Spekulatius

Occam‘s razor applies here - you don’t need a god or aliens to explain how life came to earth , you shouldn’t use them as your hypothesis. No, we can’t exclude it, nor do we have to. Anyone can believe what he wants- some things can be proven, some just plausibly explained, in the absence of hard evidence, the simplest solution should be the preferred one.

We know how life got started. At some point our planet had an atmosphere with plenty of organic and fairly little free Oxygen and plenty of lightning storms. It has been shown in lab experiments that this leads to the formation of fairly complex organic molecules which started to a accumulate. At some point, a molecule was created that could replicate itself (the Ur DNS) and things got started from there. Surely, the creating of a molecule (or several different molecules) that could replicate was a huge milestone they took many many rolls of a dice so to speak. It also recall, that we had a laboratory the size of planet earth and hundred of millions of years to the disposal. It is likely that something eventually will evolve. Once something works, evolution goes to work. We don’t know why the big bank happened, but it is sort of an irrelevant question. Before the Big Bang happened, there was no space/ matter or even time. Even the laws of physics as we currently know them didn’t exist. Since time didn’t exist, there is no beginning or end either. We do not know how likely other life is, but we do know that planets like our own seem to be plenty full in the universe, as are the elements they our life is build upon. It is also possible that life may develop based on other chemistries (Silicon can create macromolecules, but the bonds are not as stable than carbo, so this would likely develop at lower temperature and probably not water based. I am not an expert on this but the driving force of evolution (whatever works survives and multiplies, whatever doesn’t, ceases to exist) can lead to the evolution of complex, self organizing structures that are able to duplicate. That’s what life is.

Not a problem for those companies not in the index, other than undervaluation for long periods...I'm buying those like hamburgers at half price. It will be a problem for the broad market included in the indices at some point, and could create a panic. Cheers! I must be missing something, but I don’t see a lot of stock being 50% off, just because they are not in an index. Besides, isn’t almost any stock in some kind of passive index, like the various Russel indexes? The only inefficiency I can see is that with the float being weighed rather than market cap, owner operators are systematically underrepresented.

Rkbabang won.

The French had Mitterand for 14 years, Britain will survive Corbin. Mitterand actually had communist ministers in his government. got off a rocky start (and he did nationalize banks etc, but paid fair prices), but later the French stock market was one of the best performing ones in Europe as I recall. Bought a bit BCS to get my toes wet yesterday. I am hoping for more volatility.

DXC and a bit of BCS

The LI railroad pays average salaries comparable to engineering salaries. You probably can nab while waiting for your pension. As for myself, I just want to the richer than my neighbors.

^ Seems splendid cheap. While not as cheap, I have been buying a bit of Nitto Denko 6988.T, which is an international Japanese chemical/material company (the Japanese 3M). they produce tapes made for semi/wafer processing and protection ,as well as materials used for displays, semi manufacturing etc. Higher margin stuff. ~30% of the market cap in cash. Earnings are down somewhat as their end markets have weakened. I think they have decent LT prospects and pay a rising (now ~4% dividend). They also have an US ADR.

LOL, I like this mental image better than picking up nickels in front of a steamroller

There seemed to be plenty of optimism about new ad units being released. Could that explain the price jump? I was going to buy more this morning but decided to buy something else once GOOG jumped. Yea I had an order ready to go right before the close yesterday as 1120 seemed excessive. I ultimately convinced myself to hold off because I'd deployed a fair amount of cash elsewhere recently and todays move is what I get for being a pussy. Google I find tends to overreact often. More times than not it is to the downside but there is no reason to be buying a stock like this on a +4% day. I flipped some of my FB sales proceeds from a while back in my IRA’s into GOOG. I feel the stock is reasonably valued and much more safe than any of these other tech plays. On MPC, I still have some more work to do, since I haven’t looked at refiners for a while. What I think Mr. market is missing (or at least underestimating) is the cash flows that these companies are getting from their midstream operations, which by now exceed the cash generated from the refining business itself. Then they have these captive MLP which allow them to monetize assets around 9-10x EBITDA when their stocks trade at <6x EBITDA (at Times) which is a great arbitrage. Best in class PSX also looks cheap and they are even further down the road to be a midstream player.

The problem with the strategy is that if the stock goes straight up, you just get 10c/ share.

