Spekulatius

Great decision buying AMD. It continues to surprise me how some (only a few) companies can re-invent themselves. My son (who is in grade 12) alerted me about 2 years ago to what was going on at AMD; he and his buddies are into technology and he explained to me that AMD was a company on the rise. Alas, i was too busy thumb sucking to do anything about it. I use it as an example with him to how small investors can do well if they do what Peter Lynch advises: take advantage of what you see in your circle of competence. I was quite torn about selling it since my cost basis was so low. I like the management team and what they’re doing. I think they have been executing very well. Solid products, good growth in multiple segments and a really solid pipeline. But the valuation has gone bananas. 200+x earnings is too rich for me. But I’m definitely looking for another entry point. It’s hard to say whether this will trade at a fair value anytime soon. Thanks So, if you are concerned about taxes, why didn’t you wait a couple more days until next year and then sell? This would push out paying taxes another year.

Few responses often means that an idea just takes off. A long thread often means that an idea becomes controversial. and a battleground of longs vs skeptics. The performance in a lot of cases isn’ that great for those ideas.

GOOG is a whole lot closer to FV than where I bought it ((~$1050 blended). I sort of try to reduce positions when they approach fair value, although with GOOG, it’s a tough call. CTVA is my 3rd round trip this far.

I was looking at this stock for some year end dislocations, but there isn’t much volume. I don’t think their last acquisition indicates that management is selective about where to put their money either. Shopping malls in Jacksonville ? http://ir.ctlc.com/file/Index?KeyFile=401493134

Yes, I believe it is correct to be concerned about this. Once the gears of bureaucracy start to move, it can be hard to stop them. I would also think that the OTC probably is biased as they would benefit even if just some compansies chose to disclose financials on their system, regardless of collateral damage to investors into those companies that don’t. Then on the other hand, there might be unique bargains available to individual investors who are willing to play a long term game regardless of liquidity issues. Any fund that might own these stocks now may be forced to sell these stocks, if the rule indeed gets implemented.

Reduced positions in GOOG, FOX and CTVA today.

Shows I am liking right now: Daybreakers : witty version of Mad Max and Walking Dead Expanse 3rd season (Amazon Prime) The Boys : Cynical Superhero series (Amazon Prime) The Boys Season I is great, but Season 2 is a big let down. I am two Episodes in and I think I give up.

I bought the door myself and had a handyman install it. I also had the issue that the price most contractors charge wasn’t transparent as they both had a margin on the door and Charge for labor. That’s why I bought the door myself. This also was cheaper than going with Home Depot doing the whole thing. I think contractors are afraid that customer size the door wrong and want to take some margin on the hardware itself. We did this with our last kitchen renovation, the same way. We bought all the hardware cabinets, stove, tiles vents ourself and had a handyman install it. Cost us ~10k back in 2010. Now people pay 5x as much to get similar work done. Crazy! (My wife had awesome connections to Asian hardware stores in the Bay Area back then). Cabinets cost half what we would have paid at Home Depot.

My door was a Home Depot Fiberglass door back then. I was pretty satisfied with the quality. The door looked similar to this: https://www.pella.com/doors/half-light-entry-doors/pella/ I also recall I got a bit money back from the utility back then for buying an energy star product. There was a little bit of extra work required to get the door to fit, because my house back then was build in the 70’s so shoddily that all the frame dimensions were off a bit.

Seems expensive. I got my front door replaced a couple of years ago for ~1.5k. This was for a larger door (~60” double door with glass). The door cost was ~1.1k ( Home Depot) and installation ~ $400. This was a couple of years ago when contractors were really hungry for jobs. I am hearing nowadays that people get outrageous quotes for all sorts of things. Home Depot also has an installation service, so it’s worth getting A quote from them. A door installation isn’t really a difficult job as long as the size doesn’t change, so even a good handyman might be able to do it.

He is definitely an out of the box thinker and he is a good investor. I hope he stops by here every once in a while. I feel we will hear more about him.

So ScottHall re-incarnated as LaforeverHall. Awesome tweet storm: https://twitter.com/laforeverhall/status/1205981236960714754?s=21

The data is for tracking RETAIL investor flows, and in general they are the worse investor of all classes. So, basically this chart means that retail investors made a big mistake, nothing else. What conclusions can we draw from this? It’s not clear to me that anything is relevant for investment decisions.

Hopefully the new CEO won’t do write downs, like many new CEOs like to do. Yeah, or set the future bar low, so he can easily jump over it. FWIW, I don’t like banks right now - potential for lower NIM and higher loan losses.

