there are some deals to be had.
Just bought some $MLAB, a medical diagnostic company. It screens horrid, with like a 100-300 PE but that is nonsense. They are a serial acquirer so there are numerous accounting charges. In their annual report they break out their adjusted earnings and they are going for 10-12x that number. This for a company that has grown EPS 15-20% per year over the past couple decades. I think they have hit some recent challenges but yet they are still very profitable and historically that has been part of the business, it is a lumpy 15-20% growth rate. I don't know how much of a moat they have, I suspect there might be a small one based on the high margins and due and due to small size of these businesses discouraging competitors but I won't pretend to be an expert.
Anyone else got any idea in this area?
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Thanks for the link, I was actually looking at W R Berkley and Travelers recently, nice to see them together. I wonder why they would peg FFH so far below book value?
Regarding the valuation assignment, I think it's great to have a value that misaligns as that builds an environment of opportunity.
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14 hours ago, Sweet said:
I don’t know about Ray. I’ll listen if he is taking about finance but he goes into changing world orders and all that other stuff that he can’t possibly know or predict.
He reminds me of some of my profs when I was in school. You leave the lecture feeling both intimidated and inspired and yet with no idea what you just learned. I don't care how much money he has I think he is full of it.
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Viemed (VMD.TO) - medical device company, good little compounder with huge runway, sales hit by COVID, I estimate it is trading around 20x current year earnings and growing 20% per year. Roughly 15x next year analyst ]estimates. Sold off recently with other medical companies.
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45 minutes ago, MMM20 said:
Style drift in what sense? (I thought they were just doing the same old thing and it was falling more and more out of popular favor in a ZIRP world - but I have been a shareholder for less than three years)They were making giant short bets on equity indexes (I may be slightly wrong on the terminology but that was the essence of it) for years. As the market cranked forward over the past decade this was one component of why they lagged so badly. I believe they have now stopped with the shorting. This general market shorting only started in (I'm guessing here) 2010, it was not part of their original strategy.
I like them for everything else, making counter-cyclical bets and buying out of favor companies. I like that they have an insurance company they can draw additional capital from. I just don't want them making macro bets. If they want to hedge I would prefer they just hold more bonds.
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I think there was a style drift in ffh few years back. That's what concerned me. Am I buying the same company of the past? I only got back in because viking made a compelling argument and the share price collapsed.
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So "UK", to summarize, Russia provided security .. promises (something less than guarantees) and then had the one disputed territory taken over by Azerbaijan. Now Armenia is pivoting away from Russia. Additional background, Azerbaijan is using advanced Turkish (NATO) supplied weapons to attack Armenia. Armenia is now getting closer with the US (and other NATO countries perhaps). What a complicated situation. Hopefully the current borders can hold. I just hope the west doesn't screw over the Armenians with false promises. They are in a very delicate place.
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Bought some $ARE.TO. Small 1% position for now.
Bought an extra sliver of $C.
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15 minutes ago, patience_and_focus said:
There is open celebration and mural depiction in 2023 in Brampton, Ontario of the killing of then Indian Prime Minister (Indra Gandhi) 40 years back
The views espoused here are not new, in one form or another going on for decades, a lot of this translates to fundraising and logistics, to say the least, behind the scenes and disregard of it by the Canadian government.
It is unfortunate because this liberal and open tolerance only inflames and causes more right wing hardline views and actions from the other side (Indians and their govt). Rationality, empathy and finding middle ground is lost completely.
Sikhs and Hindus in India have made peace since those god awful 1980s, they had a sikh prime minister and vibrant democracy in Punjab. But gobbles of money keeps flowing to the radicalized few from the west funding the insurgency (particularly from Canada).
Interesting is that the current right wing Hindu nationalist party in power (BJP) frequently aligns with sikh political parties and is a bitter rival of the INC party run by the grandson of Indra Gandhi (Rahul Gandhi). But they are now uniting and taking a hard line on this.
Thanks for posting. Scary but not surprising. This is confirmed, here is a Canadian link to what I believe is the same event.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/06/08/india-angered-sikh-parade-float-portraying-assassination/
What Is the Best Investment That You've Ever Made?
in General Discussion
Posted
$CSU.to. I actually missed the big moves and sold way too early but even still I managed to double my money in half a year. I've had lots of other doubles and larger but this was different. I had a huge position in it as it was going for 15x earnings, with no debt, growing 30% a year or something and holding a diversified set of niche software businesses. It didn't ever feel like there was much risk. I probably had 10% in it (for me that's huge) but always regret not making it larger. It was the near certainty that I would not lose and possibly make a huge gain that stands out.