I don’t think that anything has changed with respect to QUCT‘s Land holdings. I have been tracking this stock since at least Y2010 and I don’t think there were some larger land purchases. They continue to shuffle around their commercial real estate holdings den possibly some plots near Long Beach. Buying another 25,000 acres would have been in the news, that’s a size of 40 sq miles and that’s a lot of land!. What I did find is that the ranch is held via Messer Land &Development, which is registered in 12707 Huasna Road in Arroyo Grande. When you look this up in the San Luis Obispo county website, you can look at some plots there, but they are only part of part if the land apparently. https://assessor.slocounty.ca.gov/assessor/pisa/Search.aspx Pro Tip, search for the street number 12707 and a couple of parcels will pop up. The parcels are named Huasna Rancho, which is actually from a Mexican land grand from hr 19 century ( for 22k acres back then), but I don’t think that the areas for Messer Land ranch and the land grant are a exactly the same, but I think they overlap. Anyone is welcome to do do more sleuthing, I have spent already enough time in this rabbit hole :o

GOOG - what caused the inexplicable weakness yesterday and this AM and the even less explicable sudden jump this morning?

MPC is quite interesting from a value POV. Their cash flows that can be used for buybacks or dividends exceed their earnings due to the cash stream from the MLPs. Twas the toast of the town, best of breed, sector champion maybe a year ago...now its poo poo. I don't see much that has changed to warrant such sentiment shift. Me neither. Bought a starter today and will see how it goes. I have owned it way back in the past at the spinoff before the shale oil boom became a buzzword and sold it too early then. Thanks for posting. I also bought some MSM. Arguably not super cheap, but I like the company and the management and I think it’s a good business.

Interesting background on Uber IPO: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-blame-game-focuses-morgan-014218851.html I also thought UBER might be a decent flip. However, I think there is a warning here they with these mega IPO where they wait such a long time until they IPO that most semi professional investor have gotten in it already or IPO and there isn’t much demand left. I find it ironic that even so I subscribed for a few shares with Gidelity, I did get zero allocation, yet when the stock was started to trade, it dropped like a stone because nobody wanted to own it. I guess most of these semi professional pre IPO investors simply bought this for flipping. Thanks for playing!

MPC is quite interesting from a value POV. Their cash flows that can be used for buybacks or dividends exceed their earnings due to the cash stream from the MLPs.

DWDP and GOOG. I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

A conglomerate discount of 20% is not unusual and I have in fact seen much larger discounts in Holding co’s. Exor for example trades at a close to 40% discount to NAV.

I believe they WEB is more concerned with increasing BRK’s intrinsic value than with closing the gap to NAV. Generally, NAV will follow Intrinsic value anyways and if there is a large gap between the two (I mean 40% or more, not the current 15-20% by my estimate) I think WEB will absolutely buy back or tender stock in size they my surprise some.

Couldn’t help but post this buffet quote: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-07-tm-354-story.html

I think this is a key point. Retail investors are more likely to get the leftovers. Get a small slice of the good over subscripted ones and get a large slice of the bad apples. Overall, I think an IPO is just a special situation, just like a spin-off, mutual thrift conversion or an emerging bankruptcy play. IPO’s can’t be correctly priced or they would not show that large changes when trading begins, so there should be a way to make a buck here. It may not be Graham style investing, but I think it can be value investing in a probabilistic kind of way.

I don't understand these drivers complaining about money. I mean, I have never seen Uber advertised as a full-time job. Commercials always show it as additional income when you have a few hours to spare. I drove for them while in college and some nights when my wife worked 3rd shift as a nurse. I was quite happy to have some "beer" money in college. If anything these people should be thankful Uber exists. It facilitates everything for them and gives them a platform to make some extra income. Nobody is forcing them to drive for Uber and they could go out and start their own private taxi service if they really wanted (my neighbor used to do with for a local Judge...made out pretty good). Society needs to stop trying to push these supplemental income jobs as careers. Bagging groceries, flipping burgers and driving for Uber isn't a career. We need to hold firm to this conviction, because out of necessity comes change. People will learn this and adapt if needed. Fun fact: also paid for the entirety of my honeymoon by donating plasma in college. But that's a story for another time. I agree, it makes no sense to take an on demand job with a contractor and then demand benefits. It’s also off base, because Uber right now loses money, so one could make the argument they it subsidizes the riders , but also the drivers. If some has a reason to complain, it would be taxi drivers since they get more unregulated competition.

Added to DWDP. I believe the company trades at a substantial discount to the value of the sum of parts.

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. FWIW has anybody ever tried this at IB? They do have an "IPO Subscriptions" page in account management but I've never actually seen an IPO there. Looks like the Uber IPO was available at TDAmeritrade. But I don't even know if it is possible for non-residents of the US to subscribe to IPO's at all actually. Something to look into maybe. IB does not get access to most IPO’s. The only stock I recall that one could get there was IBKR. ;D FWIW, buying UBER at IPO wouldn’t be value investing, but it is likely to make some money given what we know. I didn’t get an allocation from Fidelity, so I think there is decent demand. If they could just open UBER for trading. Maybe they wait until the market recovers. LOL.

Anybody try to get some shares? It’s priced at the low end at $45 to make sure, the shares fly of the shelves. Should be good for an IPO pop, imo.