Spekulatius

You know the photo is staged when she wears high heels on the factory floor.

It's beer ;D Essentially branded consumer discretionary purchases. They have decent brands (Molson, Coors) and an established distribution network. It's pretty cheap and was 10% off today. While the business may go thru ups-and-downs, especially in terms of management's execution (as we are seeing with other CPG's like Kraft-Heinz), I think product demand will remain relatively more steady (compared to say, Tide detergent). So it's basically, multiple is low, they have scale, brands should have staying power. Was just curious if there was more than met the eye to the thesis. In the alcoholic beverage segment, beer is losing market share to spirits and wine. Within the beer segment, TAP’s mass market brands are losing share share to craft beers. I think TAP represents a slow bleeding consumer franchise, somewhere in between a consumer staple and cigarettes, imo. The bleed is probably slow enough that an investment in equity makes sense at this point, especially since pricing holds up.

The reinsurer AXS and RE don’t look that great, they took quite a hit last quarter. I had positions in both of them and sold out a couple of days ago. I do agree that Münchener Rück‘s result look pretty good. We will see how BRK and FFH are doing. FWIW, I have reduced my FFH Position, but not because of their catastrophe risk, but because of concerns about their investment side.

WFC is cheap, probably caused by negative press coverage about the outage. I added some on Friday. FWIW, I could still access my accounts, but it was slow.

Another issue with Interactive Brokers. I bid on an stock (which I purchased before on IB) and the order remains in “blue” status, meaning that the exchange doesn’t accept the order. This has never before happened to me and seems to be only with one stock. I put in a ticket with and they first told me that there is no bid ask. However, I lok at the same stock with E*TRADE and Fidelity and there is an bid ask. After I put in a second ticket the answer was as follows: This does not make sense, because I know that the stock has traded since I made a bid ask. It almost seems like IB is trading in a different exchange than these other bid ask or trades go though. Anyone understands what’s going on? Again, I have traded the same stock before using IB.

Shhughes1116 - thanks for the color on MAC’s managment changes. I agree it makes a change of control more likely for MAC vs family controlled TCO. There is an interesting article from Brad Thomas (prolific writer about Reits on SA) about TCO, which also mentions MAC as a comp. The point he is making is that TCO has way less (7 stores) exposure to ailing department store retailers (Sears, JCPenney) compared to MAC (49 stores). While I think MAC can fill these cavancies when the time comes (some of it is in JV and would be a shared expense), it still means that they have a lot of work to do and capital to spent until the properties are fully productive again. It’s an opportunity, but also a risk, imo. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4236590-taubman-centers-get-rolex-price-timex

Besides the bravado around macro, Druckenmiller basically pitched cloud plays and specifically mentioned NOW. I put it on my watch list around. $165 and it now trades at ~$220. Not bad at all. It would have been better if I had bought it myself. ::)

I guess they don’t like the fact that as long as the preferred (or debt) is publicity trading, they need to file the financials for their now “private” firm. The simple solution would be to tender the preferred? I wonder why this want the plan to begin with? Stinginess or lack of cash?

Any comment why you choose MAC vs TCO? Both seem to trade at similar valuations (7-7.5% cap rate) and TCO has even higher quality malls and a better balance sheet and way better long term track record. I think they are equally likely to be acquired. What I noticed with Nc (and TCO) that both have shown shrinking FFO/share due to dispositions from property where the proceeds were invested in their higher quality properties. This is dilutive, because apparently these investment have only initial returns of about 7%, while the deposed properties have cap rates that are higher than that. Then adding the lag when the rents are kicking in from the projects and it’s clear they are dilutive to FFO , albeit hopefully accretive to NAV. The low initial returns on investment bug me a bit on project that are upgrades (low ROI’s for green fields would be understandable, but most of these projects are just updating existing properties) and make me think they these operators have no choice but to keep their properties updates, or they quickly may become dreaded B-malls, trading for 8.5-10% cap rate and quickly losing value. So a lot of the Capex may just be maintenance Capex in the end, even if it’s capitalized. Anyways, I am basically questioning if recycling the capital in higher quality properties created value.

