rukawa

Thinking through the housing shortage in Canada and many cities in US, Australia, Britain and I've come to one conclusion. There isn't a way out that doesn't involve fat and massive profits going to housing developers. We got into this mess because politicians and advocacy groups demonized developers for decades and any policy that eased development was said to be a "give-away" to housing developers. There is only one exit solution...you incentivize housing developers in a huge way all across the country and the world. This means that have to make fat stacks. Obviously this has investment implications. Housing developers over the next 20 years should do very well. Haven't thought it through yet. Anyways this article basically says something similar: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/upshot/developer-dirty-word-housing-shortage.html

:) That must have been hard to admit.

Bingo. The tri-state area is not the same "NY" as Flatbush Ave. Yes, hence the: This should be in the politics section. Anyways New Yorkers should not really worry about this...they should celebrate. This is what their future will look like once the AOC's GND is fully implemented :) Think of how much greenhouse gas emissions were reduced as a result of this blackout...the planet will thank them.

I was accessing value line 1 page pdfs through the Fairfax county library online. Lately I am unable to access any of them...the pdfs appear to no longer be part of the subscription. Anybody else having the same problem? Anybody have alternates. Fairfax was charging $25 for 1 year subscription to their library.

Its really funny because they used to have this on their freaking website!!!!!! Exactly what you wanted. And now I look at their website and its total garbage. Microsoft used to have an excel spreadsheet with their financials going back to their IPO. All these god-awful site redesigns have made these pages much less informative.

Is this Value Investing? Who cares if it is "Value Investing". Value investing is just a means to an end. I'd draw nice colored graphs and candlesticks all day long if that would make more money. The correct question is: is it profitable? And I wouldn't be surprised if subscribing to the Uber IPO and selling at the open is +EV. Nonamestocks does pretty well with a mix of technical analysis and "value investing" in very low liquidity stocks. I sometimes wonder about what he is doing.

The problem I have with this analysis is that its based on the least predictable and reliable signal...growth. Also why even focus on growth....if you really want big money why not just focus on market timing. If you could predict the high and lows of stocks your returns would even be higher than if you could predict growth. At one time Blackberry was a growth stock :)

This is good advice. You can get valueline from Fairfax Library for $25 a month and just try to value companies based on value line one pagers. I would stick to something dead-simple...like magic formula or net-nets which does not require a lot of analysis or thought and mostly just focus on excluding stocks which seem to be not real companies or have strange financials. I would also advice strongly against any type of strategy that involves a lot of analysis or research. I guess the most important thing is to not be ambitious.

That's totally not something that is happening in this topic. :P Never seen this essay. Its really nice. I have had a few instances which were big oops type ones where I completely changed what I was doing. One question I have though is what you do if: 1) You are sure what you are doing is failing 2) You have no idea of a better alternative. Here I'm not talking about investing because the obvious alternative is to index invest. I more thinking about big problems like a failing career or a lack of passion in life. I am thinking of rut like patterns in life that people don't know how to break. I can think of a few answers: 1) Try anything new and different...experiment with a lot with different things 2) Meet different people 3) Look for the person who is succeeding while you are failing. Especially if that person fall into the psychological category of someone you dismiss because they had some unfair reason for succeeding or because you don't believe in what they are doing. 4) Take LSD or some psychedelic. I don't really think I have a good answer since I am having problems like this and I don't really have a good solution.

