Spekulatius

Real estate is a Cash Flow generating asset, while bitcoin and gold are not generating anything. Big difference, imo.

Had the same surgery (Hernia) this fall and used a grand total of 2 tablets of the batch of opioids (forgot the brand) my doctor prescribed for me. I managed my pain (which was pretty strong at moments, but most of the time fairly bearable ) with Ibuprofen and went to work a week afterwards. I recall to getting fairly decent batches of Vicadine (with refills) for surgeries a few years back, where I barely used more than a few. A somewhat junky acquaintance told me back then that they would go for $5/ each on the Black market (I politely declined). Comparing this to Europe, it seems that the threshold for pain is much lower in the US than over there. I Even remember dentist drilling teeth without any pain treatment. He was from Russia and told me it only hurt if you think too much about what he is doing.He was right, but it is difficult to think about something else, when you are lying on a chair with a drill in your mouth going all in. As to OP’s initial post, I am not quite sure what he wants to say. It’s certainly not the distributors fault, that opiate drugs make their way in circulation, maybe the doctors for prescribing too much too freely, folks for taking them too much, folks for reselling their overage.... I don’t know, the drug does no seem to do all that much other than dull your mind and removing chronic pain. They did not even work that well for the sharp pain experienced sometimes when moving around after my surgery, which was quite unpleasant but generally only lasted a for a few moments.

I meant NG ( natural gas) - phat finger when typing on my phone. I think the MLP are selling off due to concerns about the tax reform, which believe to be unfounded.

Added to NG Mlp SEP today. This is essentially an equity bond. I also like BWP in the same space for around. $13, since they do in excess of $2 per unit in DCF. This is owned by L and I can’t for the life of me figure out, why they haven’t taken out their limited partners.

I for one am thankful for the discussions regarding bitcoin and block chain. I am not buying into the bitcoin bull market, but there is certainly an investment opportunity here. It seems to me that block chain based protocols have a place where counter party or third party trust cannot be obtained or is not desired. I think the underground economy is one, but I could also see an institution like the United Nations using it to transfer funds, Why shouldn’t they create their own block chain based currency currency to facilitize funds movements acros nations borders without interference from anyone? Gaming is another advantage where it could be used to exchange goods between gamers. I am sure there are many others.

Folks should lighten up a bit -maybe this will help ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house Every person was trading, including my spouse; The mining rigs hummed in the cellar with care, In hopes that some new bitcoins soon would be there; The children were buying tokens from their beds, While visions of Porsche Turbos danced in their heads; And Mama on her laptop, and I on PC Searched for the next big buying opportunity But then from my desk there arose such a clatter, I answered the phone to see what was the matter. I squinted to see by the light of the taper, As a teenager walked me through his white paper. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a bearded millennial drinking craft beer He pulled out his phone, checked his what-do-you-call-it Where one keeps one’s tokens- his digital wallet. More rapid than lightning, the rallies they came And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now Bitcoin! Now Litecoin! Now Ether and Ripple! If Monero can double, then you can all triple! To the top of the chart! Break the resistance wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!" And then with a wink, to my office he flew While lugging a case and swigging his brew As he prepped his ICO pitch to help me gain, I confirmed a few transactions on the blockchain. His slide deck was thick; his paper, full of detail About how he’d attract bids from Asian retail. His eyes--how they twinkled! So this was no hobby He clearly knew how to pitch the Watanabes When I asked if he’d come from the North he said "No. The coin-mining rigs have all melted the snow. I leave for the coast on my sleigh in an hour. My wind-farm provides me with super-cheap power." What about the Fed? Do you see any trouble? He laughed, "You know central banks can’t spot a bubble. The worst they can do is say ’buyer beware.’ It’s like the Wild West... pretty much laissez-faire." Is there intrinsic value? I mean, what can I buy? He looked at me sadly and let out a sigh. Then shaking his head, tapped the side of his nose. "You mean that you can’t see the Emperor’s new clothes? You’re not a believer, I can feel in my loins. C’mon! A chap once bought some pizza with coins. You know that the ledger, it needs proof of work. You’re not only a doubter, you’re some kind of jerk. Your insistence on value is pretty quaint, Gramps. Stick to trading stocks or maybe collect stamps. My coin’s not for you, I’ve seen more than enough." Then he packed up his things and he left in a huff. But I heard him exclaim as he left, sight unseen: Happy holidays all, and good luck in ’18

This one comment really made me think? Are we really in a great phase of innovation? Hard to tell while we are in the middle of it..... Smartphones are probably more a drag on productivity than a benefit. Imagine the time people spent on nonproductive uses during work hours on their smartphone. The gains being accessible and look up information on the spot pale in comparison, IMO. We certainly are. Things like wide adoption of wireless communication, carrying a powerful computer anywhere you go, google translate is incredibly good, available to everybody on demand for free, advances in genetic engineering, even horizontal drilling and fracking, all happening more or less at the same time, iPhone is only 10 years old! Nothing short of miraculous.

