no_free_lunch

CVNA. The actual numbers and idea seem solid but I just don't trust management.

Dynamic, Awesome. This is the way to invest. If you are still able to replace the savings then why not, worst case you don't ER as .. early. It is interesting that you balance the high conviction with extremely strong companies (as far as BRK & AAPL). I like how your approach frees you to really take your time on finding an idea. Every now and then I come across something with such strong upside/downside that I will make a large bet and I seem to do very well in those cases. However I always limit myself to about 10% of assets so I just can't find enough bargains and end up filling with lower quality muck. I have a lot to learn about portfolio sizing.

This is quite the concentrated portfolio! It sounds like you have done your research and those two are very solid companies but still, I couldn't go this concentrated. Just curious if you can disclose anything about your portfolio size. Maybe something that keeps it relatively confidential such as portfolio size relative to a year of savings?

I am a little confused right now regarding Hensarling's intentions. This article from American Banker states that he supports the Milken plan. The milken plan specifically states that they will reconstitute fannie and freddie. However, he is simultaneously saying they need to be wound down. Maybe he interprets Milken differently? https://www.americanbanker.com/news/breaking-down-hensarlings-gse-reform-overture http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/view/823

There is an ignore list in your profile. Just go to Profile and then Summary. From the page that pops up it is available if you hover over Modify Profile.

We can speculate but you now have a bloomberg article stating that the preferred's are likely to be made whole or at least mostly whole. I view this as progress.

This seems big to me. Not a done deal but a step in the right direction and welcome change after failing litigation. The preferreds willl have to move up tomorrow or I am doubling down. Found this as well, sorry if it has been reposted. This thread has blown up a bit. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/06/hensarling-signals-breakthrough-in-mortgage-reform-208774

So this isn't a block-chain and the supply isn't fixed. What features does this have that will disrupt bitcoin?

The central bank idea does have the advantage of much much much lower electricity cost per transaction. Bitcoin is so inefficient and there doesn't seem to be a way to have the security without that inefficiency. The more people mining, the harder it is theory for any one person to corner the chain. With the central bank idea there is no mining at all so big edge there. However I still don't think this will fly. I just can't see central governments giving up control of their currency. I really don't want to drag this into politics but I think our current system with large government deb loads is dependent on low levels of inflation to devalue the debt. If you can't print I don't know if you can guarantee inflation. I also think people would continue to use bitcoin regardless. As I said there are uses beyond currency and even for currency there is value to being outside of government scrutiny.

SD, Is this even a blockchain or just digital currency? I don't see this killing blockchain without it being a public ledger. One of the advantages of bitcoin is that you can take large chunks of information, form a token and store the hash of the token on the chain. You then have high probability that that hash really was created when you said it was. I think this is how t0 is planning to integrate their data into blockchain for instance. It all works together along with money transfer/payments/etc to add value to bitcoin. I think the central bank might be missing this but could be mistaken. I think what will kill bitcoin if anything is the forking. It's power is being this solid reliable source but when people get greedy and start looking at forking as some weird type of dividend you lose the uniqueness of the chain. This forces the miners to pick chains and as the miner pool on a single chain get to be smaller and smaller, it increases the risk of a bad actor compromising the chain. It also makes it difficult for these ancillary apps (t0) as they have to guess which chain is the main chain to store their information. You don't want to be keeping everything on a chain and then have it fade away.

I dont think he missed it. Has 180b under securities. I assume its in there. Its only 15b.

If you follow this twitter thread there is a lengthy breakdown and valuation of the various BRK subs. They peg the total value at $517B.

Maybe I was too harsh but it just feels like click bait. "Let's talk about bitcoin's merits" and before we even get into that lets talk inflation. Why don't we just talk inflation then? Bitcoin itself is too broad to discuss but then we start getting into whether inflation is a pro/con .... I mean this will be endless.

I don't like how you went from bitcoin to an economic argument on the merits of inflation. I see the link but there is no need to talk bitcoin if you are only interested in inflation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-ratings-moody-s/moodys-gives-modi-a-boost-by-raising-indias-sovereign-rating-idUSKBN1DH0O8 India seems to me to be the best of the BRICs from an investment POV. Just not sure the best way to buy into it. There is an ETF but it is .. well you don't really know what you are buying without putting in some serious work and frankly it doesn't seem that cheap. I am thinking FFH might be a good approach. Any other suggestions?

Agreed. Should be able to get better terms on licensing or investments in a downturn. Pharma in general is fairly resistant to recession.

+1 to that. In the robust category you might include PCLN. They should be able to capitalize on a slowdown in travel by taking market share from rivals, whethere traditional travel agents or OTA.

Thank you boiler maker. Cigarbutt, this is possible. Earnings + dividend should provide a roughly 100-200% return above inflation over next 20 years assuming constant valuation. If we are on the lower end of that return (100%), and if valuations were cut in half then you would roughly match inflation. Bonds are yielding about inflation so that should be roughly ERP 0. Definitely possible, we have seen worse. Only question is what to do for someone with an existing portfolio. What time of allocation would you use then?

What is forward looking ERP?

Some comments on the bitcoin lightning network here. The author is not entirely pessimistic on scaling but suggests off-chain shards might be necessary. http://codesuppository.blogspot.ca/2016/11/the-problem-with-on-chain-scaling-is.html

US equities are expensive in general right now, not just the S&P 500. So I think no matter what you are over-paying. As far as trying to buy individual companies vs an index fund, I will just point out how many have under-performed the indexes over the last 10+ years.

I like the idea, but I don't think it can work (but will admit that I haven't read the whole technical paper). But the basic argument is as follows. If it's a "green" solution with less power and resource consumption (because it's using unused space) it's vulnerable because these cheap resources would also be available for an attacker. Maybe it could work, it is an intriguing option. Just not sure how you can "know" the proof of storage, how do you prevent people from claiming the same storage more than once? You can't fake proof of work. I also didn't read the white paper so it's probably in there. This option still doesn't address scaling of transactions. Even the lightning network is only a mitigation. With lightning you still need to write to the main blockchain when you open a channel and you need to write to the blockchain to close the channel. So imagine if you have a large channel open to some company and you suddenly question the company's integrity. You are stuck waiting for your chance to write to the main blockchain and close the channel out (with the blockchain running at 6 or 7 transactions per second). If you have millions of users in this funnel, it could get ugly. It seems the only solution to scaling is a combination of sharding of the actual chain, off-chain solutions light lightning and I don't know maybe even the occasional freeze point. Perhaps blockchain will just muddle through all of this and people will accept the complexity, I mean existing financial solution are not perfect either. I just want to point out that there are a lot of unsolved problems given how much people have bought into this.

Bingo. They are looking at scaling solutions... It's just kind of crazy that it's valued at $120B and they haven't implemented scaling yet. Usually when you develop a software solution that needs to scale you take care of that at step 1, not after the software is live.

You could look at OSTK. They have their securities lending platform and an ICO coming up. However, it seems very speculative at this point.

I could certainly stand to do more work on it myself. I'm mostly relying on others research and just looking for issues. CEO seems okay to me, while a serial acquirer the debt levels are very reasonable. Usually they get into trouble when they are taking on too much debt to fund the acquisitions.