Wow 17 pages of discussions on the future state of hard drives and barely a paragraph on their financials which are confusing as fuck. Maybe all of you thought this was obvious but I'm still very confused. Value line has non-recurring losses at 12.53 per/share for 2018 which translates to 3.6 billion. I get the following: Non-recurring = 0.9 (debt charges) + 0.7 (tax) + 2.1 depreciation-0.6 (cap ex)+0.2 (employee termination) = 3.4 billion non-recurring This gives me 4 billion in net income for 2018...I guess I would be comfortable with normalized value of 2 billion if I go by valueline history, All these weird charges really bother me though. I've never seen such a simple business with such a deceptive balance sheet. Why are the taxes so high for 2018. The debt premium makes some sense I guess..they tried to pay off high interest debt and took a hit. The huge depreciation is for tax purposes but somehow they are still paying unusually high taxes..huh?! Depreciation is 2 billion but they only appear to spend about 550 million in cash. Everyone keeps saying this is cheap company. I would appreciate some discussion of the financials. MrB mentioned 3 billion FCF. How does one derive that from the financials?

And now we get to the beating heart of the environmental movement. My answer to your question is NO NO NO FUCK NO. I also think its massively questionable that the massive land requirements of wind/solar are more nature neutral than the vastly lower land requirements of fossil fuels. The environmental movement is based fundamentally on the concept that nature left to its own devices is best. That is essentially what your argument amounts to. This is a ridiculous and incoherent concept. I'll give multiple arguments against it: 1) Humans come from nature. So humans interfering in nature = nature interfering with itself. If humans interfering with nature is bad it implies that undisturbed nature is capable of self-disturbing. This alone demonstrates the argument is ridiculous. Occams razor dictates that humans are not unusual...this implies nature is constantly disturbing itself with highly disturbing species like humans. 1b) In desserts when there is a strong rain you will get a very very rapid greening. During this time locust species will tend to form swarms. The resulting swarm will basically completely wipe out all the greening that occurred in a short period of time. AND HERE IS THE KICKER...than the locusts completely die out because they have zero food. WHY would it work this way. Does it make any freaking sense. The locusts don't benefit, the other life doesn't benefit...the plants don't benefit. This is undisturbed nature. 2) WTF does "best" mean. Nature has no concept of best...because nature has no concepts or values to speak of. A lifeless Earth is as "good" and natural as one teaming with life. The idea of nature being good or best or maximizing something is ridiculous and teleological. 3) When humans disturb nature we always see the same thing...some species do really well (e.g. Racoons) and some do really badly (carrier pigeon). There are winners and losers. This alone argues against the concept of best...changing nature is good for some and bad for others. Typical argument is that human involved in environment X and therefore environment X is best for humans. Ridiculous. If this were the case than when there was an environmental change there would not be winners and losers...all would lose since they did not evolve in that environment. The fact that humans are found in all environmental conditions further argues against there being one "best" set of conditions or environment. 4) There are tonnes of instances where an undisturbed nature produces outcomes which are arguably bad ones. For example elephants convert forest into grassslands. Forests support a lot more bird, plant and animal life than grasslands. There are strong arguments that can be made that what elephants do makes things worse. Red wood trees are another example. If you cut down red wood trees completely it would result in an increase in biodiversity (a good thing??!) since redwoods basically grow tall enough to prevent sunlight from reaching other species of trees. Redwood forests have very low plant biodiversity. 5) If we truly believed undisturbed nature is best than why do we bother with things like sewers, anti-biotics, storm drainage, vaccines, cities, farms. And if nature truly is best...than why do we die from natural causes...viruses, bacteria, cancers. 6) Disturbed nature is scientifically indistinguishable from undisturbed nature. There are functioning, sophisticated, beautiful ecosystems that look fully natural but consist almost purely of invasive species that were gathered from all over the world and placed in an environment by accidents of history. Some examples: San Francisco Bay, Mount Sutro Forest, Big Island in Hawaii, unmanaged Pine plantations in Puerto Rico.