Appreciate the condescending reply - the tone immediately made me realize how everything I wrote is silly and outright stupid. Can you please send me a list of your investments so I can just clone you? Network effect is probably in the top 3 requirements for a store of value asset. Bitcoin is currently winning the network effect game. Once again, I'm not a zealot and my opinions will grow as facts change. I hold some of the smaller coins in crypto as an effective hedge on bitcoin losing its current network effect status. And great idea with the interest earning crypto-asset. Must be nice to be able to just come up with million/billion dollar ideas on the spot and not act on it. I would advise that you create this - but I hate spending time giving advice to people who don't want to follow it. In response to Jurgis, the answer is, I don't know. But I also don't know why gold? vs why silver, vs why palladium, vs why granite? vs why limestone. I don't really need to know or understand to know that they have a value in the market. The internet and tech in general have shown to be a way of the future. Internet real estate, which takes the form of domain names, has shown to be just as valuable as tangible dirt and soil real estate. Why? again I am not an expert and do not know. The only question one should be concerned with, has to do with whether it is sustainable. I have started to believe it might be. Palladium and silver are valuable as well, because they are used as a store of value (silver) and have industrial uses (Palladium is a catalysator metal). Platinum also has industrial uses and is also more expensive than Gold. All of the above are rare in the earth crust and expensive to mine. Gold is pretty to look at (shiny yellow color) is non corrosive and easily malleable,which made it the metal of choice for precious things since many thousand years ago. One can argue about the value to store wealth in it, but the above will always make it worth something. In a time of crisis, it has proven to be an enduring way for means of exchange (also in WW2 for example, cigarettes in Germany worked better). I don’t think that crypto currencies, which can easily be replaced with another crypto currency's, have the same durable aspects to it than the above. It is not even clear to me that in the time of a real crisis, you will have access to internet or a computer. What would a crypto currency be worth in such a case? I think this aspect to important for those that want to have a vehicle to store wealth. Right now, it seems to me that Crypocurrencies is just a bet that more suckers will be drawn into it in the near term future, just like buying internet stocks in Y1999 or even gold in Y1980.

Just shut up and don't take my money? ::) My check is in the mail 8)

I am not sure who the scoring number accounts for qualitative factors like the training and the weaponery of their troupe. The Roman Army for example was much better trained than their adversaries and were expected to beat a force equal their size almost under any circumstances. I suspect that this has much more to do with Caesar’s victories than his leadership accumen in battle. I don’t see hw this qualitative measure was build in his scoring model.

A guy in a basement will create a new one a couple days later. If you think about it, mining for gold isn’t very productive either, that’s one reason why the gold standard isn’t really feasible. It makes no sense to couple wealth with the amount of gold that can be mined, or just as much sense than mining for a artificial limited number of crypto keys. It’s quite easy to create a new crypto currency, much easier than finding and building a new gold mine though.

More likely, they decided to do the intelligence via watching our TV rather than flying around in saucers. They probably decided they they get all the information they need just by watching the Saturday night show.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it was never possible before. In all the history of mankind up until Satashi published his white paper, any currency created by man would have been easily inflated and would require you to trust the issuer. So no, there is no precedent. You can inflate the crypto currency by creating a new one. You can also inflate the crypto currency by dividing it into smaller and smaller fractions. Since it is a virtual transaction token with no objective value, who cares?

Even the high estimate is under 25%. http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/ "3.79 million bitcoins are already gone for good based on a high estimate—and 2.78 million based on a low one. Those numbers imply 17% to 23% of existing bitcoins" AND: "both estimates make a critical assumption that coins belonging to bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi, are gone for good" Take Satoshi's coins out of the estimates and you get 2.75M to 1.73M lost coins or 10% to 16% And these estimates are considering a large amount of coins which haven't moved in a while to be lost (30-50%), no one really knows which are lost and which are simply being held. Stupid question - how can bitcoins get lost, just by losing the digital keys?

