Spekulatius

The SAAS model does not apply here, because for a customer, there is virtually no switching cost. One can use Uber and I can use a competitor 30 min later without issues. These business are great for the customer, but it remains to be seen what the ultimate profitability will look like.

Lyft looks really terrible now compared to Uber. Uber doesn’t look pretty either but shows economies of scale, while Lyft basically doesn’t. I can see why Lyft is selling off, it’s not just supply and demand of shares in that sector but inferior economics relative to Uber.

It’s the long term Performance of a lot of his investments that I am worried about. That’s why I hold less FFH “bags” now than I used to.

Largest privately subsidized public transportation company files for IPO: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000119312519103850/d647752ds1.htm

WFC and RHDGF

Image what she could have accomplished , if she had joined a hedge fund! Jokes asides , it is quite a feat to get spatial resolution on an object so far away, even if this object is the size of our solar system. Will listen to the Ted talk later. I wonder if they will have a go at the black hole in the Center of our galaxy next.

Looks like a donut to me 8)

Annual report is out. Cliffs notes: Trust fund assets and under management and revenues up +15% YoY after stagnating for a while Earnings ~$70/share ( some extraordinary gains from 1031 swap of RE included) Book value ~$1050/ share ~$600/ share in bonds and cash Some investments in RE and startup ventures initiated ($20/ share) $53 revenue/ share in real estate rents 0.52 acre/ share CA farmland I am very pleased with the pickup of the trust business.

Can you name some examples of well run family business conglomerates?

Just a possibly stupid question - how can the US enforce a fine for Danske? Danske has no operations in the US - could they just tell the US to take a hike? This is different than Deutsche Bank or even BNP since the latter do investment banking in the US. The risk reward ratio for going long Danske looks quite good here.

Couple of risks 1) The banks may have to pull out of the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania etc), which have been very profitable 2) Heavy fines by US and demotic regulators 3) Management is consumed to deal with the scandal and can’t take care or the ongoing business (see WFC and this problem is far worse, imo)

Sold the remainder ( except one share) of my few PDER shares.

The max “safe” leverage depends on the predictability of the cash. Pipeline companies typically have 10 year contracts spore or less guaranteeing stable or slowly growing cash flows during that time, so a 4-5x EBITDA coverage is considered “safe”, E&P’s have very volatile cashflows, so everything higher than 2.5x EBITDA can be dangerous (depend on asset life of course ), high quality real estate can be leveraged 6x or even a bit higher and is considered safe. 12x leverage is very high and in my opinion unsafe, no matter the underlying asset, imo.

With the largest BAM sub (BIP/BPR) at 12x debt/EBITDA, I wouldn’t call BAM antifragile. It is essentially a bet on having low interests for a long time to come, IMO.

The last two recessions (2001 and 2008) caused 50% corrections in the stock market. The 2001/2002 was just a garden variety Recession by the numbers, yet it caused a severe correction because it was preceded by bubble valuations. I guess one way to frame the question by OP is to ask yourself how likely is another 50% correction in the next 10 years? If we get such a correction, results overall may still be positive, but most likely they won’t be great. Also, I have mentioned this before, I think the next stock market rout may well be caused by political events. We have populist movements in almost any country now, so it will be harder to predict what the political environment will look like. For example, we have now almost 40 years of tax reductions for corporations in most countries, starting in the 80‘s basically, which helped valuations tremendously - what happens if voters decided that it didn’t work for them and decide let’s try the another way around? That’s just one example of political risk, another one is trade wars, elimination of trade blocks and free trade. All of the above are common themes with politicians.

One thing to point out is that buying funds with a 2% + expense ration are a suckers bet, almost regardless who runs it. It certainly creates a very high hurdle to outperform after fees.

Yes, that is exactly my opinion as well. +1

cherzeca, In short, I agree on the first emphasized part of your post above, ref. my earlier original post. I'm reluctant at elaborating further here - because of fear of participating in or triggering to derail this topic about the Brexit. This also applies for the second part of your last post emphasized by me above, ... but just even more. I believe the vote for Brexit is more rooted in political disagreement than economic causes. Personally, I would prefer if this thread would be more focused on the economic and especially investment angle, as this is the focus of this message board. For one thing, I believe that the fact that the UK kept it’s own currency and hence independent central bank ist the reason why British banks earn a higher NIM and are hence more profitable. exit should perpetuate this structure, which means that British banks should be more profitable going forward too. If correct, that would be an important consideration in terms of investments.

Thanks, much appreciated. The table from the Guardian seems to indicate very slow GNP growth in Britain in 2018 and the near term future, but no crisis. Projections always need to be taken with a grain of salt and were based on soft Brexit: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/08/uk-economic-growth-slowest-europe-next-year-european-commission-forecasts-brexit

EU has been great. You can travel to a lot of countries without showing your passport, stupid border controls. You can move ,work in France , Italy, Germany as you please. A lot of countries like Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czechoslovakia have benefited tremendously. No expensive currency exchanges. The Greeks screwed up, so what. They had the choice to leave. The U.K. will leave, but at the end of the day, they will still be closely connected to the EU by trade.

I think the UK will be fine in the long run, but the short term might be ugly and probably means a lower standard of living via higher inflation. Corporate taxes aren’t really the problem in Europe, they have been substantially lowered over time, it’s the individual taxes they are too high. Germany at least could easily reduce the tax burden, there is 60B Euro Budget Surplus and interest rates are negative for short term Bund notes, what are they waiting for? The issue of blame aside, any idea what happens to the U.K. economy if we get a hard exit at default conditions? i thought it might be similar to the impact of the GFP for Britain and maybe a weak recession for the EU. The stock market especially in the U.K. doesn’t seem to think so or it would be 30% lower, or are investor there just putting their head into the sand? I am guessing they I must be wrong, I wouldn’t touch U.K. stocks (in general) with long pole right now, but clearly many think differently.

Knowing something and applying it are two different things anyways. I used to know some accountants at work that seemed constantly broke and had credit scores in the 600’s. They certainly can run the numbers and budget, they just couldn’t apply it for whatever reason. It seems like discipline and temperament are more important than knowledge and intelligence for success with investing.

Yes it’s significant. However looking at this in another way , 40% of all U.K. exports go to other EU countries, but the fraction of EU exports going to the UK is only 8%. So for the UK, trading with the EU is 4x more important than the other way around. The EU can clearly live without the UK, but the UK has a really hard time with out the EU. Anways, trading between the UK and the DU would hardly stop with a hard Brexit, the EU could simply assume standard WTO conditions and be done with it.

I don’t think it is even an option for the EU to let the UK vote for the EU parliament, when they clearly want out. This would not even remotely make sense.

I honestly think most investors are better off ignoring these macro biased reports. I think it’s correct to think about the economic cycle in broad terms (Dalio, Howard Marks early vs late cycle), possibly take this into account but don’t get obsessed with it or conclude that any of this really is going to tell us what is going to happen and perhaps even more importantly when. Again, this is just the circle for competence with stocks. If macro is your circle of competence than by all means used it for investing. I don’t think a lot of investors are good at it though, so they better stock with what they know rather than gamble with the unknown.