I think the fact that climate scientists can't forecast accurately is more of a reason to play it safe and protect against climate change. If scientists were sure climate change would cost between 5 to 10 trillion to the global economy we could prepare for that. However if the range was 1 trillion to 25 trillion you have to be more proactive as the potential pain of 25 trillion significantly outweighs the upside suprise of only 1 trillion in costs. Additionally most climate scientists have usually been wrong by being too optimistic. Your argument has an unjustifiable lack of symmetry. Since we can't forecast accurately we should assume bad cases on both sides. For example if global warming is in fact preventing an incipient ice age than the cost of preventing it could be 100 trillion or more. So I say the surprise of an ice age vastly outweighs the pain of warming. There is also another problem. The future is filled with tail events like this...all of which have huge potential costs. You cannot avoid and plan for all of them simultaneously both because plans may be mutually exclusive and because you won't have the resources. My argument is that you would be far better off focusing on adaptation to an unknowable future than pretending you can predict it and avoid all its various worst cases. You buy health insurance right? Does it matter if you have a staph infection and have a massive fever or if you suffer from hypothermia? If the risk of both these things is bankruptcy if they happen, makes sense to pay something to insure from getting the worst-case scenario, even if most of the time you will be paying the insurance company for nothing. If ice age was a huge risk worse compared to global warming I would say we should take preventative measures to insure against catastrophe too and if that included artificially warming the planet, so be it. But lucky for us, there is no evidence of catastrophic ice age. I concede no one buys insurance for being struck by lightning because of the odds are so small. But the odds of catastrophic global warming odds wise is more in the same ballpark of getting seriously ill than being struck by lightning. So I feel it makes sense to "take an insurance policy out" in this situation. We are in an interglacial right now. A catastrophic ice age WILL happen. On the other hand there is zero evidence of catastrophic warming both now and over almost all of Earth's recorded history including the times where C02 was highest. In the last 20k years Earth's temperature has risen 4-7 degrees which exceeds what we expect from global warming and sea levels have risen 120m which is essentially cannot happen again even in the case of an ice free earth. During that time Earth's civilization rose up. So I only see benefits to global warming both based on our own history and based on the history of life on the planet which has always reacted positively to warming. The predictions of global warming are not desserts. To get high sensitivities for C02 you must have an assumption that relative humidity remains constant which implies greater amounts of water vapour. This basically means the Earth will be wetter and hotter. When combine with the effect of C02 whose biggest direct impact is to fertilize plants you basically have the recipe for hot, wet and green. I don't see how that is bad for the environment or us. The greening effect has already been observed. So I see it as beneficial warming which perhaps slightly delays a horrible ice age...win/win.

I think the fact that climate scientists can't forecast accurately is more of a reason to play it safe and protect against climate change. If scientists were sure climate change would cost between 5 to 10 trillion to the global economy we could prepare for that. However if the range was 1 trillion to 25 trillion you have to be more proactive as the potential pain of 25 trillion significantly outweighs the upside suprise of only 1 trillion in costs. Additionally most climate scientists have usually been wrong by being too optimistic. Your argument has an unjustifiable lack of symmetry. Since we can't forecast accurately we should assume bad cases on both sides. For example if global warming is in fact preventing an incipient ice age than the cost of preventing it could be 100 trillion or more. So I say the surprise of an ice age vastly outweighs the pain of warming. There is also another problem. The future is filled with tail events like this...all of which have huge potential costs. You cannot avoid and plan for all of them simultaneously both because plans may be mutually exclusive and because you won't have the resources. My argument is that you would be far better off focusing on adaptation to an unknowable future than pretending you can predict it and avoid all its various worst cases.

The Book of Why is excellent and I highly recommend it.

I guess I'm exposed to different children than people on this board. I always think the children are fantastic. Its the adults that are I'm not fans of. The children seem optimistic, fun, happy, brave and daring. The adults just seem like all that life has been wrung out of them. If I see any great danger in this society it is that it has made things too easy. Humans have an infinite capacity for laziness. Any formerly easy thing can be re-conceptualized as impossible. Sometimes when I read all the disadvantages that are now considered impossible to overcome: addiction, mental illness, poverty, race, sex the list goes on I marvel that we were ever able to build civilization or even survive as a species. Either living has become more difficult or we have gotten a lot weaker.

