Spekulatius

Damn it! How nobody thought of this before? Shoot, let's nationalize the entire economy and stop worrying about bankruptcies or bailouts. Problem(s) solved! You wanna run for President? I can’t run for president, because I am not US citizen and not born here anyways, but thanks for thinking of me. Also, I don’t know how you get the idea that ai suggested to nationalize the whole economy, Inusut suggesteddp the revolutionary thesis that if everything works just fine for virtually anyone, but a few speculators, the current status quo is very likely to persist, why would it not? While this maybe correct, it doesn't make it right. And, are things just working fine for virtually everyone? Are they? Do Fannie and Freddie engage in reasonable credit expansion while they have no capital of their own? I was under the impression Watt sees the companies operating with a straightjacket. "working fine" is just in the eyes of the beholder. Or the eyes of the banks. I don’t think creditworthy borrowers have trouble accessing mortgages for homes, at least not from my experience. Housing markets are doing quite well and are becoming overheated in many areas. What are the straighjackets that you are referring to? They don’t seem to have any impact on the mortgage financing.

Not to argue that merits of technical analysis, but you might want look at a BTC chart. Alternatively, build your own if you also want RSI and moving averages. SD Technical analysis on a value investing board? Mayorly undervalued is mayorly undervalued. Just mindful that the current price is below the last trough low (Feb-05) of USD 6,914. For those who belive in the voodoo science, this supposedly means that at the curent price of USD 6,611 it could drop quick a bit until it 'finds' a new level. And given that there really isn't any agreed fundamental value approach applicable to Bitcoin - tossing bones may well be as good as it gets! No opinion as to whether it is under or overvalued. ;D SD What would exactly provide a floor? Technical analysis would suggest much lower, maybe $800-900. Intrinsic is exactly what?

What surprises me a bit is that so many value investors end up owning the same crappy stocks like Valeant, Sears’s, Resolute Forest. Seems like a lack of original research to me or some group think. all these stocks had yellow or red flags, had balance sheets etc. Chou had huge stacked in all those stocks and thwt is why he underperformed. It might have worked great in another universe, but as it played out, it wasn’t really a surprise that it didn’t. As a value investor you can’t expect to outperform consistently every year, but I think some introspective is warranted, if 1/3 of your portfolio goes bust. You can’t blame this on macro either. These weren’t really value investment with a margin of safety either. margin of safety stocks is where heads you win, tails you break even or don’t lose much. Those stocks were more like poker bets were heads you win, tails you lose and they got the odds wrong. This, IMO is not not really value investing, at least not Buffet or a Graham style.

I disagree. Let's define underperforming as being in 33 percentile (aka bottom 1/3, a good sized margin under the average) I would say that for most professions, their results aren't even being accurately measured. Imagine you are crippled in an accident and you hire a personal injury lawyer. How do you measure his effectiveness? How do you know if they did a good job for you? That you got as much as your injuries were worth? What about doctors? Hospitals probably collect statistics on surgical mistakes and complications, but what about seeing your family doctor? Do you think someone is tracking their misdiagnoses and mistakes? I don't. What about underperforming as a grocery clerk? A bit slower at their work and not as friendly. Remember that one 1/3 of your employees are underperforming! Are you going to fire them all every year? Remember that your top performing grocery clerks probably move on to find other, better paid work. You don't want staff turnover and retraining of 50% per year.. So in summary I think that Fund Management is one of the few professions where your results are accurately measured! There is underperformance in all professions - but it isn't as obvious as in fund management. In most professions, you still create value for your employees, even if you underperform. An underperforming waitress will still serve customers, an underperforming engineer will still do some engineering work for the company etc. An underperforming money manager however will be measured against the easily obtainable index standard and if he doesn’t beat that or worse underperforms by a wide margin, he does not create any value of hits customers, in fact he costs his customers money. His customers would have been better off, if they had never heard or met this persons, that’s the harsh truth. On the positive side, money mangement is one of the few professions where you can underperform and still become filthy rich. 8)

Damn it! How nobody thought of this before? Shoot, let's nationalize the entire economy and stop worrying about bankruptcies or bailouts. Problem(s) solved! You wanna run for President? I can’t run for president, because I am not US citizen and not born here anyways, but thanks for thinking of me. Also, I don’t know how you get the idea that ai suggested to nationalize the whole economy, Inusut suggesteddp the revolutionary thesis that if everything works just fine for virtually anyone, but a few speculators, the current status quo is very likely to persist, why would it not?

