rukawa

Not sure about non-Europeans but I was at a Maddy's in Toronto on Saturday and met a bunch of Irish guys who told me that they didn't believe it possible that a person would not be able to find a job in Canada and that it was much much more difficult in Ireland. This really confused me because a year ago I talked to an Irish girl in Pharma who told me she managed to get a job after 1 week of searching in Ireland but it took her 6 months in Canada. So two completely opposite stories about the same countries. I guess it depends on your field, experience, the local situation, the state of the economy and a whole host of factors. I have actually begun thinking in that direction. In the past the real prime mover was better opportunities. The US is 10 times the size of Canada after all. But I was talking from someone from Wisconsin who was paying $500 dollars to rent a 3 bedroom and she considered that expensive. Blew my mind! Canadian real estate is a real issue that effects quality of life.

I like Dan's blog. We have stock pumpers on threads in this forum and there are conspicuous things they do that I don't see Dan doing. I outlined them here: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/bewhere-holdings-(bew)/msg305062/#msg305062 In particular I have never seen Dan only make optimistic points and never acknowledge the negatives of an investment case. I don't see him spamming the internet with his case in multiple boards and multiple forums. I don't see him repeatedly posting about the same stocks again and again and again.

I believe guessing stock prices based on financials is a good method of learning how to value companies. But I've also realized that its might be a good fundamental method of stock-picking. Basically what I propose is that a person go through valuelines or some set of financials for a company quickly (~5-7 min per company) with the objective of guessing the stock price as closely as possible. After they have gotten reasonably good at this game you make a list of any companies where their guess was way higher than the actual stock price. These are the stock you buy. My admittedly unreliable intuition is that the method would work very well, it could be use with any person as the guesser...a 10 year old child, an investment banker whatever or even an artificial intelligence and it would produce reliably good results. It would even produce better results if you had two people competing to guess the stock price and they received some price based on who guessed better (like the price is right gameshow).

> “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society" --John Dewey I looked this up because it sounded wrong and it appears to be falsely attributed to Dewey.

Have you tried adding a time delay between your requests? When I built a google finance scraper that seemed to do the trick of fooling it. I think you mentioned IB api before...did you ever get that working in an excel spreadsheet.

Well that was a pretty bad call.

Tobacco companies have about the same risk reward...maybe even a little better since they tend to be better businesses (lower needs for capex). I have some tobacco companies as well and I'm ok with them. But they're a very different cup of tea. Yea there you're talking lower capex, also pricing power, brand loyalty, etc. Then there may be or may not be a competitive threat from e-cigarettes. With monopoly power cables, brands are meaningless, there's no competition and no distributor not just on the horizon, you can't even see one from the space station. There's no pricing power, but you get guaranteed returns. Capex is much higher but again you earn guaranteed return on it, so you want to do capex. I pretty much agree....but I think you can think of the competition as being a little comparable to the political risk. They are both existential threats. From what I see there is a generational shift going on to e-cigarettes...the young like them. But many cigarette smokers will never make the switch. BTW, what tobacco companies have you bought and why?

Tobacco companies have about the same risk reward...maybe even a little better since they tend to be better businesses (lower needs for capex).

I think its unfortunate that Pareto gets reduced to the Pareto principle. The guy was brilliant and his thinking is far broader: https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1943/machiavellians.htm

Its not my attention on this thread to be an asshole here or mean. There is a definite predictable pattern on these stories but its goes both ways. Here are some threads which exemplify it: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/this-girl-is-really-amazing!/msg226754/#msg226754 http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/personal-finance/the-28-year-old-retiree/ The pattern here is: 1) Someone posts a somewhat unusual story relating to a woman (or something else) 2) Board strongly doubts the story 3) Posters claim the board is being sexist and only being overly doubtful because they are women There are a few possibilities here: 1) The board is sexist and overly skeptical of women 2) Society and some posters on this board tend to be overly credulous regarding stories the fit a certain typical feminist type narrative or just generally credulous when it come to stories that fit their already pre-existing beliefs The one things I would note is that the skeptics on this board generally don't have a bad record either regarding women or other things. They are often right to doubt. Emotionally if you identify with the story it doesn't feel good to have them attacked but some detachment here is necessary. I know there is often an emotional charge to these arguments because when someone attacks something associated with a belief you have...you end up feeling like they are attacking you. I've been guilty of not listening to the board in these situations and its definitely been detrimental to me. Let me catalog a good example which I'm embarrassed about. I'm the poster that posted the 28 year old retiree thread. I definitely believed the board was being overly skeptical and negative. And the story connected with my pre-existing prejudices because I am a huge fan of the concept of early retirement. I bought two books off her site based on her recommendation which were terrible. I realized but never said that writser was right. I'll post a few comments from writser: Skepticism is my default setting when people try to sell me things,because I am frugal. And given the affiliate links, books and seminars on most of the ERE blogs these gurus are definitely trying to sell me something. Writser.....you were right!!! I didn't lose much money here but I did learn an important lesson!! And Rb, you were right. I should have realize what I was being sold and the trick that was being played.