Get Shorty (the show not the movie) Silicon Valley is excellent Humans (UK show) Viking is in my opinion the best show on television Black Mirror Planet Earth 2 and Blue Planet 2 First season of True Detective House of Cards (UK version) Yes, Minister (this is the greatest political comedy ever)

Pretty much my ideology on healthcare: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00019mq "There is only a weak relationship between patient satisfaction and how likely your doctor is to kill you" The healthcare system is absolutely absurd. As are many of our institutions.

Whenever I read Americans complaining about debt or house prices I just find it funny. I know financially responsible Canadians, :o with double the debt of these people and a lower household income: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/money-diary-couple-debt-us I said financially responsible and I mean it. I don't even know what these words mean anymore in the GTA or if its possible for them to have a meaning. These days 1m in debt is considered pretty much normal.

What do you consider cheap for RE companies? Do you base in on cash flow or earnings?

Buying bonds from banks increases bank reserves with the FED but it doesn't really increase the money supply in any direct way unless banks are reserve constrained and there is both willingness of banks to isssue loans, willingness of other regulators to allow this and willness of borrowers to take on loans. The true money supply is bank IOUs which are determined by bank loans and may be considered as the sum total of bank deposits. Currency is a part of this but its very minor. In a fractional reserve system the money supply is not determined by the central bank directly...its determined by the uncoordinate, unplanned market behaviour of the banks and bank customers. The FED can attempt to influence this behaviour and if it wants to in can even use reserve ratios and other tools to force banks to do things...but it almost never does. Indeed banks as a whole are never reserve constrained in Canada/US...they are capital constrained and that capital is determined by other regulations. The FED influences short term interest rates directly by market operations..the buying and selling of bonds. Central banks can also pretty much directly control the interest rates banks pay on loans of reserves between banks. Presumably low interest rates increase demand for loans (which banks might not be able to issue anyways because they are constrained by regulators) and high interest rates discourage loans. In addition the FED can increase the price of assets which has a wealth effect...people who are richer tend to spend more money and probably take more loans. But the FED cannot force people to take on loans and it can't force banks to lend which means it can't increase the money supply directly. This paper is a must read for anyone who is trying to understand how the money supply actually works: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

I've pointed out repeatedly that the Singapore system which is a Massively multiplayer system (since each person pays out of pocket for almost everything) is a vastly better system than the UK. Go on studiously ignoring this. Single payer is not the best we can come up with. NHS, US and Canadian systems are pretty much the same when it comes to the practice of healthcare and even the incentives in the system. The big advantage of single payer is that it costs less. But I regard healthcare itself as fundamentally dysfunctional and broken. Paying less for it is the lipstick. The pig is healthcare itself in any country that practices it (Japan may be an exception). I'll give one huge example that I keep hammering and yet no one cares...iatrogenic deaths (death due to healthcare). In the US there are estimated to be 250,000 each year. Its the third leading cause of death. In an intelligent system, you would deal with that FIRST. You would deal with that SECOND. You would deal with that THIRD. It would be your only priority until you solved it. Not increasing coverage or single payer. And yet none of you care?! But this connect to a much larger problem...the complete lack of concern or incentives or even properly conducted research into what works in healthcare and doesn't. And the reason for this is the incentives in the system and way people think about healthcare. For doctors the incentives IN ALL SYSTEMS are to treat more patients for the treatments that have the highest dollar to time spent ratio. For patients all they want is for something to be done and done as soon as possible...whether what is done actually improves the situation is something the patients don't know and often the doctor doesn't even know. For researchers the goal is to publish flashy findings and get grants and funding from industry. Its much easier to conduct bad research and poorly supported findings than conduct good responsible research. The result is a fundamentally broken system. Paying less money for it doesn't solve anything. Lets give one example...routine mammogram screening. It is known to be completely ineffective: http://theconversation.com/routine-mammograms-do-not-save-lives-the-research-is-clear-84110 And yet in Canada: https://canadiantaskforce.ca/guidelines/published-guidelines/breast-cancer/ NOTICE that in Britain they actually invite women by mail to do this every year. Its basically going out of your way to encourage stupidity: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/breast-cancer-screening/when-its-offered/ As I said...healthcare itself is the pig. The mammogram example is also a great example of how all the incentives and thinking align: 1) Patients are in favor it because they remember some person they know where mammograms caught a cancer that was promptly treated or they remember a relative who died because of a cancer that wasn't caught. Obviously they just want something to be done, done quickly and for as much to be done as possible without regard for costs. 2) The doctor is incentivized positively (fees) and negatively (medical malpractice) to conduct more mammograms and treat more patients. 3) The cancer institutes are incentivized by bad press from outraged patients and doctors to keep mammogram screening recommendations in place.

