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rukawa

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Posts posted by rukawa

  1. I have US cash. I'm Canadian but taking a trip to Nashville. What is the best way to buy gold bars. I can buy at a big 5 Canadian bank but then I pay the exchange rate conversion and possibly get a worse price. Is there any convenient options in the US. I would prefer not to buy online because I'm concerned about theft.

  2. I own shares of MHY.UN (Marret High Yield Fund Strategies). This company announced several distributions as follows:

     

    https://webfiles.thecse.com/MHY_Distribution_Announcement_Dec_2021_FINAL.pdf?2XyIz5vWnFSPsoFQN4Sq_c2cvareJ3AU

     

    Quote

    Marret Asset Management Inc. (“Marret”) announces that Marret High Yield Strategies Fund (“MHY”) (CSE: MHY.UN) will pay a distribution in the amount of $0.0952 per unit on December 31, 2021 to unitholders of record on December 23, 2021. This distribution is in connection with the termination and continued liquidation of the Private Portfolios.

     

    How is this viewed by the CRA for tax purposes. Is this a dividend or return of capital? If its a return of capital I'm assuming I reduce by acb to zero until I register a capital gain. I'm not sure what MHY.UN is. It calls it itself a fund but its exchange traded. I'm assuming I treat as mutual fund which is return capital back to unit holders. But I'm confused. 

  3. I think the above is a typical example of the sentiment I was talking about. I don't think it will influence current definitive Chinese going-private deals at all. Why would a ruthless Chinese businessman offer to buy back his own company when it's a fraud?! That makes no sense. The basic game plan of these situations the past few years has been A) sell shares in US at a high valuation. B) mistreat investors for a few years. C) if your company is actually worth something buy it back from disgruntled shareholders at a bargain price and relist in Hong Kong or Shanghai. Yes: if you buy at stage A or B you have to be very careful. But if you buy in stage C (from a disillusioned US investor) when there's a definitive Chinese going-private proposal on the table from the majority owner your incentives are basically aligned with the Chinese buyer.

     

    The past few years only one definitive Chinese going-private deal was NOT completed successfully: SVA. And that was a case with a lot of red flags that was easily avoidable.

     

    Actually, I think forced delisting of chinese companies from US stock exchanges could create up some interesting opportunities.

     

    Like what?

  4. The internet is pretty robust, the protocols are all fairly simple and straightforward, and it routes around damage fairly well. There won't be a "hack" that "takes down the internet".    You might take down some companies or even cut international cables, but the internet as a whole would probably remain.  I think you'd have to take out the electrical grid in a large area to completely cut off the internet to that area.  But even then, some people will have satellite connections and generators.

     

    Wow....you do realize that the design of the internet was the product of government research right? :)

     

    In fact when I read the history of how it happened I think it would have been pretty difficult for the internet to have been done without government since it required a 20 year incubation period where all the kinks were worked out. Actually these days I can't even imagine it being done within government...time horizons have shrink too much.

  5. There are a few things I've found working from home the past two months. I was less productive when I did WFH and everyone was in office pre-Covid. But I'm more productive now that everyone is working from home. I think the difference is that WFH employees were usually second thoughts when everyone was in office..so managers would not call you, meetings often had no conference line to call, people would not be at their desk so you  had a hard time reaching people. But now that everyone is WFH you have the opposite effect...everyone is reachable easily.

     

    Its interesting to see how this will play out. I work at a bank and its pretty obvious they will save huge amounts of money on office space if all their employees worked from home. They recently spend millions training and outfitting "ecosystems" where there is no assigned desks and you just sit anywhere...I asked the person working on this why they were willing to spend so much money and it basically came down to huge savings on real estate since there would be less desks than people.

     

    But WFH renders this idea really stupid....why even bother with an office?

  6. Following stocks look cheap. Found them with a PE >1 and PE <4 screen. This gave 150 stocks which had valueline reports...narrowed down to the following. Children's place looked particularly interesting...no debt, high returns on equity...very cheap.