For those that like history, I can very much recommend Barbara Tuchman books. I listened to the Audiobooks “ Guns of August” (how WW1 begun and was fought early on) and “March of Folly” (Samples of Folly from history ) which I feel should get a new edition with a chapter on how Trump runs our country, especially how he starts an Trade war. I also read “A distant mirror” about the 14 century and liked it a lot. What I like a out her books is that the very much regards history through the then contemporary eyes of the protagonists who lived in these times, but also draws (somewhat opinionated) comparisons to present.

. Hey it's me - someone who understands how CRTs work - turns out they don't really. They are essentially giving money away to their buyers at risk premiums that do not align with the risk actually being taken, which of course is up for debate on how you model it (by design), but the former CFO of one of the companies now issuing them wouldn't be doing so if he were still in charge because, as he notes, you're giving away too much $ for the amount of risk being mitigated. The problem is that no one can tell because the market has only been going up. As Rosner et al have noted - CRTs are counter-cyclical. Meaning that when the cycle enters a downturn no one who is currently buying them will continue to do so. So then all the risk will flow back to the GSEs and they will have already given away the amount of capital they should have kept in the equity position (the set up pre-conservitorship) but since these guys are all self serving frauds that were put in by all the people trying to cover this up and give the market to the banks, they go along with it because the need to get paid too. And if they're willing to strong arm the BoD in 2008 into essentially a mob loan, what's to stop them from pressuring their current mgmt (who was replaced by the frauds) to do whatever they want. Which will further work to their ends of blaming the GSEs for privatized losses in the future when no one buys the CRTs in a downturn thus giving the gov't (but really the banks) ever more ammo to claim that the GSEs are a failed biz model or whatever horseshit they're going to say. And most people, including the politicians won't know it or won't admit they know it because they're getting paid too. So yeah they're a scam and the people buying it won't say it becuase they know they're getting paid and the people selling it want the GSEs to fail long term so they're pushing it hard. And no one anywhere is scrutinizing it because all the 'research' on it is coming from where? oh right the banks selling them. So la la la the fraud continues. Have a nice day. I think the GSE’s work better under conversatorship than as private or private public enterprises. Their capital levels (essentially zero right now) don’t matter and if they make losses in a downturn, they have an infinite credit line from the Fed that they can rely on. So there can’t be a run in the bank. Problem solved. Keep things exactly the way they are, in this case the limbo status is the best case scenario for all stakeholders, except the shareholders of old of course

I don’t know any Profession where it is Ok to underperform for 10 years and I do not know why money mangement should be different. It‘s as simple as that.

I agree with Oddballstocks that smaller companies shareholder meetings are much more rewarding. in these meetings, Managers often will engage talking with shareholders and make off the cuff remarks that can be quite enlightening. one also get a real impression on how management thinks. You also got to meet other investors and learn how they think of the fact that they own this stock alone may be telling.

This is a complaint website. The rating is meaningless, even the highest rated Lenders (credit unions etc) are rated 1 1/2 stars. That said, it seems like CACC is extraordinary quick to repo the cars.

By that logic, why vote for Christine N. McLean? She is Prem's daughter. Because I didn’t know that this is the case, otherwise I would have withheld the vote for her as well.

I highly doubt that Siemens needed a bit of change all of a sudden.

Got my Proxy and voted for all Directors but Benjamin Watsa. I hope more people do the same , so they at least get the message.

I think it is just higher discount rate. Pretty much everything with a yield or utility like attributes has sold of, including utilities, cable stocks, MLPs, Pipeline companies or other high yielding dividend stocks.