This is the problem with US single payer solutions. They don't really understand what makes single payer work. Rationing is key. Without this the costs of single payer will spiral out of control. All good single payer systems include lots of rationing or they use deductibles (a much much much better method) to control costs. Interestingly Singapore avoids this problem completely. It has much much lower costs that even the NHS and it has much much much much much MUCH MUCH lower wait times. Singapore wait times are measured in hours...British wait times are measure in weeks. This means that Singapore's wait times are more than 100 times shorter than Britains. Its costs are half of Britains. Singaporeans also live longer. The interesting question is given the incredible wait times in Britain...why aren't their healthcare outcomes much much much worse?! My explanation is simple...its because healthcare mostly does nothing. It doesn't really improve health. Thus single payer works because it rations something that was a useless expenditure to begin with. A rational system would focus much much more on determining what actually is useful in healthcare and focusing all subsidies on that. Its also important to avoid killing people...something the US healthcare system does very often: https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/05/03/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death/ Its also really shocking to me how little connection there is in the healthcare system between scientific evidence and actual healthcare practice...or even how little concern there appears to about this issue. Given the way healthcare is practiced and the complete lack of incentives for evidence based care I don't see how healthcare could possibly be very effective. The proper way to view modern healthcare is mostly as witchdoctors, voodoo and shamans. That is what healthcare mostly is. https://retractionwatch.com/2016/03/16/evidence-based-medicine-has-been-hijacked-a-confession-from-john-ioannidis/ Honestly this whole debate is mostly arguing about how to do insane and stupid things in a slightly less ridiculous way but no one questions the fundamental ways the whole system is setup. Single payer is just lipstick on a pig.

The deminimus was raised to $150 which isn't a small thing: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/nafta-replacement-raises-duty-free-shopping-limits-for-canadians-1.4116231

Yes that is exactly what I mean. Well we can test that assumption by looking at a time when student loans and student populations were far smaller. In 1930 the tuition at Penn was 400 for School of Engineering and Applied Science. https://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/tuition/1930.html With inflation that translates to: $6,039.43 Current cost of Engineering at Penn is: $45,556 https://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/tuition/2010.html This does not even account for the fact that Penn now in addition to its massive tuition receives huge amounts of government funding and has a $18 billion dollar endowment whereas in the past it didn't. Markets function very very differently when the are huge affordability problems and things are considered very expensive by most people. The tendency is usually first towards "no frills" cheap options and reducing costs as much as possible e.g. Model A by Ford or budget airlines. An extreme example of this, in education, is India where low cost private education dominates: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/asia/for-indias-poor-private-schools-help-fill-a-growing-demand.html We never see this in markets financed primarily by insurance or credit.

Just get rid of student loans......education cost problem solved. Get rid of mortgages...housing cost problem solved. get rid of health insurance...health cost problem solved. Almost all these "free market" problem are because people are paying for things with money that hasn't been earned the hard way and so they aren't very careful or thorough in determining whether they are getting value. You basically never see these problems in markets not financed primarily by either insurance or credit. A good start would be if government were to stop trying to interfering in all of this.