Spekulatius

Yes, if you manage money for others and hold shares in noinfo stocks, you are between a rock and a hard place. As you stated, an individual investor can do as he pleases. I don’t like this rule either, that’s why I wrote a comment email to the SEC as well, but then again, if it causes forced sales, I am willing to take the other side and buy some shares at deep discounts to prevailing prices ( let’s say 30% below prevailing prices) and see what happens.

No Fidelity and Schwab haven’t walked anything back in terms of commissions. Fidelity does not allow buying noinfo OTC stocks, so keep that in mind, if you consider them. I believe Schwab has no restrictions on what you can buy , but I don’t have a lot of experience- I just opened a test account with them yesterday. I personally would close my Etrade Account if I were you.

Im just kidding... relax. Im just shocked at the prices people pay for investing advice. The buyer doesn’t pay for investment advice, they pay for advertising that comes from a possible news story with him having lunch with a semi famous person.

He has gotten excellent feedback as a seller on various ~$80 used computer monitors and for a $3500 30 min conference call.

Thank you Packer. Do you know anything about mortgage REITs? It seems like ABR is a mortage REIT paying over 9%. These REITs don't have real properties right? No, these mortgage Reits typically hold paper (commercial and residential mortgages), lever them up and live off spreads. Get something wrong like duration (easy to mess up with callable residential mortgages) or credit risk and you have a zero. So essentially these mortgage REITs have the same nature of lending business like the banks, but with a higher funding cost? The concerns you outlined seem to be the exact same concerns banks have. But WFC and BAC still seem to be investible by a lot of members here. When I look at mortgage REITs, what particular concerns should I have and look out for? Banks are diversified and regulated business. Mortgage Reits are one trick ponies and not regulated and cater to yield hungry investors. That makes the risk profile entirely different. It doesn’t mane that they are bad business, but I think most business that are designed as yieldcos aren’t great business to begin with.

Thank you Packer. Do you know anything about mortgage REITs? It seems like ABR is a mortage REIT paying over 9%. These REITs don't have real properties right? No, these mortgage Reits typically hold paper (commercial and residential mortgages), lever them up and live off spreads. Get something wrong like duration (easy to mess up with callable residential mortgages) or credit risk and you have a zero.

The problem with those kind of performances track records is that they outperform when the fund is small and underperform when the fund is large (from fund inflows). When you look at the total amount money gained and lost, CMGFX lost their customers money on average, relative to an index fund.

Farmers Mac isn’t really the same business model, it’s income mostly comes from the net interest margin, while the GSE would be 2/3 fees and 1/3 interest income (roughly) The GSE would have a more stable income stream, specially in a low interest rate environment. AGM stock only took off after interest rates came off from zero.

Do you think the price improvements will go away & they'll start selling order flow? https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/press-release/Fidelity-Price-Improvement-Guide-Media-Advisory_02192019.pdf I really don’t care. I reviewed the price improvements I received this year va commissions paid and they were roughly 5% of the commission cost. (I do a lot of small trades when I scale in and out of positions). If you trade low priced stocks I low liquidity markets, then the price improvement matters, otherwise it has marginal impact. More important is that Fidelity pays higher interest on cash balances than most other brokers, except IBKR. IBKR is best from a cost benefit perspective, but I don’t like to put all eggs in one basket.

Bought a starter in PAYP (premarket yesterday) and also DD (rebuy). On an unrelated note, Fidelity went commission free today - yay!

FWIW, there is still a GSE trading in the public markets, which may serve as a reference - Farmers Mac: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AGM?p=AGM The valuation is pretty undemanding.

Done. On the other side, forced sales sounds interesting too. There could be real bargains to be had, if funds owning these buggers can’t hold them any more, because the value is unknown. A private investor would need to be willing to hold them for a decade. < Corrected for grammar >

The owners are pretty crusty and made waves because there are no women on board and probably none in their mangement either. Colorful history, they changed from an plantation into a real estate investment vehicle with a decent track record. I own a few shares. Probably good podcast material with a bit of digging.

I don’t think Thai people haggle about the price of street food. The reason you could feed 3 locals for the price of one farang alone is that they raised the prices for you.

I get a sinking feeling when I read about value in the shipping sector.

I think over time, Stelco is a zero, it’s just a matter of time. Blast steel mills in NA don’t work economically any more, as the mini mills over time eat their lunch, breakfast and dinner.

Can you comment at all on RYCEY? Even with the pullback it doesn't seem that terribly cheap to me but I admit I don't understand the financials. I look at RYCEY‘s valuation in terms of EV/ sales. It trades at around 1xEV/ sales, but once profitability is addressed, it should be able to get to 2x eventually. Now add done revenue growth to it, one can easily see more than a 2 bagger. Bases on Current results, you are correct , Rolls Royce isn’t cheap at all. I am optimistic though, because there is just such a strong moat around this business and there is really only one competitor ( and Pratt& Whittey to some extend). Likewise logic can be applied to GE, except I have more concerns about their accounting.

There is some an interesting implication for politics here, as there is a tendency for super rich to get involved more so in the US than anywhere else. Not all of them are A$$holes, but some of them are. We probably should caution the motives to “serve the country” a bit in general. It may just be another way to assert status and power in some cases.

I think these “perfect trades” are a well known staple in trading. It’s called picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

It’s better to be a rich A-hole than a poor A-hole.

Oddlots –How financial repression in China helped cause the trade war https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000451738498 It’s pretty good to at explaining the underlying reasons for the trade imbalances (saving rates!) and what may happen next.

Have been doing something similar myself, bit it's based entirely on "when markets do well, Trump has enough flexibility to hang himself with it". As long as that dynamic holds, this trade will be profitable. But hard to know when he finally decides to let things ride OR isn't going to save the market by backing down. It’s basically a bet that Trump blows some kind of gasket, or that an generally overvalued market falls or that the continued weakness in many sectors leads to some economic trouble impacting the stock market. The amazing thing to me is not that any of the above frequently occurs, but that Mr Market returns to a state of piece and quite in between where puts become cheap again (with allow VIX). That said, the 3:0 is probably just luck. There is no free lunch and sooner or later Mr Market will score against that trade.

The US is one of the few countries without law governing how data of individuals are used. We are in good company in that respect - China and Russia don’t have any laws either. This was actually a discussion as early as the 80‘s in Germany, when basic rules were developed. The EU now has laws, although the effectiveness is another matter.

Or buy puts when VIX is<14 and SPY >300. I am 3:0 on this trade. I think I made about 70% on average each time, just closed my last round yesterday. It’s definitely a no brainer, especially when in addition to above Trump says that trade talks are going well. I am almost serious about this.