This doesn’t matter if reimbursements for operators don’t grow. I also suspect there is a lot of wage pressure for operators as well. They don’t tend to pay nurses and skilled personal well, so if the labor market improves, those folks move on.

Same here, I added to my small Fb position. I also bought CMCSA - relatively cheap asset at 8x EBITDA and good operators.

I think that these traditional tobacco companies have a lot more staying power than you think --> they have an addictive product. In addition, most of them have diversified into other business. Yes, they is true - their product is addictive, but now you can replace it with another addictive product that works just as well and is less damaging to your health and more socially acceptable. I compare it to LED lights replacing lightbulbs. For about a hundred years, lighting companies made bulbs and gas discharge lamps (Halogene etc) with very nice profit margins and relatively stable market shares. Then came the LED - a superior product and old market shares count for nothing and the profit margins went to hell. The comparison of LED vs tobacco is problematic in several ways, but I think there are a lot of similarities too. The fact that an upstart in the e-cig business (JUUL) can get almost 50% market shares and beat the marketing machines or Imperial brands and BTI (and maybe MO) tells you already something.

i have been looking a cheapishly looking tobacco stocks a while ago and bought a starter position and then started to do some more research and thing this business is on the cusp of a significant change from e-cigarettes. It seems that products from industry newcomers like Juul gain significant market share especially with younger folks. This makes sense to me since starters will likely not be bound by existing habits and chose the product that appears to work best. I have little doubt that smoking vaporware is much less harmful than tobacco and it certainly is less annoying to others. My guess is that adoption of e-cigs could rapidly increase and destroy the other tradional tobacco business. the fact that a newcomer like Juul can gain almost 50% market share means that the incumbent tobacco companies don’t have that much of an advantage and market shares will be redistributed, but moreover, it is not likely that the e-cig business will have the same obscene profit margins than the tobacco products. So get the last puff out of tobacco stocks and hope that these companies die faster than their :P

The earnings transcripts are still available and don’t disappear behind the paywall. That is the main thing that attracted me to the website in the place.

Yes, SeekingAlpha jumped the shark. I don’t think that many people will pay up, the content for the most part is not worth it. I think hiding the older articles behind a paywall will do nothing but reduce page views.

It’s a low margin business , so the valuation is fairly low despite the 20B in revenue. A couple billion are small fries for BRK nowadays.

It shouldn’t be based on race and gender but all companies should be open to all races and gender. I do think it makes a questionable impression if all top managers are white middle aged men. Contrary example - I visited some companies in my field in Silicon Valley a while ago and virtually all Engineers were Chinese. They would speak Mandarin to each other. I went to the cafeteria and the items for lunch was Chinese food, virtually all of it. The menu was mainly written in Mandarin with English scribbles next to it. How would you feel working at that place as a white minority engineer? That is how it must feel if you are of a minority and work at a white make dominated work place. I like to see people from different backgrounds in a workplace, and I am a white middle aged majority guy (except my upbringing in Europe perhaps). My wife is of Chinese descent (so I really don’t mind Chinese food) and our family definitely gets some second looks, when you travel through some heartland areas, they you don’t get where families like us are a commonplace occurance.

Yea, maybe a woman would have helped. Also maybe having a few more board members that weren't senile would have helped also. Half that board probably consider it a personal victory if they survived a board meeting. I see that Mad Dog is also on that list. Now I don't doubt his ability to smoke an Iraqi division. But the idea that he would have anything to add in the area of blood testing is laughable. Blood letting is more his thing. Furthermore, as DETJD pointed out this more or less applies to everyone on the board. What a joke. I think anyone with some experience in the field would have helped. All these guys are out of their are of competence by a mile and they retired and most likely haven’t seen anything but staged tours of the operations. You could have learned all you wanted, if you would have spent some time checking out the opereion and talking to some people. You will be amazed what you can learn about a company, fairly quickly. But a Kissinger or Shultz who both are way out of their area of competence and retired a long time ago won’t do that. I do think they choosing a BOD for reputations effect and with none having experience in the field is a big red flag.

Based on the lastest pictures, she seemed to go to a really bad hairdresser, so that’s a start.