RE has compounded BV at 12% since 1995. You don't think there's better stuff out there? Do you think they will compound higher in the future? Paying around book value seems good but can probably do better, no? As Jurgis stated, I don’t think they will do 12% going forward, but neither do BRK and FFH, which trades at richer multiple of P/B. If you know a compounder that is cheap, relatively low risk and can do 12% going forward, you should tell us about it.

recent buys are MLPs - BPL and SEP, which seem to have come under selling presssure (tax loss selling?) I also bought some RE - a solid up insurance company that got hit by the hurricane season (like just about anyone else in the industry) , but has a very solid history of book value growth and reserving history. I think the latter is a better buy than BRK right now.

Fits right in with his boss.

I bought some T.PPR as well. But also T.IPO and V.ATU. What’s equities these symbols? Can‘t for the life of me find what kind of security these are.

Do you mind running me through how you came up with a 7.2% cap rate. I estimated this based on $2.365B of NOI and ~$33B in EV (the stock was a bit higher when I did the math). I think this number is incorrect, however, because it neglects unconsolidstrd debt . the $2.365B in NOI given in the annual report put seems to be about correct, but also seems to contain some gains from sales of apartment in mixed used project. There are 960M shares outstanding, but GGP will get some cash from warrants they are exercised. U think they will get $500M roughly. mortgage and ST debt is $11.7B, but they is only the consolidated number. I do not know how much debt is unconsolidstrd. This is important because their NOI contains the earnings from all source (including unconsolidstrd), the GHp shares of the debt in those needs to be added too, to make it consistent. In the 2016 annual report the EV is given at $40.3B and the stock was then at $25. I assume this EV contains the GGP share of debt from minority JV as well, since it is higher then the EV from the consolidated balance sheet. If we now correct for the decrease in share price from $25 to now $20, the correct EV from the Y2016 year end would be $35.5B. ($40.3B-0.96x$5) with the 2.365B in NOI, the cap rate would be ~6.66%. My math may not be totally precise, but I think it is approximately correct.

GGP is at at 7.8x EV/EBITDA, which is a bit on through side. however their Re is very high quality and Inthink it is safer to own high quality RE leveraged with 7.8x ENITDA than low quality RE with 5x. Furthermore, GGP has shown a long stern trend to deleverage and improve their debt metrics over time significantly. if they keep doing this, they should arrive at 6x EV/EBITDA ina couple of years, which I think would be fairly manageable. The implied cap rate of GGP is about 7.2%, which Inthink is fairly cheap for high quality RE.

OP asked for listed companies. Gomo, as I understand it was a family business that was purchased by a listed company. The first listed company was The Dutch East India Company, which started in 1602 or thereabouts and ceased to existing in 1799. The Salt mine probably want started as a corporation 7000 years ago, but it seemed to be an organized effort at least since the Bronze Age, if not early based on ar archeology, since individuals by by themselves could never have done such an undertaken. Quite a durable resource and operation for sure.

My first investment was a quarter of an ounce gold coin in 1979, which worked out well. I sold it for a 100% gain, close enough to the peak. I bought another gold coin afte the correction, which actually trades cheaper than the face value of its gold content, but that one didn’t work, And I barely broke even. Sometimes luck or timing beats valuation. I bought my first Long term options in 1982 (BASF Optionsscheine) and sold for a 150% gain a year later. I should have kept those. It has been downhill from there ever since...

Gomo, that Japanese construction company, wasn’t listed so I don’t think it would count. If we look for continuously operated business of any kind, the Hallstatt salt mine in Austria, which has been operated for 7000 years (not sure continuously) probably wins: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallein_Salt_Mine The Reichenhall salt mine closeby, which I visited on my trip to Germany (very worthwhile) , has been continuously operated for 500 years.

GGP looks interesting, but the debt load at 8x EBITDA is just too high, SRG is an interesting example in what Whitman calls resource conversion. With a 11-12% cash yield on invested capital for renovations and finding new tenants, they make about 22-24% on equity (assuming 50% equity) or 4x they invested equity, if you assume that Cap rates for their properties are in the 6% range fully stabilized after thr conversion is complete..

Tesla is in a way a company that has a high likelihood of being fraudulent in one way or another . Strong willed and visionary founder /CEO who does not take no for an answer, high management turnover, visionary but apparently very ineffective manufacturing organization, abysmal GAAP financials, mergers with related companies (Solarcity). It’s a fertile soil for fraud to grow.