Not true. It's correlated with GDP, but it's mostly enacted through environmental regulations because market forces tend to be very weak on environmental issues, too few price signals and too many costs externalized to others in very diffuse ways, below the threshold of triggering reactions but still doing lots of damage in aggregate. When you're very poor, environmental issues seem a luxury, so of course there's less focus on those. But a hypothetical wealthy country like the US with no environmental regulations would have huge incentives to do worse than its doing now. Can save some money on water treatment? Can sell cars without catalytic converters? Can build power plants without strict PM emission limits? Can dispose of coal fly ash full of mercury however you want? Can incinerate trash as cheaply as possible? Can reduce the number of expensive water and soil tests? Can run diesel engines as long a you want without emission tests? Can buy cheaper fuel that has lead or extra sulfur in it? etc, etc, etc. No, basically people who value the environment end up putting pressure on politicians so that they pass laws to protect the environment for everyone, because otherwise you have a huge free rider and tragedy of the commons problem. California has a right to have stricter standards if it wants, and it'll deal with the consequences both ways. It might miss on some trade, but it has also gained by being a leader in these technologies and having others adopt its standards... California has no right to prevent interstate trade. That is the design of the US. I also strongly disagree about the role of regulation. Japan has no strong environmental movement and yet its environment is indistinguishable from the US. On the other hand Germany has an extremely strong Green movement (much stronger than the US) and yet its air quality is worse. Also your argument fails to explain the most massive improvements in environmental quality that occurred of the last few hundred years: 1) The change from wood as a fuel (very very dirty) to coal as a fuel (much cleaner) to gasoline/natural gas (much much cleaner) 2) Stopping the use of horses as a mode of transportation and switching to cars which basically reduced the shit in cities by an order of magnitude The modern environmental movement and the regulatory state to accompany it only began in the 1970's but cities and the country were vastly dirtier during the 19th century. So what is your explanation of the progress that occurred from 1870 to 1970 and do you really believe that the progress since the 1970's comes close to what happened from the 1930 to the 1950's? Fracking is definitely responsible for improvement in air quality since its caused the elimination of coal and replacement with natural gas and yet liberal politicians in California want to ban it. Is this going to improve the environment? Regulations have very limited utility...the clean air act is an example of one that worked. But many are counterproductive and even make the environment worse...e.g. biofuel subsidies. Most environmental improvement is driven by advancing living standards and technological improvements which are inhibited by having more regulations and interstate barriers. And I haven't even mentioned how the environmental movement killed NUCLEAR POWER for a generation which would completed the energy density transition to cleaner forms of power (wood -> coal -> natural gas -> nuclear). This alone vitiates your whole argument.

Why should we trust the CDC estimate? I feel like this isn't really very scientific. In proper science you construct a model and then you compare the outputs of your model to reality to assess how good your model is. Its seems to me that the CDC never did that second step. You can get fact sheets for each country here: http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/profiles/en/ I have attached the ones for France and the USA. fra.pdf usa.pdf

Congrats on a more nuanced post than usual! It's kind of 50/50 with the "liberals this" and "liberals that", but at least you've shown some thoughtfulness here, so kudos. Personally, I'm an independent, and I look at things issue by issue, on the merits. So I don't really care if people who agree with me on one issue disagree with me on a different issue. Everybody ends up thinking that I'm "on the other side" because of this (some lefty friends think I'm on the right, some friends on the right think I'm on the left, etc), but I've gotten used to it. I think the central government is well positioned to put a floor below which it shouldn't be permissible to go for some things like for human rights, but that it shouldn't ever prevent states who want to do better in that area or in other areas, like the environment. What's the point of having 50 states if the democratically elected government of one can't decide that they want to reduce pollution or CO2 emissions or have even cleaner water or whatever? I agree. I think states should be allowed to make those changes in addition to other things (whether or not I agree with them). However, the government (regardless of political party) shouldn't force states to fall into its ideology. I disagree. The design of both the US and Canada constitutions was to enable free trade between states/provinces. All interstate barriers should be eliminated and this is an interstate barrier to trade. The federal government should have one standard for products that can cross state boundaries. Period. Almost all improvements in everything including air quality are totally reliant on GDP. And the fact that the US is the biggest and most long-standing free trade zone in human history has a lot to do with its success. Screwing with that through environmental regulations and product regulations at the state level is hugely short-sighted and will be detrimental to both the environment and the economy.

This Addin is no longer working. Bloomberg killed robotic usage of their site. Not sure if there is a way to fool it but for now the addin is not working.

Try never married and see what the life expectancy goes to. Its amazing the difference marriage makes.

Our pension plans are all in way way way way better shape than pensions plans in the US. Your pension plans are basically large unfunded liabilities. I'm not one for beating up on the US but honestly this is one place where I think Canadians are far better off and where our leaders have mostly done the right thing in huge contrast to the US.