     

    delta airlines

    alliance data systems

    Royal carribean, norweign, carnival

    viacom (VIAC)

    fiat

    diamond back

    eqm midstream

    enable midstream

    brinker international

    delek logistics

    dana incorporated

    designer brands

    discover

    capri holdings

    commercial vehicle

    conn inc

    comerica

    caleres

    amc networks

    giii aparell

    gap

    haiwaiian holdings

    husky energy

    kohl's corp

    macys

    mednax

    modine manufacturing

    movado

    marlin business

    pbf energy

    dave and busters

    children's place

    spirit airlines

    sally beauty

    signet jewellers

    spirit aerosystems

    texas capital

    united airlines

    unum group

  7. The problem is caused by all of you being stupid assholes. If you were rational you would accept that to avoid shortages in situations like this markets have to rapidly increase prices to multiples of normal levels. But you don't accept it. You complain and moan about price-gouging. You punish retailers that do increase prices to rational levels by refusing to ever shop their again. You complain to your politicians who promise to investigate these evil retailers. The result is shortages and hoarding. And then you have the audacity to complain about the shortages. Its like cutting off your hand and then complaining that you are losing blood...of course you are dummy.

     

    These problems could be solved if prices responded rationally. They don't because of you stupid assholes. Its not a supply problem..its not a demand problem...its a stupid market, stupid person problem. Lineups, shortages, rationing...this is what socialism looks like.

  8. Young indians live with their parents. People are incredibly social, its a very warm friendly culture and cities are extremely crowded (google Indian trains). The whole country has horrible hygiene. And the people are stubborn as fuck. The public health system is horrendous. I mean they still have leprosy in the country despite the government offering the anti-biotic for free.

     

    And yet they haven't been hit by Corona in a big way. India was good at screening people at airports and quarantining people based on that. But once the virus get inside the country I can't see how they would be able to control it. Maybe the hot weather will save them.

     

    The real Corona bombs will be countries with warm extended family cultures like India and Latin America...its especially dangerous because these countries are getting hit last and so they are pretty complacent.

  9. Is it really possible to become and MD without a basic understanding of exponential growth and no understanding of statistics/sampling theory? (This is a serious question, not rhetorical, because I don't know the answer and I'm curious if such big holes are normal in doctors' education.)

     

    Exponential growth and compounding are studied in high school. I don't remember even covering this in university (mine education was in engineering) except in passing....it was just assumed you obviously knew it.

     

    Proper statistics and sampling I learned much later. However I've never believed anyone really has a grasp on how to do anything reliable with statistics...the field has been filled with pseudoscience and bullshit from day one especially in the soft sciences. The only people who were able to use it effectively were physicists and they used it in a fashion very different than almost every other field...they tend to use it deductively instead of inductively. A physicist will start with a model which may have a probabilistic feature to it and reason from the assumptions of the model to statistical conclusions. They almost never reason the opposite way from data to models....they never do things like linear regressions. 

     

    Its the reasoning inductively that ends up being a mess generally. Its really shocking to me how prescient Keynes was and how correct he was about the problem inductive problems in statistics (Tinbergen debate and Keynes book on Probability theory). I think it will be another 150 years before we really figure out how to properly reason with statistics if ever.

  10. cruises may have a long impact period.  spy is down 13%.  I like spy. if you can find an individual name down, say , 25%, that isn't directly linked to covid19, then fine.  but cruise lines down 50% is not enough at least for me given direct linkage to covid19, if I can get diversified down 13%.  just my viewpoint

     

    Cruises have long (perhaps unfairly https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/norovirus/norovirus.htm) been associated with norovirus outbreaks aboard. I don't think the cruising public will punish cruise ship operators for covid19 months/years after the coronavirus hysteria is over any more than they have in the recent past for the occasional norovirus outbreak aboard. The lure of a cheap vacation in the tropics is too much for most to pass up.

     

    And oil is down big and likely going lower as OPEC+ falls apart so a major cost for cruise operators just got reduced.

     

    Honestly I don't think cruises are that cheap and I really really don't understand the appeal.

     

    I am not a buyer of cruises, but a simplistic analysis of Carnival says its cheap if you think this does not permanently change the industry's supply / demand/profitability/pricing power. Has made about an average 10%-11% (I did not precisely calc this and just eyeballed it) or so ROE since 2005 and it trades for 0.7x book. If you assume it gets to its historical ROE and is worth book to a slight premium in say 3-4 years (note that the range in the past 5 years is like 1.4x-2.0x pre-corona) then you could make some decent dough.

