wachtwoord

A lot of ATUSF on Friday too.

Only 1 blockchain right now is any good. Dont let the banks convince you on their private BCs. Without the decentralized nature a blockchain is just a bloated way to store transaction data.

Made an addition to my Altius position with accrued dividends in my account.

This market, and every other market since the beginning of mankind, has been manipulated in some fashion by market participants. In the case of oil, I don't think it is that hard to forecast the trajectory. Overproduction leads to lower prices, lower prices lead to reduced production and increased demand, demand begins to increase along with corresponding declines in production which causes tightening of supplies, and tightening of supplies eventually yields increased production. Although the pricing and volume may change, this cycle occurs consistently. So who gives a crap if Goldman starts pumping and dumping, or if the United States starts releasing oil from the SPR, or if a bunch of monkeys in suits get on CNBC and start prognosticating about the price of oil, or if Elon Musk blatantly and frequently manipulates his stock price through Tweets and other social media...this is just noise. The real question is whether or not you can make money in a manipulated market. As a small player with a flexible time horizon, I have a pretty good idea of when to put money to work in the oil cycle, and when to start taking it off the table. My timing is far from perfect (as evident by some of the red in my brokerage account from getting into certain names a bit too early in the cycle), but in general, I think I can use the bulls**t described above to benefit myself, and I think you can do the same. So instead of getting frustrated by the bulls**t manipulation, use it to your advantage to make some money. Well said. Both Cardboard and myself were real early in the oil game (see pwt/pwe thread). Actually a surprising lack of red in my holdings. It can be frustrating getting in too early - value investors curse, as you know. The cycle is normally shorter for oil - at least it seems that way but the view, here, in the fishbowl, may be obscured. I'm way in the red. I very often get in 'too early' and exit 'too late'.

Right. Money is the most important thing in the world. In business it's the only thing.

I'm down 9.5% over 2015 to date.

Not that it's the right way to value BRK, but if you take $16B of earnings as CF and run a 5% growth for 10 years DCF, your hurdle rate is only 7% to make current price cheap. If you use 10-15% hurdle rate, it is quite overvalued. That's why you have to bring other parts into equation to persuade yourself that it's rather cheap. Or just go with P/B. ;) Why would you use a 10-15% hurdle rate for BRK? Because I want to have 10-15% return. Hurdle rate == return rate. What you want to make shouldn't have a place in a discussion about what fair value is. If possible I would like to make 100% annually, but I'm not going to call something that is expected to return less overvalued. Fair value is always relative to what you want to earn. Of course one generally should accept a lower return on investments with less risk.

Can you please share these names ? I have been doing a lot of research lately but I do not find anything which is obviously cheap (except as I mentioned earler, NOV). I am also looking at SSW but I only made a small position because the customer concentration ( + Chinese) is stopping me from making a bigger investment. Rolls Royce -- Not cheap in an obvious way. Small position. AIQ -- Too much debt. I am not able to put a baseline price here. Small position. Altius -- Already 7% of my portfolio. Will go higher if it drops significantly, say to C$10. Mostly the stocks that are already my 3 biggest positions: NOV (20%), ATUSF/ALS.TO (19%) and SE (13%)

I've been fully invested through this. Have bee n drooling over some of the prices though.

I doubt the Saudis will back fown. At least not for diplomatic reasons.

No matter what the truth is BRK made a mistake (either the purchase or subsequent sale) as long as they are dealing with similar information as us. If they have inside information from the Saudis or OPEC for instance their weird move can be explained. My portfolio heavy on oil now, although I mostly focus on pipeline companies such as SE, limited partnerships such as SEP and WPZ and service companies such as NOV because these are less exposed to oil pricing than most companies in the sector and seem to be similarly discounted.

2011 after reading the intelligent investor.

WPZ is a good one, two of the premier blue-chip NG pipeline assets in the United States (transco line and northwest line) - I think folks underestimate the value of the Transco line given location, supply points (Marcellus and GC), and numerous demand points, Out of curiosity, is there a reason you chose WPZ rather than ETP ? I like both MLP's, although ETP seems to have a similar yield with better growth prospects (at least so far as the committed backlog indicates) I believe the income certainty of WPZ is higher because a larger portion of their income and cash flow is fee based. Next to this ETP also has a gas processing and gathering unit and retail unit which have a smallee moat than the pipeline business. Morningstar awards WPZ a wide moat and ETP a narrow one. On top of this I believe WPZ has another reason for the price being so depressed namely the takeover by WMB being at risk because of the possible takeover of WMB. I think the market has overreacted to this uncertainty and am fine with holding WPZ without a buyout.

WPZ (which I sold for 58 in may).

Not in line with the latest direction of the threat (semantics) but I'm going to leave this here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-27/when-work-punished-tragedy-americas-welfare-state

I like that quote, but when it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, I think it is a little of both. Indeed. Everyone is corruptable (and even corrupt to some degree).

There are doubts. Why would NATO risk nuclear conflict for Lithuania? But if they don't, then NATO becomes meaningless. And it would be an invite of further Putin expansionism. Where would it stop? Will we have a replay of pre-WWII scenario? It's not that cold. The climate is like US Massachusetts mostly. More rainy though and bigger day/night seasonal swings (long nights in winter). But you have swamps, zombies, cannibals and Russians. But then I repeat myself. To me NATO became meaningless after Crime. It may not be a NATO state but Europe the US (and Russia lol) promised Ukraine their sovereignty would be defended if they'd get rid of their nukes. Europe and the US sat on their hands and will do the same in the case of Lithuania. They are doing what France and the UK did when Germany annexed Poland and the west of Czechoslovakia in the run up to WW2.

Rand Paul seems to be the first member of either of the two big parties I can support since I've been alive. I doubt he has much of a chance though.

Wow Eric, you have lot of patience. Eric's not even defending any ideology here, he's just stating hard cold (undeniable) facts and he gets this much resistance?

No it's not. Inglation is increase in the money supply. Change is prices is a poor ptoxy for that at best (and very manipulatable). Oh and to be clear I'm talking M3/M4 here, not M0.

Oh there has been very high inflation for years. I think the Fed tripled the money supply in between 2012 and 2014? You can look up the exact numbers. Yes consumer prices haven't risen yet.

Current interest rates are due to central banks. In the current climate they'd easily be above 10% in a free market.

Higher spending does not equal a better economy. That's like saying that breaking people's windows is good for the economy. Progressive taxes make no economic sense as it discourages contributing positively to society (if I were a Swiss national with 2k Euro badic income I'd quit my job and never work a day again despite my high education). To put this in context thus far in my life I have on net petsonally benefitted from our socialistic system (no student debt gor instance). It just leads to a suboptimal economy which degrades over time. That's what's happening in Europe right now and it seems to be nearing the end game (but for all I know it takes decades).

Your government is huge with huge funding and much power. The power of the 3 letter abrevation agencies approximiates police state.

LOL. Asserting something like this doesn't make it true, except on Fox News. To what do you ascribe the reduced income inequality and greater economic mobility in welfare states relative to more purely capitalist countries? Correlation, not causation? :) Equality is not equivalent with fairness. Reduced income inequality is unfair as those that contribute the most are significantly underrewarded in our society. And yes, the US is socialistic now. Western Europe is borderline communistic (France is in my top 10 of worst places to live worldwide).