Is this is a major source of revenues for Wells and other banks? I was under the impression that most migrants used something like Western Union or Moneygram. I will note, due to weird circumstances, I've been having to send myself money - I'm currently in South America and can't mail myself a new debit card yet - and I can send myself cash through a service like Worldremit for ~1% of my remittance (including both fee and FX charge) and pick up directly at a local bank five minutes later. That is going to put a lot of people out of business over time. Remittance is most likely a very small part of larger banks revenues. The larger banks now promote Zelle, which I think is a bank sponsored payment system and is free or very cheap (I haven’t tried it yet).

Weather apparently doesn’t count. Now, I'm in a weak position for my argument that it's nice living here (Calgary) because I had to get my furnace serviced today to keep up with the -30 C weather. But, the weather here isn't as bad as people think. We have a significant portion of relatively warm days in the winter because of a weather pattern known as chinooks. Plus, it is one of the sunniest major cities, which I think is relatively more important to people's well-being (and livability) than temperature. But on the other hand its pretty freakin' cold right now. I will still never move. Yep, that's what everyone in Alberta says... Well we have sunny days... or .... But it's a dry cold (yea, right). All you need to know is -30 C. That's COLD! I got a buddy in Edmonton who always fantasizes about moving to Toronto where it's warm lol. He'd do that in a second too if over here we didn't loose our minds with the houses. Those of us in Calgary can always cling to the fact that at least we don't live in Edmonton... There are probably not many jobs there, but we once were travelling through the Lake Okanagan and Kootenay area, which is absolutely beautiful and appears to Canada’s banana belt. It’s probably costly though.

I guess there is the question about industries vs companies. While some companies may be misunderstood, it is quite rare that an industry is completely misunderstood. I think one is more likely to find misunderstood industries where there is very little coverage from the investment community, which could be an overlooked sector, or a sector where the industry changes/transforms and those few analysts/investors that cover it, don’t quite grasp the change. I think some recent changes that I am aware of are the subscription model for software (Adobe, Microsoft; and separation of franchising/branding from property management and ownership in the hotel sector (HLT, MAR benefited from that).

Weather apparently doesn’t count.

This article on mobility is fantastic, imo. I am surprised that Germany does so badly. it is also obvious that the Scandinavian countries Sweden and Denmark are doing something right. Think about this - the top 0.1% own as much than the bottom 90%. A lot of folks in the bottom have no chance to move up. Why would they not eventually get the idea to just take what they can’t earn, but electing a someone which is willing to do what it takes. These trends are decades in the making and there isn’t a quick fix, imo.

But that's in theory. In practice, I've experienced countless times when I bought a low P/E stock, and stock kept declining, and a few months later the company reports shit earning and suddenly, my P/E is much higher. Company blames it for some one timer events, so I held on, and then another quarter later, the earning is even worse--- It was negative now! So there isn't event a P/E that I could value on, and now management continues to blame some one timer events. Now I am down 50%, with no margin of safety with me. ::) Well then it wasn’t a “good” stock. It was a stock that looked better than the fundamentals actually were when bought. You are correct, that this happens and Mr Market should not be underestimated. Not every contrarian buy is a good one. However, often Mr Market knows nothing and stocks go down for no reason or the decline is in no relation to the fundamental issue causing it.

Theoretically, if you bought a stock cheaply, it should not matter if the market agrees with you or not. A good stock should work even without rerating.

EUK3.F (Eurokai). Shipping berth/ port operator operating harbors in Germany, Italy and a few other countries. Very solid balance sheet, cheap and illiquid, the way I like it. IBKR - bought a few shares in today’s selloff. Might just be trade. I continue whittling down my pipeline holdings as they march towards fair value.

It really needs a “Brexi dump”, hopefully neglecting that the bulk of its business is in the US.

How can they make 12% unlevered returns. Their cap rate, based on invested capital looks to be around 6.66% (~$400M NOI / $6000M invested capital ) and lease escalation are < 2% annual. That’s gets at most an 8.5% total return, neglecting certain costs (renovations etc.)

Yes you can, as long as the shareholders you screwed and the new shareholders are different. It happens all the time.

Bankruptcy is easier for managment than dealing with an activist. I don’t think that management owns enough stocks to care if shareholders get wiped out of not. Now it’s “calvinball“ game in bankruptcy court.

Yes, I love the “Expanse” and the “Man in the High castle”. Babylon Berlin is on my list to watch.

Forget what they say, just see what they do.

What damage?

^ Good ideas above. I like the idea to get other employees involved. It certainly seems like you will need some sort of a partner.