     

    So while I'm not  a buyer (I'd rather buy less directly affected stuff for slighlty more expensive prices to "normalized" earnigns/asset value whatever), I can understand the appeal as a mean reversion play.

     

    When you compare to other stuff that's down 20% or 30% and may have already been cheap before, I can't be enticed to buy something so directly in the bullseye of this.

     

    I can see the appeal in the short term for bears: high fixed costs, probably some construction committments, may even need to raise some capital, etc. etc.

     

    Do you think that if this kills 0.2% of infected people under 30 and is gone in a year or 2, that college kids aren't going to go on a spring break cruise? according to my 5 second google, only 30% of carnivals customers are over 55 (this is surprising to me).

     

    I was comparing carnival to auto part suppliers like linamar which i did think were cheap at less than 6 times earnings. Carnival was at over 6 times earnings. Since my post its dropped significantly. Now its under 4. I now do consider it actually cheap even considering the crisis. Unless people stop going on cruises completely or they run into a cashflow problem. Haven't looked at their liquidity yet.

  11. cruises may have a long impact period.  spy is down 13%.  I like spy. if you can find an individual name down, say , 25%, that isn't directly linked to covid19, then fine.  but cruise lines down 50% is not enough at least for me given direct linkage to covid19, if I can get diversified down 13%.  just my viewpoint

     

    Cruises have long (perhaps unfairly https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/norovirus/norovirus.htm) been associated with norovirus outbreaks aboard. I don't think the cruising public will punish cruise ship operators for covid19 months/years after the coronavirus hysteria is over any more than they have in the recent past for the occasional norovirus outbreak aboard. The lure of a cheap vacation in the tropics is too much for most to pass up.

     

    And oil is down big and likely going lower as OPEC+ falls apart so a major cost for cruise operators just got reduced.

     

    Honestly I don't think cruises are that cheap and I really really don't understand the appeal.

  12. I use IB to invest in foreign stocks. IB's default is that you just invest directly in the foreign shares and they setup on automatic margin loan. They charge interest on the margin loan and they pay you interest on your cash balance in CAD.

     

    Convert CAD to foreign currency. It seems you are not using margin then why keep the margin loan?

     

    The margin load essentially has the effect of hedging your fx exposure.

  13. I use IB to invest in foreign stocks. IB's default is that you just invest directly in the foreign shares and they setup on automatic margin loan. They charge interest on the margin loan and they pay you interest on your cash balance in CAD. When IB send you your tax forms your T5 will automatically have the interest coming from your Canadian cash balance.

     

    However the interest you paid on your foreign negative cash balances is something you have to declare as Interest expenses on money borrowed to earn investment income which is line 221 of the federal tax return. As far as I can see the CRA only allow you to claim this interest if you are buying a share that is expected to pay dividends. See here:

    https://www.taxtips.ca/personaltax/investing/interestexpense.htm

    You can deduct interest and carrying charges incurred to earn income from securities, bonds and other Canadian or foreign investments, if they are earning investment income.

     

    I'm curious as to who has done this before and how they normally deal with this?

  14. Questrade will let you do options in TFSA. Same rules as for RRSP. Not sure about IB.

     

    IB's website says

    TFSA Trading Permission

    No trading on margin - all purchases must be paid in full in respective currencies; No account debit allowed. If needed, currency trade could be executed between USD & CAD.

     

    Accounts are restricted to cash balances in CAD and USD.

     

    TFSA is allowed to trade the following qualified investments:

     

    Stocks listed on designated US and Canadian exchanges (excluding Venture-NEX segment and CSE single listed stocks)

    Long equity call options

    Long equity put options

    Short equity call options with a fully covered position (covered call)

    Long equity put options with a fully covered position (protective put).

    Long put/call options on indices.

    Warrants/Rights if the underlying asset acquired under the right to purchase is a qualified investment.

    U.S. Bonds.

    https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/index.php?f=13406&p=tfsa

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