How can a market go up when money flows out? This does t make any. sense. Sure there are buybacks, mergers and equity swap for debt, but those are long term trends. It would posit that Markets can go up, if money flows in.

The best illustration of the failure of the US health care system I have seen: https://www.healthcostinstitute.org/blog/entry/international-comparisons-of-health-care-prices-2017-ifhp-survey

Also sold my small position in HHC today. I also reduced my CUERVO.MX by 15% after a good run.

Oddlots - “How online dating is reshaping the economy” is a fantastic episode, imo: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000459731481

I think more restaurants fail for inconsistent quality and service than for food quality itself, much less menu breadth. What DTE is trying to do (many different cuisines from one kitchen ) sounds very complex and would be highly skill dependent.

I would probably looking to join a local Real estate investment association and start networking. Another option would be a real estate crowdfunding platform. I am bit leery of the latter, because I am not sure hat would happen if any of those platforms would run into financial difficulties. This might be a good question for folks knowledgeable in real estate like BG2008, especially if they are local to you.

As follows 1br $1600-1700(towards the lower end you can take your pick of high quality tenants with 700+ credit scores), HOA $330-$350, taxes ~$4700, market value currently ~$160K per(pre 2008 sales where mid 200s) 2br $2200-2400(same as above wrt tenant quality) HOA $400 or so, taxes $6500, market value currently around $250-270k (pre 2008 300s) Here's the reason those numbers work though.. theres ZERO market for $3000 per month and up rentals here. So under $2500 and especially $2000 per month is super competitive. This is just a specific community I have multiple properties in, but by and large those numbers are in the ballpark for what I look for. Again I would reiterate that the way I am investing in the stock market, I need to be consumed by it and its heavily taxing mentally. So with these, Im not looking to have ridiculous returns, but simply have something simple that takes care of itself and does better than the passive 3-5% I'd get elsewhere putting in no effort. I also try to stay disciplined and avoid concentration risk. I'd like to get a few mil face value of properties; ie something that spits off a decent chunk of cashflow, but also something that is reasonable enough in size to offload to a local HNW investor if I ever wanted liquidity and found selling more attractive than the alternatives. Gregmal, thanks for sharing these numbers. Based on the high tax rate, it sounds like you are somewhere in NY burps, perhaps Westchester county or LI. Have you seen any impact of rent regulation on property values there? I had a holding which had some NYC properties which marks their properties at market and based on my calculation, their property valued were reduced by ~7% since rent regulation became effective. We have an acquaintance in our town in MA who rents real estate who lower end multi family units and claims he makes a double digit cash return on those. He does some handy work himself and services like snow removal and for others he has a guy (he has a full time job so this is just a side activity for him). This is an area that a bit distressed still and rents are low (<$1000), so the units are pretty cheap. He doesn’t get a whole lot of price appreciation so far, but a high cash return. Different strokes for different people I guess. CA was totally different - negative cash return (even when not counting in mortgage amortization and just mortgage interest) and any buy was a bet on price appreciation.

Going to the firm first is probably the right idea. I think official complaints can be filed with the Finra: https://www.finra.org/investors/have-problem/file-complaint I think in most cases, it is always a good idea to file a complaint with the regulating body if you want to make sure to get traction. No company can ignore these complaints, because it is easy for prospective customers to look them up (even though most wont do so).

I have casually followed distressed debt from the 2015/16 crop of E&P bankruptcies and the recovery rates were mostly awful. Gladly I just looked, but never played in that sandbox. I bought some midstream debt during the 2015 energy credit meltdown and it went very well (OKE debt was paying north of 9% back then and was BB+ rated and never even close to being distressed). There is nothing like this around right now, not even close.

I am sure there will be trade deal with both the EU and the US, but it won’t be free trade. The UK is going to protect their farmers (which I think voted for the Tories), so that going to make a deal more difficult in particular with the US. I thought SD’s comments about Scotland splitting away were a joke, but apparently Scotland voted very differently from the rest of the UK for their own nationalist SNP party, who wants to remain the the EU and split from the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50779402 It is conceivable that they push for another vote to either remain or split from England. The U.K. could look like Yugoslavia when it’s all said and done. Maybe not that likely but who knows.

The election has removed much of the uncertainty and the prospect of a very left tilted or hung parliament, that’s why the GBP us up. Even the Eurozone likes the outcome since the Euro is up against the USD and stocks are up as well.