The customer would pay US sales tax. And the US has a far higher threshold at $800. But even if you were interested in the tax argument all it implies is that you should raise the deminimus until the cost of administering equals the tax collected which is a far higher level that we have now. Then you should be a Luddite since technology has done more to destroy whole sectors of the economy to "selfishly save a buck" as you put it than trade ever will. The whole history of progress of capitalism is the selfish evil process you described above of wiping out whole sectors of the economy systematically. And nearly every single thing we value including all scientific, technological, and social progress would basically not exist if it weren't for that. Even Karl Marx understood that.

RB already explained this, there are exemptions in all free trade agreement for all sorts of things. The other bigger one than dairy products is the de minimis threshold. Raising that threshold would have a huge effect because it would basically eliminate the difference between US and Canadian retail prices. That would be a retail killer in Canada but it would massively benefit Canadian consumers. Again I support eliminating this for obviously selfish reasons. I'm kind of curious as to whether any Canadian here would support eliminating the de-minimus threshold and if not why? Because you are definitely hurt badly by this. Minimally we should raise the de-minimus to the point where the government breaks even and the cost of administering the threshold equals the taxes collected. Right now we actually lose money on this. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/online-shopping-cross-border-duties-taxes-1.3647965 I have to confess that I find the viewpoints here very strange. You should be happy if your own country has low tariffs much more than being pissed about another country having high tariffs. If US has lower tariffs on car you should be really happy about that. Its Germans that should be pissed. Trump is hurting his own country but he is really doing the Canadian consumer a big favor.

This has become a US vs Canada issue so I expect all Canadians to support supply management. But I don't for purely selfish reasons...I am a huge consumer of cheese and diary products. Most people are pretty stupid when it comes to free trade. The ordinary Canadians who go to Tim Hortons hate free trade with a passion and love things like supply management even though they have no clue what it is. But at the same time they hate that American's pay lower prices than Canadians or that Amazon doesn't work that well in Canada. This hypocrisy is repeatedly pointed out on the Canada.com reddit to no avail. The truth is that free trade is one of those things the Elite has always supported and the ordinary guy has been suspicious of.

I don't really think Theranos is exceptional. I think most startups are pretty much run the same way: Following are two articles that are pretty much on point: https://slate.com/business/2018/06/elizabeth-holmes-deserves-prison-but-her-indictment-wont-make-silicon-valley-any-less-reckless.html?via=homepage_taps_top http://fortune.com/silicon-valley-startups-fraud-venture-capital/

I'm still impressed by Faraday. He came up with revolutionary ideas when his mind was failing him and after he had already once fallen into a deep depression due to this. In fact the whole story...Faraday, Maxwell and then the Maxwellians is one of the most impressive things I've ever read. All these men displayed humility, courage, far-sighted vision and seemed to be able to endure when they were pretty much alone in their ideas. The also seemed to care very little for fame, credit or fortune.

I don't like the term free market in this context so I will use a different term. Normal market. You can have a pretty good "normal market" solution to this problem. And that is what Singapore has done. Its extremely effective in providing high degrees of health care availability, good outcomes, no lineups and very low costs. Singapore is a multi-payer system and its the single most effective healthcare system in the world. By "normal market" I mean a system where the vast majority of consumers are paying for thing directly out of their own pockets with money they earned and for their own direct consumption (not to resell to someone else). I would say that housing, stock market, education, car repair, healthcare are mostly abnormal markets since in these cases the consumers are mostly not paying using their own money directly for their direct consumption. Instead they are using loans, insurance. Normal markets work well. In most normal markets prices typically decline, quality improves, pricing is rational and there are no large scale societal problems. Clothing, food, consumer goods are examples. Healthcare is not a normal market since everyone uses insurance. But Singapore found a way to turn it into one. Their system is not a "free" market. But it provides all the true advantages that free markets have. Brad Delong has a solution that essentially accomplishes the same thing and is described here: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/06/dealing_with_th.html Basically the solution is as follows: 1) Compulsory HSA's and everything paid out of the HSAs up to a certain limit which is dependent on income 2) 100% insured coverage if you exceed the HSA limit

Really interesting. Thanks for posting!! I was surprised to find out horses evolved in North America but move to Europe/Asia and were reintroduced by Europeans. And they were only absent from NA for 9000 years. Its creates a huge problem for environmentalists because its difficult to say what do with feral horses....are they invasive or not?

I need a very liquid place to park cash in my RRSP/TFSA. Was thinking a High Interest Savings Account Fund. I was trying to research which one the best one is. Anybody buy one lately? I'm thinking of stuff like this: https://www.milliondollarjourney.com/where-to-put-your-rrsptfsa-cash-high-interest-investment-accounts-mutual-funds.htm

Was reading this article on animal evolution in cities https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1267 I have been noticing a lot of road kill this summer and a lot more animals I have never seen so often: foxes, coyotes, large snakes, beaver, deer, a lot of new birds, possums and a tonne of rabbits. I live in Mississauga in Ontario which is a quintessential suburb. I'm running more so that might be part of it but it definitely appears to be way different that it was before. The number of coyotes is surprising...I saw one cross the road recently and when I was running heard a pack of them howling.