no_free_lunch

I really don't know anything about Transalta. They appear a bit riskier. However the yield is higher and the underlying stock still pays a dividend, which could be cut and provides a buffer for the preferreds. I would need to do some work on them but thanks for the suggestions all. Dundee is indeed an interesting situation. I am just not quite there yet with it. If I started to see a turnaround operationally this would be a no brainer but for now I will just watch.

It certainly could be too early. However, some of the fairfax prefs (series C) are within a few percent of their 2016 bottoms and below where they spent the majority of that period. If they can ever get back to levels from a couple months ago you have 30-35% upside plus a 6.3% yield, and on a relatively low risk company.

Fairfax prefs are getting cheap. It's not hard to see double digit returns at these prices. Fairfax is not without risk but it's investment grade, conservative and fairly diversified. Seems like a decent cash alternative. Does anyone see any other good deals in preferreds?

There has been asset price inflation like crazy here in Canada. Housing prices doubling or tripling against near flat incomes? I think that is all interest rates. The other way to look at it, if the fed is just mirroring what the market would do, then why do we need the fed? The thing that really concerns me is the crazy stuff you are seeing elsewhere. Negative interest rates? Bank of Canada buying home loans? It seems like as the facade starts to unravel they are reaching deeper and deeper when really maybe it was all caused by them artificially messing with the system.

Oh, you're an "abolish the Fed" kind of person. No point in engaging further. OK. Well I will engage you nonetheless. I don't think it's such a wild idea to be against central planning, ok? USSR had a central bank as well. I think the differentiator IS the free markets. I am okay with deposit insurance, financial regulation and I see how you might have to intervene in a 2008 scenario, but otherwise why are we letting a small cabal of intellectuals control the economy. Everywhere else in the economy we accept that business know best. If we do have to have a fed I actually do like that he is raising rates. I don't agree with trumpy on this. However, based on the above, why do we need these magicians to be involved. Let rates do what they will. I think that without the fed keeping rates on the floor, yields would be higher and the govenment wouldn't be able to run these deficits.

I think you could keep deposit insurance. You haven't seen any boom bust since the fed? What I have seen is the US and all developing economies jack their debt levels up to war era levels in the middle of normal times. I guess that is part of prosperity. ::)

Really? I guess it's subjective and hard to prove but I tend to think American prosperity had much to do with free market capitalism. Certainly the us economy grew strongly and the market made people rich before the fed was introduced. Maybe the US succeeded in spite of the fed. If you look at the massive amount of debt that was introduced over the last 30 years I have to blame that largely on the fed and their slow hand on interest rate increases. I don't think trump should be trying to influence the fed, I think he should be trying to abolish the fed.

I dare not have hope on this one but maybe the narrative is starting to change? https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/421956-fannie-and-freddie-didnt-get-a-bailout-it-was-a-stick-up

I have deja vu. Not the first time he has hinted. Probably why the stock and prefs didn't react more.

WFC as well. Flying a bit blind with this one and riding on coattails.

Bought some GS. They made it through the financial crisis despite significantly higher leverage than today, and grew at the same time. Hopefully they can make it through the next crisis as well.

The brookfield preferred's are getting interesting. Series 25 (BAM.PR.S) is a floating rate that adjusts each quarter and is set at government of canada tbill + 2.3%. It is has dropped from $21 at end of October to $16.67 today. It currently yields 5.7% and would need to move up by 25% to get back to end of October levels. It is also floating rate so you have some protections there.

Took a position in sec.to. PB was around 0.55 based on Sept 30 numbers, book would have dropped for sure over past 2 months but still should be around 0.6 book.

I took a small position in the fairfax prefs. From what I understand, they reset the dividend in a year, and based on todays rates it would reset at $.33 per quarter. That would push the yield up almost 20%. It's not too enticing so I will keep it small for now. In general a number of prefs have sold off over the past couple months. However fairfax seems like a better than average bet.

I was just looking at some graphs of bitcoin transactions. You can find them quickly via a google search so I'm not going to post the link. What you see in the data is that bitcoin transaction fees, while quite volatile, are essentially flat from early 2017. There was a massive spike in the fees earlier this year when crypto went crazy, up to over $20 per tx, and that is now down to $0.50 or so. This is despite the price being up 4x. I realize there is more to it than transaction fee but it seems to offer decent insight into demand. Doesn't flat transaction fees imply no real growth in demand for the service? To me that is a real issue since the only real reason to hold this thing is if it is growing in popularity. While certainly not a perfect argument, it's technology so flat demand will likely be replaced by another service. In general, these trends would seem to weaken the store of value argument.

If you think that the market cap of BTC will one day equal the current market cap of gold the price will be north of $350K using today's gold prices as a comparison. But comparing the price of 1 BTC with the price of 1 oz of gold is a strange equivalence. It is like comparing the price of whole apples to oz of orange juice. To me, comparing market cap to market cap makes sense. Obviously you would never expect them to exactly match but similar to stocks, it is a comp. They are both stores of value. Obviously they are not the same, gold does have real world utility while bitcoin, in my mind, has negative utility as transaction have to pay for all the mining used to secure it. Gold also has stood the test of time, bitcoin still has some proving in that regard. However, bitcoin does have the use case that all you really need to remember is a key. So theoretically you can just flee your country if need be and later on retrieve your bitcoin using your memory, say what you will but that does offer some additional safeguards. Anyways, weight it all out and apply an appropriate discount to the $350k and go from there.

Frommi, I am interested in why you were short the DAX. It seems quite cheap to me, from a simple statistical perspective.

I can sympathize with this, but I don't know the solution. I know that wages in my field are up maybe 1/3 over the last 20 years while rent or housing prices are up double, probably more than double actually. Tuition costs are up by about 50% over that period, here in Canada at least. It's got to be tough getting started these days. I think it's a combination of globalization and artificially low interest rates but really just a guess. Not sure what to do about it, people freak out when globalization is resisted, interest rates shouldn't be this low but it will crash the global economy if you try to fix them. I just know that going the socialist route (if that's what the article is implying) is going to make thing worse.

I just read their investment ideas. They tend to provide good primers for new ideas. In particular their investment ideas focus more on business analysis / history rather than pure numbers as many other online sites do. I just read through those things and discard most but every now and then something will really pop and you will have a basic but comprehensive understanding of the company after 5 to 10 minutes of reading, rather than digging the internet for an hour or two.

BPY on the Canadian side.

I think its fine. Bollore only reports twice a year so maybe this is standard elsewhere? I think it pulls mgmt away from the short term focus wall street puts on them. Yes it will make things more volatile stock by stock but so what. If there is volatility there is opportunity. Its also a small advantage for smaller companies as i see it. Probably no real impact to costs for larger firms. However if u can get more small stocks to list thats a win.

Maybe it got off topic when people started insulting soldiers?

So watchtwoord, in your alternate reality, what would have been the appropriate response to the german / japanese invasion? The way I see it, they would have ultimately just conquered all and killed or enslaved large portions of the populations. I mean that was their stated intent and we have ample evidence they were doing that.

What about the soldiers who fought ISIS? What about Ukrainians fighting Russians? People are just supposed to hand over their country if they get invaded because, you know, 'war is evil and case closed'. I get it, it's a discussion board and people like to take extremes to push debate but I hope we think about the implications of what we are saying.

This seems naive. I guess it's case by case but do you think that a soldier who joined up to fight the nazi's was in the wrong? It seems they actually saved a lot of lives by putting an end to that madness. Agreed, but it is arguably a unique example - possibly the only righteous war in history. Well there were millions who served there. Probably something to consider before you start slandering soldiers.