no_free_lunch

Recently purchased MIDD and GUD.TO. MIDD is a compounder going for 19-20x earnings. Not exactly a steal but a reasonable price if past growth can hold. GUD.TO you can buy at a fairly nice discount to the $10/share equity offering that happened last year.

ABEV could be interesting. Do you have any links to it's financials in USD?

Elon Musk, if given the opportunity to invest with him at sane valuations.

Don't forget it is 8 oz gloves and McGregor's style is heavily focused on striking. I read he actually started out boxing. The guy held 2 titles simultaneously in UFC and has shown to be very adaptive. It's gonna go Mcgregor with a knockout in the first 6 rounds. Not many people thought BAC would pull through either. ;) Don't take this too seriously. I'm rooting for Mcgregor but I don't know much about boxing.

Yeah they can be rigged but for fun what the hell. I would put money on McGregor. Huge payout 4.25x. He hits hard and is 29 vs Mayweather at 40.

There was some recent analyst commentary on AOBC. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sure-shot-analyst-initiates-american-134347339.html The next quarterly earnings come out on Sept 7 for AOBC, at that point we will have a better idea of what impact the slowdown actually has. Feb-Apr earnings weren't bad at all, with the company selling at around a PE of 9 if you annualize those numbers. I continue to think that the market has over-responded to the slowdown. The company has pulled way back and is now selling at below what I initiated at.

It seems to me this is the biggest thing to consider. For that reason, I would go with one of the big banks. Just figure out which one is the least crappy.

Agreed. It seems it will create some very specific opportunities but I wouldn't expect the market at large to appreciate.

Maybe I am not doing this right but when I have done Norberts Gambit you have to wait for the trade to close before you can move it and sell on the other currency side. There is generally a 2-3 day delay.

It's probably a good trade but I don't like the downside. Other possibilities would be to just buy the calls but no puts and potentially hold more cash. Another option, you could sell the 5% put and then both buy calls and a more out of the money put to limit your downside.

Last year was probably a peak that won't be repeated for awhile but I don't think sales will plummet. Based on what we have seen so far this should be the second best year ever. The industry will gear down is my bet. The average earning estimate for AOBC for this year has the PE at 12 and next years avg estimate has them at PE 10. Those estimates build in a large drop down in earnings, 30-40%, from last year so it is cheap even if sales drop. Sales just need to stabilize at some point and I think it will have to rise. They have outperformed their earnings estimates in each of the past 4 quarters so there's that too. Generally by large margins too of 20%+. Maybe just a fluke but maybe people are too pessimistic on it. I think it's great if people hate the industry. Hopefully insiders get fearful and pull back on production. You need to size this accordingly, it's a competitive industry. I actually much prefer AOBC but I am probably going to buy RGR just to diversify.

Firearm stocks are attractive right now. Look at RGR / AOBC. I know, I know.. ethics. Just don't tell anyone you bought them or you can blame it on me. Not something you can exactly sink half your portolio into but could be one part of a diversified portfolio. I think the market is over-reacting / over-predicting a large slowdown in purchases. Earnings will pull back a bit for sure but still too cheap right now.

Are you sure that is Melvin Watt's real twitter feed? Why are there only 5 tweets, with the oldest one being from yesterday?

I think the valuations are on the high end of reasonable for most of these companies but they are still reasonable Let's just take one example though, FB. It has a PE around 35x but is growing 40%+ per year. Certainly that growth rate can't go forever but we don't really know where it levels off. Given the growth rate it is really not that expensive. I would agree that there is not a big margin of safety so I won't invest but you don't have the information to say that it is over-valued for FB or GOOGL, in my opinion. I think MSFT is a bit over-valued but really not that terribly much. AMZN is just really hard to analyze so who knows. AAPL is not over-valued at all on conventional metrics but then we have no idea how sustainable the profits are, so I would avoid it.

TEVA calls.

I keep thinking about Aimia. Stock down 65% after air canada dropped them. Okay, radically different business but at a very high level they are kind of middle-men, just facilitating a process. They both had major customers drop them. Okay it's not a done deal with esrx yet but still. I just don't like businesses that can disappear based on their customers deciding to do it themselves. I could very well be wrong, in fact I am probably wrong since the industry has been around awhile but I am not sure how much value they add relative to other companies in the same space. Why couldn't a tech company come in and destroy them. When they talk about their edge a lot of it is data. Amazon has a lot of smart people and given their existing businesses it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch for them to go here. End of the day it is just too hard.

SSW LILA

Bought BRK yesterday. Bought LUK today.

Perhaps it is just a terminology issue but the preferred's can be redeemed. Series R: Optional Redemption by Fannie Mae: On or after November 21, 2012 at $25 per share plus accrued dividends from the most recent payment date Series S is more complicated, not sure how this would be handled: Optional Redemption by Fannie Mae: On December 31, 2010, and on each fifth anniversary thereafter, at $25 per share plus accrued dividends from the most recent payment date, whether or not the dividend was declared

All preferred. 2% position as of today but that changes week by week.

I am just speculating but: - his bank holdings will make higher net income as long as rates rise gradually - his operating companies are very lightly leveraged relative to peers. So interest rates will hurt the profitability of peers which should provide some competitive advantage.

Thanks for the write-up SlowAppreciation. I have read much on Berkshire but there are so many parts it is always good to see it in a nice summary format.

That is the question isn't it. What is scary is how few Canadians realize that this is even a possibility. I keep hearing that rates can't go up because we are too leveraged. It might have to happen though, like it or not. One additional concern, the biggest concern to me, is what do our neighbors think of the dollar value and what kind of leverage do they have. Is dropping the dollar down to 60 or 50 cents even an option?

So in Canada there are all these pathways to $80-100k careers. Plus benefits of course. So many options to get to those numbers. There are quite a few options to push that out to $150k if you excel in your field as well. All without capital risk or other business risks, just an investment in a career. Meanwhile, when you look at owner earnings on businesses so many fail to consistently exceed that $80-100k level even with you managing the company. That is the main problem I see in Canada. You are generally better off to go the career route unless you are willing to own multiple small businesses or do exceptionally well. Yes, I know there are exceptions of course but these seem to be the average numbers for businesses. Not sure how that compares to the US.

I am learning to be cautious with fnma but it sounds huge to me. I mean he is basically repealing the nws albeit without explicitly saying so. So the entire fairholme case would be won via legislation. Once capital builds momentum shifts towards cleaning and fixing the existing entities. Ok im a bit ahead of events but yes very good to see.